Tax Credits and NIMBYism

On Friday I discussed the recent announcement of WHEDA's tax-credit awards for 2011, and looked at a bit of history with the awards in recent years.

I ended with:

But keep in mind that there are many developments that never got off the ground because of community opposition, and did not even appear on the lists of applications.

Like it or not, affordable housing and tax credits can be very politicized, especially in local communities with community opposition.  I received some feedback from a professional who follow tax credit development issues:

It might be interesting to know whether the percentages of elderly, family, mixed-income and supportive housing for which developers applied the same as the percentages selected. Or did WHEDA staff choose a "disproportionate" amount of one or the other kind of housing? I say it "might" be interesting because the scoring criteria for awarding tax credits are a lot more complicated than just those factors, and the projects selected (from among the applications) could reflect a different profile for reasons other than the kind of housing (based on those categories).

That is not to imply that there was some kind of bias (although there very well could be).  For instance, one could take a look at this projection of Wisconsin's aging demographics and argue that there's a legitimate need to begin building more elderly housing in anticipation of the aging boom.  Unfortunately, very often communities will plan for affordable housing-but only the elderly-only kind.  Much of the opposition in New Berlin, for instance, was only to the workforce portion of the development.  This kind of behavior should not be rewarded-communities should be open to housing of all types. Personally, I'm opposed to segregated housing, which elderly-only housing are.

In this vein, a fellow advocate told me:

I spoke to a LIHTC developer recently who confirmed to me what we already suspected – “Mayoral support makes or breaks it.” He said if they don’t have community support, they will never submit their application. That’s how WHEDA can always downplays the role of community support, application are never denied because of it – THEY ARE JUST NEVER EVEN SUBMITTED.

I also noticed a good number of applications that were withdrawn for whatever reason.  I'm sure WHEDA knows this is a continuing issue, and the new director of WHEDA should take steps to combat NIMBYism, especially because often WHEDA's good name is smeared by the opposition.