Wednesday, March 18, 2009

More details on the April 22 event!

Here are some more details on the Creating Communities Campaign. The next event is scheduled for Wednesday, April 22 from 5:30 to 7:00pm at St. Luke's Lutheran Church in Waukesha.

There will be a panel discussion on current affordable housing efforts and what more could be done in Waukesha County with a Housing Trust Fund.Panelists include:
  • Bernie Juno, Executive Director, Hebron House of Hospitality
  • Bill Perkins, Executive Director, WI Partnership for Housing Development
  • Ted Romberg, President, Community Land Development Association
  • David Weiss, CEO, General Capital Group

This should be a fun discussion! Be there!

Pre-register with Heather Dummer Combs at heatherdc@interfaithconference.org or 414 276-9050. Also contact her if you have any disability-related accommodation requests.

Mention in Journal-Sentinel

The Waukesha County Affordable Housing Taskforce is making waves, and people are starting to notice! We were mentioned in the Sunday edition of the Milwaukee Journal-Sentinel! It is a thoughtful article about the disparity of employment and housing in the suburbs, so go take a look!

On the flip side of the coin, there's Dan Miller from the Heartland Institute in Chicago decrying Smart Growth (interesting, isn't it, how an editorial about affordable housing devolves into guns misfiring at Smart Growth?). Leaving aside our opinions on Smart Growth, the article contains some misleading "facts" that I immediately spotted. Check it out here and post your comments!

UPDATE: Links fixed!

Tuesday, March 10, 2009

What The....?!?

Guess what Wisconsin suburb was chosen as the best affordable suburb in America? After winnowing down hundreds, if not thousands of suburbs, the wise folks at Business Week chose....

Pewaukee.

Yes, Pewaukee. Look, Pewaukee's a pretty place, wouldn't mind spending a weekend or two there, but... affordable?!? From the Business Week article-
Median home price: $267,500. Obviously we have differing opinions on what affordable is.

To be fair, they don't look purely at housing costs-they have a number of other factors, hence the "best" adjective.

Here's part of the criteria that was used:
Editor's note: The selected suburbs were limited to towns within 25 miles of the most populated city, with populations of 5,000 to 60,000 people, median family incomes of $51,000 to $120,000, and lower-than-average crime rates. We weighted a variety of factors including livability (short commutes, low pollution, green space), education (well-educated residents, high test scores), crime (low personal and property crime), economy (high job growth, low unemployment rate, high family income), and affordability (median household income, cost of expenditures). Affordability was most heavily weighted in our calculations. We penalized places with bad weather, a lack of racial diversity, high divorce rates, and few children.

Let's take a moment to review. "We penalized places with...a lack of racial diversity...." Pewaukee is a city that is 97.2% white, compared with 75.1% for the United States, or even 88.9% for Wisconsin. Obviously it was not a stiff penalty. And note that they look at affordability purely in terms of the household income of residents vs their expenses, not the cost of housing vs the income of the broader community.

Please don't misunderstand me-I'm not knocking Pewaukee as a place to live, but knocking BusinessWeek for poor use of statistics. As we used to say in my high-school computer class, GIGO. That's "Garbage In, Garbage Out."

Thursday, March 5, 2009

Can you afford your housing costs?

Did you know that the median sales price of a house in Waukesha County is nearly $250,000, even with recently declining home values? The most recent median sales price listed on RealtyTrac, for May 2008, is $246,949. The US Department of Housing and Urban Development defines housing affordability as paying less than 30 percent of income on housing costs. So to afford even a "modest" house selling for $200,000, a household needs to make over $73,000.

And the Fair Market Rent for a two-bedroom apartment is $795. To afford that, a household needs to make at least $15.29 per hour, but the estimated average wage for a renter in Waukesha County is only $13.31 per hour.

We've met people who are struggling to afford their housing costs, or settling for less space than they need, or further from their jobs than they'd like. Visit our website to hear the voices of these people.

What is a housing trust fund?

A housing trust fund (HTF) is a fund that a city, county, or state creates to support affordable housing development. HTF funding reduces building costs, so that developers are able to charge less to sell or rent housing. Those who receive funding agree to keep prices affordable for lower income households for a certain length of time.

Housing trust funds have become a common way to support the development of affordable homes. There are over 550 housing trust funds nationally. You can find out more about HTFs at our web page and at http://communitychange.org/our-projects/htf. Or post a question if you have one, and we'll reply.

Wednesday, March 4, 2009

Welcome or Welcome Back

For those new to the site and as a reminder to the regulars, this blog is a way for supporters to connect around the issue of a housing trust fund in Waukesha County. The Creating Communities Campaign is an advocacy campaign of the Waukesha County Affordable Housing Task Force, which includes members of faith communities, affordable housing advocates, and members of the business community.

We're advocating for the establishment of a housing trust fund at the county level to address the lack of affordable housing. The campaign name reflects our belief that increasing affordable housing will create true communities of people from various walks of life, living and working together in those communities.

So welcome, or welcome back! Read some posts to find out more about the campaign, post comments, ask questions in the comment areas, sign up to be a follower to show your support. This is the place to shape the campaign,
to go back to the drawing board if things aren't working, and to get excited about our successes at making our communities better places to live!

Tuesday, March 3, 2009

Best Practices in Low-Income Tax Credit Housing

I ran across this a while ago, and finally got around to posting this. This is a report on Best Practices in Low-Income Housing Tax Credit (LIHTC). Building Opportunity: Civil Rights Best Practices in the Low-Income Housing Tax Credit Program-An Updated Fifty-State Review of LIHTC "Qualified Allocation Plans" is an interesting report on what states can do to affirmatively further fair housing using the LIHTC program.

Wisconsin Housing and Economic Development Authority (WHEDA)'s Qualified Allocation Plan can be found here. Does it employ best practices? On the contrary, just about the only mention of Wisconsin is criticism (along with other states) on "incentivizing community support". Advocates here in Wisconsin have criticized WHEDA for this part of the QAP, which can lead to a lack of affordable housing being built in hostile communities. That is not to say that Wisconsin's QAP is poor-there are many parts I like in the QAP, but the community support scoring, alas, is not one of them.

There is no reason why a Housing Trust Fund could not adopt some of the best practice strategies in this study. Furthermore, to counteract a possible lack of community support in certain municipalities, HTF commitment could be used to increase community support scoring in a local development's application for tax credits.

Monday, March 2, 2009

Future Meetings

The schedule for future meetings of the Waukesha County Affordable Housing Task Force:

Task Force: March 4, 10 AM-11:30 AM at St. John's Lutheran, 20275 Davidson Road, Brookfield.

Public Outreach Committee: March 10, 10 AM-11:30 AM at St. Anthony on the Lake, W280 N2101 Hwy. SS., Pewaukee

Quarterly Evening Event/Activity-April 22, Time & Location TBA; SAVE THE DATE!