Silver Housing Lining in Budget

There are two provisions in the Wisconsin 2009-11 budget that I'd like to discuss. Those provisions benefit affordable housing and provides a tool that will be very helpful to communities.

The first item is a provision to extend the life of a Tax Incremental Financing (TIF) District by a year with the extra year of funding going to affordable housing in the community. This was initiated by the Milwaukee Housing Trust Fund advocates, and inserted into the Senate's version of the budget by Senator Coggs.

The second, the result of efforts of many advocates and legislators over the past few years, would "fix" the property tax exemption for "benevolent" housing. I won't go into the details, but there were two issues at stake here-the "rent use" by the housing provider (how the rent revenue can be used and still qualify for the "benevolent" exemption), and the fact that many municipalities felt that some senior housing providers were abusing the exemption with "affluent" housing for older adults. This was in the joint finance version of the budget, removed from the Assembly's version by the Democratic Caucus, modified in the Senate version, and the recounciled version was closer to the Senate's version.

Both were not vetoed by the Governor, and are now law.

This is very significant because it allows low-income housing providers to continue to provide housing without being slapped with a tax bill they never budgeted for which would drive many out of business.

The TIF District gives communities a powerful tool to raise revenue (however erratic) for affordable housing and to improve housing stock. A community can use at least 75 percent toward affordable housing, and the remainder to improve housing stock. This could be an ideal revenue source for a housing trust fund.