SEWRPC Housing Plan Website

The Southeastern Wisconsin Regional Planning Commission has set up a page on their website for their new Regional Housing Plan. I urge you to go to this website and take a few moments to explore it. Be sure to check out the newsletter, the housing plan study details, and the public meetings.

The Waukesha meeting will be on June 3, 2009 (4:30-6:30) at the Waukesha Rotary Building, Frame Park at 1150 Baxter Street, Waukesha. Of course, you can go to the Milwaukee County meetings or one of the other counties' meetings if the location and/or scheduling fits your needs better.

It's important that SEWRPC has input from the community regarding the housing study. So take out your calendar and scribble or type in the date & location.

UPDATE: Link fixed & time added (missing from original announcement).

Campaign forges on for a housing trust fund

Last night about 60 people came to St. Luke's Lutheran Church in Waukesha for our second quarterly evening event, Creating Communities: Affordable Housing Now and When. Those attending were members of non-profit and faith organizations, developers, local government officials and staff, and a columnist from the Journal Sentinel. The event focused on how a housing trust fund could help current affordable housing efforts in Waukesha County.

"Land, land, land," said Ted Romberg in response to the question of what the biggest challenge is when working to provide affordable housing in the area. Ted is the president of the Community Land Development Association, a land trust in Waukesha County. Funding organizations typically require the land trust to apply for funds for a specific piece of land. But when the association finds the rarity of an affordable piece of land in the area, that land is usually sold by the time the group obtains funding to purchase it. A housing trust fund could provide funding to the land trust in advance, to help solve that problem.

David Weiss, the CEO for General Capitol Group, explained it's difficult to develop affordable senior housing projects because there is typically not enough federal funding, leaving a funding gap. A county housing trust fund could provide the gap funding needed to make more of these projects happen. And every dollar the county commits to a housing trust fund leverages $10-20 of other funding coming into the county to provide economic development in the county.

Bill Perkins, executive director of the Wisconsin Partnership for Housing Development, and Bernie Juno, executive director of the Hebron House of Hospitalty, Inc., agreed that a housing trust fund could help to increase the affordable housing their programs provide. Bernie said, "It's critical that we have this housing trust fund established, critical."

The Excitement Builds...

Milwaukee Journal-Sentinel columnist Laurel Walker wrote about the Waukesha effort in today's column!

I appreciated this part, which we don't hear enough (or ever!):

So the task force has a mountain to climb. But for their cause and their vision, participants in the Waukesha County Affordable Housing Task Force deserve thanks and encouragement.

Why Waukesha County Needs a Housing Trust Fund

Read the press release for tomorrow night's event here. Then register to attend at heatherdc@interfaithconference.org! Hope to see you all there!