April 19, 2005
April 19, 2005
Forum on Affordable Housing
West Bay League of Women Voters
Whoops! One-third of RI's families can't afford to live here . . .
How bad is RI's affordable housing problem? Catastrophic. How can citizens help
to solve it? Common-sensically.
Four experts offered those answers at a West Bay League of Women Voters open
meeting on Tuesday evening, April 19, at the Warwick Police Station's community
room to discuss "Understanding Rhode Island's Housing Needs." [This reporter's
comments are added in brackets.].
Rhode Island
housing holds three dubious national distinctions, explained Amy Rainone, Policy
Director for the RI's Housing and Mortgage Finance Corporation (RIHMFC), the
agency charged with housing RI's low and moderate-income families. Housing
prices may be higher elsewhere but have risen here at the highest rate in the
U.S.; meanwhile, our rates of vacancies and of new unit construction per capita
are lowest.
Only lately has RI's record become so bad. Given the U.S. Commerce Department's
recommended ratio of adding 700 housing units for every 1,000 jobs,
Rhode Island
blatantly overbuilt in the 1980's. We then added 1,800 units per 1,000 jobs,
more than twice what we needed. Now, however, we're adding only 443 units per
1,000 jobs, little more than half of what we now need.
Yes, we've added more jobs to our economy [a good thing] and our average
household size is smaller nowadays [another good thing, many say]. Yet our
number of households seeking units far exceeds the number of units being built.
Why does demand so far exceed supply? What happened to building and buying
starter homes on one-quarter acre lots or renting a decent 2-bedroom apartment
for $350/month? Local zoning laws and building permit caps (often aimed at good
things like preserving water quality and rural character while keeping local
school costs down) have made such stories into myths. [Then too, real estate now
seems a safer investment than stocks and bonds; but didn't tax incentives help
produce that housing boom in the ‘80's?]
In any case, RI's cost to buy or rent housing recently doubled. Given the
standard of a family's spending 30 percent of its monthly income on housing
costs, our percentage of citizens who can't afford to rent or buy homes is now a
whopping one-third. That's 124,000 families.
The Human Price
"We see the results [of RI's housing catastrophe] daily," testified Michelle
Wilcox, Senior Vice President for Housing and Facilities at Crossroads Rhode
Island, the private social service agency once named Travelers' Aid. Are we
talking here about people chronically mentally ill or addicted? No: 80% of the
agency's clients need help with homelessness on a one-time-only basis.
Between January and March of 2005, with food, medicine and utilities' prices
skyrocketing as well as housing costs, Crossroads serviced a record 680
first-time homeless individuals and, at only its one of several shelters
throughout the state, 48 newly homeless families. (Crossroads defines a family
as an adult with at least one minor child.) The total of 159 families that the
agency helped in those three months included 314 children: 70 percent were
preschoolers. Sixty percent of those 159 homeless families included a working
adult.
Still, some families and individuals are chronically homeless. Due perhaps to
mental as well as physical illness or addiction, they need emergency shelter,
transitional housing and/or permanently affordable (often federally
rent-subsidized) housing. They need built-in social
services such as help with budgeting, transportation for doctors' visits, short
or long-term counseling, or job training and placement. Then the ugliness and
ignorance of NIMBY ("not in my backyard") often sets in.
For example, audience members at last week's [4/19] meeting contrasted personal
experiences. On the one hand, teenagers have been seen tossing soda cans before
school into Jefferson Boulevard from a short-staffed Crossroads-run former
convent where a family can live, temporarily, in a 10 x 12 room built to house
one nun. On the other hand and often in working-class communities, families
routinely help one another to patch roofs and coach adolescents' sports teams.
Community makes a big difference in defining one's "backyard."
Common-sense Solutions
What can citizens do besides praying for miracles?
Plenty, according to Elizabeth Debs, Deputy Director of The Housing Network, the
association of RI's Community Development Corporations (CDCs), our many
non-profit developers of affordable housing. Pointing to photos of single and
multi-family houses -- both new and renovated – that the Network's members have
already supplied throughout RI, she stressed
that none resemble the stereotypical post-WWII housing project.
CDCs build not just housing but neighborhoods. Working with grassroots citizen
groups, CDCs have provided 1000 housing units in the last 2 years (including
some revitalized Section 8 subsidies) but also boast of programs to provide job
development, arts, gardening and a host of other community developments.
Each CDC, she noted, contributes from 6 to 40 units per year. Even though units
cost an average of $200,000 per unit, they sell for $90,000 to $130,000. The gap
is made up by coalitions of federal, state, city and private funding sources.
The biggest increase in CDC costs comes when developments which typically take 2
years to build are dragged out to 5 years or more thanks to local opposition.
Ironically, she added, CDCs aim to enhance extant communities.
Newly affordable CDC housing in RI complements rather than detracts from
individual community character. How? League moderator Sheila Brush, also of
GrowSmart
RI,
noted three meetings upcoming in May on "Best Practices in Affordable Housing
Design." National experts from the HUD Design Advisor Program, RI architects and
CDCs, and faculty from RI School of Design will offer three programs aimed at
local officials and citizens. All start at
5:15 p.m. (including
supper). They'll meet on Thursday May 5 at the URI University Club in Kingston,
Thursday May 12 at William Davies, Jr. Career and
Technical
High School
in Lincoln, and Tuesday May 17 at Roger Williams University Conference Center in
Portsmouth. Register by calling GrowSmart Rhode Island at 228-6594.
Besides sponsoring and attending such public education initiatives, ordinary
citizens can put their knowledge to work in their local communities by serving
on and supporting affordable housing task forces.
RI law now demands that towns like West Bay's Coventry, East Greenwich and North
Kingstown (which now have less than 10% affordable housing units) begin this
summer to implement plans submitted by last December and to be state-approved by
July. Those local plans would enable each town to reach, within 20 years, a goal
of 10% affordable local housing. But without citizen involvement -- serving on
task forces and commenting at Town Council and Planning Board hearings --
nothing will happen.
Five
strategies for citizens were then outlined by Ben Gworek, Housing Net-work
Community Organizer.
1. Increase density in
residential zones by creating village centers on main roads [and using improved
techno-logy that makes wells and septic systems more compatible].
2. Advocate inclusionary
zoning to build mixed-income neighborhoods like those now common in 2,000
California towns where a
minimum 20% of local units are affordable. Tax breaks and density bonuses offset
private developers' profit losses or they pay fees in lieu of build-ing
affordable units on-site [much as recreation needs are now funded by developers'
contributing land or fees].
3. Capture existing units: e.g., make in-law apartments available to
non-family, and ease deed restrictions.
4. Allow zoning exceptions to permit building on slightly sub-standard lots
such as those lacking full minimum frontage requirements.
5. Establish local housing trust funds to preserve, build and rehabilitate
affordable housing. Money could come from federal Community Development Bloc
Grants, fees in lieu of building affordable units on-site, impact fees, plus
private and charitable donations. Much as local land trusts preserve open
spaces, local housing trusts form non-profit collaboratives that own and lease
land on which long-term subsidized housing is built. [Controlling land costs
controls housing costs.] Housing trusts also help pay for down payments, closing
costs and renovations on existing homes.
Finally, Gworek noted, affordable housing isn't pie-in-the-sky. It offers a
vital economic stimulus to our state. Indeed, every $1 million invested in
affordable housing attracts another $5 to 6 million in outside funds.
[Residential tax rates need business; business needs workers; workers need
housing. Housing stimulates business; business lowers residential tax rates.]
Warwick
and Cranston [and West Warwick?] have many rental units if not at least 10%
affordable housing, Sheila Brush noted. But such cities still need to review
their comprehensive plans. Indeed, the City of Cranston is recruiting a Housing
Task Force to do so this summer. Political willpower is also needed to formulate
a Statewide Housing Plan by July of 2006.
Proposed federal budget cuts make statewide and local efforts all the more
essential. Federal housing funds likely to be cut, the Department of Housing and
Urban Development itself may well be swallowed by Commerce, and Community
Development Bloc Grants may have an exclusively very-low-income focus.
Congratulations are due, however, to the RI Congressional delegation for solidly
opposing such cuts.
Handouts at the League meeting also solicited support for the Coalition for the
Homeless statewide platform:
1.
Rhode Island provided no
affordable housing funds until 4 years ago. A $5 million Neighborhood
Opportunities Program then began to fund homes for working families. This spring
House bill #5175 and Senate bill #06451 would raise NOP funding to $7.5 million.
2. Another $350,000 would be allocated for Supportive Services to encourage
independence and stability in people's lives, via House bill #5289 and Senate
bill #0204.
3. Another $600,000 would fund the Shelter to Housing Program to enable men,
women and children to have stable employment, education and community contacts,
via House bill #5793 and Senate bill #0145.
Discussions following the panel presentations highlighted the need for a real
sense of community -- of YIMBY -- and suggested that RI might even fund
prisoners' renovations of buildings in the state's Pontiac Avenue complex.
Is RI going over the top to provide affordable housing? Hardly. Research by
Providence College Sociologist Eric Hirsch indicates that RI spends only $5 per
citizen for housing production, whereas Massachusetts spends $25 and Connecticut
$21.
Through its on-going comprehensive study of affordable housing in RI's
West
Bay area, the West
Bay League of Women Voters hopes to update its 1989 position in favor of
affordable housing at 2006 Annual Meeting, and thus lobby in support of local,
statewide and national efforts to house all Rhode Islanders.
–Marie Hennedy
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