Scattered-Site Rental Housing

People with disabilities has historically been sent to institutional-like settings, and people with disbilities, families, friends, and advocates have fought that mentality for decades, and the trend is toward greater integration into the community.  But many of the housing units available to people with disabilities that have some kind of subsidy such as HUD/USDA funding or Low-Income Housing Tax Credit tend to be apartment buildings or townhomes.  Nothing wrong with that, but it's nice to have options.

So I read with great interest the partnership between the City of Milwaukee and Gorman & Companies on scattered-site rental housing.  Gorman in the past has worked on scattered-site housing, the Metcalf Park Owner Initiative, which is lease-to-own.  This new project has the City selling 21 foreclosed duplexes to Gorman for $5,000 each to create 40 rental units (one will be a leasing office).  Gorman has funding for the project, including tax credits, federal neighborhood stabilization funds, and a bank loan. 

It's nice to see tax-credit developers exploring alternatives to the apartment/townhouse models, especially given the high number of foreclosed homes in Milwaukee.  Single-family homes, including duplexes, are difficult to make accessible, especially Milwaukee's older homes with exposed foundations on small lots with a steep drop to the sidewalk level.   It'll be interesting to see what homes were selected, and what steps Gorman will take to make them more accessible for persons with mobility disabilities.

Other organizations and individuals interested in scattered-site rental housing might want to check out Neighborworks' webinar on this topic.

July 14, 2011, 2 p.m. to 3:30 p.m. EDT. This NeighborWorks America-sponsored webinar offers participants a tour of the new online Scattered Site Rental Toolkit, and will hear presentations by two organizations that manage successful scattered site programs.

P.S.  To Tom Daykin: I especially enjoyed the dig at those making negative comments on your first article on the Gorman purchase.

I would note that no one from the public spoke at today's committee meeting in opposition to the $7.4 million project, which still needs full council approval. Nor did committee members receive any emails or letters opposing the sale, according to the City Clerk's office.  That's worth mentioning, I think, given the number of negative comments that appeared in my blog item from Monday when I first reported the proposal.

Autos & Foreclosures

This article looks at the cost of transportation and how significant costs (car payments, insurance) can affect the ability of a household to withstand the mortgage crisis.

“The mortgage crisis was more intense in less location-efficient areas,” Bernstein said at a panel discussion on regional transportation planning for equity at the National Building Museum Monday. “I’m not saying car ownership caused it. But a precipitating factor was a lack of flexibility to tinker with your household budget because you had fixed costs for transportation.”

South Milwaukee Settlement

In what is an obvious parallel to the New Berlin case, South Milwaukee has settled the complaint against it for its action against an development which included some units with affordable housing units.  Note that this is a 18-year old legal battle that must've been very expensive for South Milwaukee (and I'm willing to bet they had to pay the other party's legal fees as well), and the end result is that the buildings stand.  Well, they do get a new 10-acre park out of it, but it's probably not an even trade against the cost.

Special Tax Credit Round for Marinette County

WHEDA has announced a special round of tax credits intended to create more workforce housing in Marinette County after U.S. Navy awarded a new contract to Marinette Marine Corporation (MMC) which will create more than a thousand jobs. 

The concern is that all the new employees will flood the housing market, creating housing shortages.  Although the linked press release doesn't mention it, a different e-mail announcement included an executive summary of a report on Marinette housing market by Baker Tilly.  Baker Tilly only looked at actual MMC jobs, ignoring multipler effects (i.e. increased employment elsewhere in retail, restaurants, medical, etc.) and estimated that of the 923 MMC new employees, slightly over a third of the employees will live within the community, or 350 workers.  Of that 350, 83 would rent and 232 would own, creating a shortage of 82 rental units and 90 homeownership units.  Baker Tilly suggests the construction of 24-40 family tax credit units and 60-70 market-rate units.  WHEDA offers incentives for mixed-income housing, a mix of tax credit units and market-rent units that could be used to meet both categories.

The most intersting thing to me about this is that because WHEDA considers this unexpected and special circumstances (the influx of 500 new workers in 2011 and 2012 alone), "The Current Qualified Allocation Plan allows WHEDA to waive any conditions not mandated by Section 42 to address unforseen circumstances, and determined by WHEDA to be in the best interests of the citizens of the state of Wisconsin."

Essentially, WHEDA is saying they can toss out any scoring requirements that are not mandated by the federal tax-credit program.  The 2011 Qualified Allocation Plan outlines the scoring categories.  The question is, what will WHEDA toss out?  Given this is in response to a workforce housing shortage, one might argue WHEDA might be justified to remove the scoring categories for elderly assisted living or supportive housing for persons who are homeless, or are at risk of being homeless.  But they might be hard-pressed to explain why it would be necessary to waive those for energy efficiency, Universal Design, Large Families, etc.

One thing that should be kept in mind is that not all new tenants of those new units would be MMC workers; it's inevitable that employees with higher wages will be more desirable for current landlords and will push out those in the workforce with lower wages ("renting down" effect).  Some of the new tenants could very well be those who used to live in market-rate housing that are now occupied by a new employee.

More Changes to Creating Communities

As many of you will remember, I mentioned recently that this blog would be undergoing changes.  Because my agency is moving forward with its blog, where I will post occasionally in my official capacity, it was agreed that this blog would evolve further into my personal blog.

Fear not, I'll still talk about housing issues.  Since this is now my personal blog, I'll be more frank than I have been in the past as it's only my own reputation I can damage.

For instance, during the recent campaign for the Senate, I wanted to call out a candidate on an erroneous statement (echoed by many others) on a housing issue.  I ended up deleting that post because I had to be cautious about appearing to endorse a particular candidate or party, no matter how factual the post was.

You'll notice that my blogging name has changed to Max Max, in honor of my cat.  Not that I'm trying to hide who I am-after all, if one goes far enough back in this blog, one can find enough clues.  But this is done as to further divide the line between my opinions and any other agency/organization/coalition I am affiliated with.  All opinions are my own.  Unless I'm quoting or paraphasing someone, of course.  But you should be able to figure that out.

Welcome to Creating Communities, where I'll be giving my inexpert opinion about policies on housing, transportation, and disability issues, with some other fun stuff thrown in.

Update:  Speaking of inexpertence, I didn't realize that changing my profile name now would also change the profile name in all past posts.  Ain't time travel grand?

Finally.

About time it happened.  The Feds finally moved on New Berlin.  Regular readers of the blog will recall me often discussing the MSP-New Berlin fracas and the Department of Justice's curosity about New Berlin's motives in denying MSP's applications.

Fox Point Hates Religious Sisters

Affluent Fox Point  rejected a request by the Daughters of Charity of St. Vincent de Paul to rezone a parcel to allow five sisters (but not in the literal sense) to live together in a home.  Currently zoning does not allow more than three non-related persons to live within a single-family home.  If I were a bombastic radio or TV personality, I would say that clearly Fox Point hates sisters of religious orders.

Fox Point Now reported that the request was rejected because the Fox Point Village Board feared that it would be setting a precedent allowing group homes and "similar establishments" within the Village boundaries.  This is a village of 6,870 residents with a 2009 median household income of $100,000 (but the mean household income was $154,303) and a median value of owner-occupied homes at $307,500. With the high cost of housing combined with relatively few options (less than 3,000 housing units), the likelihood of many group homes moving into the neighborhood is extremely low.  But hysterics shall rule the day!

Think about it for a moment.  Those residents and Board members opposing this feel they are so privileged that only people like themselves are allowed to move into the community.

"I think this gets down to the basis of how this community defines itself," Trustee Eric Fonstad said. "Any way you cut it, this is a group home. I think we would be bound to consider other group homes in the future. It could erode the residential character of the village, and I'm very uncomfortable with that."

So a resident's adult son with, say, developmental disabilitiess, would not be able to live semi-independently in a small group home setting of four persons within Fox Point. Is it any wonder why cities are aggravated by communities like Fox Point that essentially dump people they consider undesirable into the cities?

Oddly, based on my quick skimming online*, Fox Point actually may be positioning itself well to defend future Fair Housing complaints** should a provider attempt to open a group home with four or more unrelated persons.  By not having existing exemptions, they can point to equal treatment of everyone. 


*This statement shall not be constructed to be a valid legal analysis and/or opinion.
**Fox Point recently updated its Fair Housing ordinance in March, so they may have been more aware of the potential pitfalls.

HUD's Annual Report to Congress on Homelessness

HUD announced their 2010 Annual Homeless Assessment Report to Congress. 

In the press release, HUD points to some interesting trends including a 17% decrease of homelessness in principal cities accompanied by an increase of 57% in suburban and rural areas.  There are also more and more homeless families, but overall a decline in total homelessness since 2007 (even with a jump in 2010 due to the economy).  But this is largely due to a steep drop in Los Angeles, so I'm suspecting they may have some bad data out there.

HUD collects data in the following ways:

• The annual Point in Time Count in January with a massive effort to count as many homeless persons that can be found in a single night.
• The Homeless Management Information System (HMIS) which tracks uses of programs over the year.
• Reported use of housing inventories such as emergency shelters, transitional housing, etc.
• Reports from grantees under the Homelessness Prevention and Rapid Re-Housing Program (HPRP)

I doubt many people realize just how much data collection is happening nowadays in an effort to track efforts, document outcomes, and to study ways to improve future efforts.  HMIS is a relatively new system which agencies can access limited data on people who access services at different points (i.e. emergency shelter at one location, employment assistance at another location, then another shelter days later) and reduces the time and effort to repeatedly enter their intake information.  I had concerns about privacy when I first heard about HMIS, but my understanding is that for most agencies, access to data is controlled on a "need to know" basis beyond the basics.

HMIS shows that more than 1.59 million people spent at least one night in an emergency shelter or a transitional housing in 2010, a 2.2 percent increase.  Interestingly, single men in shelters tend to be white males over 30 with a disability, while homeless adults in sheltered families tend to be African-American females without a disability.  That latter bit shouldn't be surprising for those familiar with the high rate of eviction among low-income African-American women. 

I mentioned the decrease in urban areas and the increase in suburban and rural areas.  Perhaps because of more economic opportunities, "...emergency shelter stays in suburban and rural shelters have shortened, which allows these programs to turn beds over faster and serve more people over time. Conversely, occupancy rates in principal cities have not changed but stays have become longer, and these programs are serving fewer people."

Milwaukee has seen some new Permanent Supportive Housing (PSH) developments, and HUD reports on the success of those developments across the country.  Nearly 295,000 people nation-wide used PSH units in a year, with 18% exiting to rental housing and just five percent exiting to a homeless shelter, transitional housing, or the streets.  Tenants typically stay between 1-5 years.  Most PSH programs have a disability requirement, so 79% of adult PSH tenants have a disability.

HUD reports that while the 2009 U.S. adult population has a 15.3% disability rate, 24.6% of people living in poverty has a disability.  But 36.8% of those sheltered in 2010 reported having a disability.  So the disability rate of homeless adults is over double that of the general population!  (A small caveat; HUD includes substance abuse as a disability, while the Census doesn't.)  The most common disability is substance abuse, 34.7%, followed by serious mental illness at 26.2%, although there often is an overlap.  The rate of HIV/AIDS in general population is less than .05%, but among the adult homeless population, it is 3.9%.

Domestic violence continues to be a problem, with 12.3% of Point-in-Time counts reporting surviving domestic violence.  This is not collected by the HMIS system since domestic violence programs cannot participate in HMIS by law.

The number of people who are homeless tend to be concentrated in coastal states, particularly California, New York, and Florida, those three states having 40% of the total homeless population, despite having only 25% of the US population.  California and New York have a third of all PSH beds.  Throw in just four more states, and those six states have half of all the PSH beds in America.  Wisconsin has less than 1% of the total PSH beds.

A new approach is to prevent homelessness and rapidly re-house those who become homeless. This is the goal of the HPRP program, and more than 690,000 received assistance in the first year of the program, with 77% receiving assistance to prevent homelessness (such as temporary rental or utility assistance), while others received assistance in being housed permanently.  The success rate of this approach is at 94%.

HPRP is being funded by the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act, or the "Stimulus" which Secretary Donovan credits with preventing numerous instances of homelessness.

For the first time, HUD’s annual report reveals how the Recovery Act’s Homelessness Prevention and Rapid Re-Housing Program (HPRP) helped to mitigate homelessness in America, assisting nearly 700,000 persons in the first year of the program.

“It’s clear that had it not been for President Obama’s Recovery Act, many hundreds of thousands of persons may have fallen into homelessness or remained there ,” said HUD Secretary Shaun Donovan. “During the height of our nation’s economic hardship, we’ve managed to stabilize and even prevent homelessness as we work to find permanent housing solutions for the most vulnerable among us.”

Wisconsin receives $81 Million in community & housing dollars

The Journal-Sentinel reports that HUD has awarded Wisconsin $81 million.  The article, unfortunately, is vague on what program(s) the money is for. 

The funding amounts include: State programs, $39.9 million; Milwaukee, $22.7 million; Madison, $3.4 million; Racine, $2.4 million; Dane County, $1.6 million; Green Bay, $1.5 million; La Crosse, $1.3 million; West Allis, $1.3 million; Janesville, $1 million; Sheboygan, $981,553; Oshkosh, $775,244; Wausau, $639,968; Beloit, $614,916; Appleton, $565,033; and Fond du Lac, $531,468.

Puzzlingly, the County of Milwaukee is not listed above, nor is Waukesha County, so I am not quite certain what program(s) this announcement covers.  I will update this when I find further information.

Update:  Paul Gores, who wrote the article, was kind enough to send me a copy of the press release.  As I suspected, this is for CDBG, HOME, HOPWA, and ESG programs.  But my puzzlement remains as Milwaukee and Waukesha Counties are still absent.

At Least The Prices Aren't Falling As Fast!

Via Americablog, a CNBC story on how housing prices have fallen lower than even during the Great Depression.

"The only comfort is that the latest monthly data show that towards the end of the first quarter prices started to fall at a more modest rate," he said. "Nonetheless, prices are likely to fall by a further 3 percent this year, resulting in a 5 percent drop over the year as a whole."

HUD Testifies on HOME

The National Housing Council's Open House Blog reports on the House Financial Services Committee hearing today in which HUD staff testified about the HOME program and Washington Post's article on the "stalled and delayed" projects.

Interestingly, HUD notes that they only identified 108 projects delayed, rather than the 700 the Washington Post claimed.  Futhermore, they noted that Washington Post has refused to share data on which of the 28,000 developments they believe make up the 700 stalled developments.

While the media has a proper role as watchdog, the media has to be willing to back up their allegations, particularly ones as splashy as this.

Housing Funding Availability from Federal Home Loan Bank of Chicago

Even banks need banks, and in the field of home loans, the bank's banker is the local Federal Home Loan Bank (FHLB). Each FHLB is required to "do some good,"  not just lend to local banks.  Two ways that the FHLB serves communities are through the Community Investment Program (CIP) and the Affordable Housing Program (AHP).  AHP is funded with ten percent of the local FHLB's profit.

Of the 12 FHLBs, the Federal Home Loan Bank of Chicago (FHLBC) serves Illinois and Wisconsin.  FHLBC recently announced the availability of $23 million for their AHP program.  Interested organizations should go to to FHLBC's calendar for the traning opportunities.  The AHP funds typically fund homebuyer grants and rental housing development.

Incidentally, they also fund a DownPayment Plus program which in Wisconsin is operated by the Wisconsin Partnership for Housing Development.

As you can see from this comparison, there is a significant increase from 2010 to 2011.  The AHP program went from $4.6 million to $23 million, with the maximum subsidy per project also increasing from $300,000 to $750,000.  This increased amount should improve the ability of Low-Income Housing Tax Credit developers to attract investment and also cover the gap between what the tax credit funds and the actual cost of the project.  The DownPayment Plus program also saw a large increase from $1.7 million to $11.6 million.

Side Note: Charles M. Hill, Sr., FHLBC's first Community Investment Officer when the AHP program was created, is the inspiration behind the annual Charles M. Hill, Sr. Award at the A Home For Everyone Conference.  The current Community Investment Officer, Eldridge Edgecombe, is retiring after almost a decade in that position.  Both Mr. Hill and Mr. Edgecombe reportedly will make an appearance at the conference, so if you see either of them (You are going, right?), please thank them for their years of involvement with affordable housing. FHLBC has announced that Mr. Edgecombe's replacement will be Sam Nicita, currently a Senior Vice President at the Bank.

Updated Fair Housing Guide

The Bazelon Center on Mental Health Law has an updated guide on Fair Housing and how it affects people with disabilities. Check it out.  Order the booklet or download a free pdf copy.

Bazelon is a good resource on legal issues affecting people with mental illness.

HUD Announces Income Limits For Programs

The new 2011 Income Limits are up on HUD's website, effective May 31, 2011.

Remember that income limits are based on the median, not the average, income in the area.  In short, you start with every household lined up from the poorest to the richest, and then you count 'em off from both ends until you find the household exactly in the middle.  Or you can find the actual answer here.  That's the median income.  

Then they figure the various income percentages of that median household, adjusted for household size, area, etc. Then they tinker with it some more.  But that's the basic idea of how they find the income limits under which people can qualify for various housing programs. HUD's 2011 Briefing Material states that "There are currently several legislated income limit standards (e.g., 30%, 50%, 60%, 65%, 80%, 95%, 100%, 115%, 125%) that were intended to have progressive relationships."  The briefing material goes into a complicated explanation of the different standards, how the numbers are calculated and adjusted, etc. 

When housing programs are discussed, those are the terminology used.

• Low Income (LI) means no more than 80% of Area Median Income (AMI).
• Very Low Income (VLI) means no more than 50% of AMI
• Extremely Low Income (ELI) is no more than 30% of AMI

Here's a long list of what the various income limits are for housing-related programs, not just HUD's.  From Page 13-16 of the briefing material.  As you can see from the descriptions below, the housing assistance does not necessarily go to those who need it the most, people with the lowest income.