Sigh, low income people aren’t criminals. Plenty of criminals (drug dealers, wife beaters, thieves, drug users) live in Maple Bluff too. But neighborhoods really get concerned when they hear that low income housing is coming tot heir neighborhood. Here’s a preview of what the council will be hearing tonight about a project on the northside.
I see the lovely captain up there still thinks apartments are evil.
Also, I’d like to note that just because someone says it is “affordable” doesn’t mean stereotypical low income people will be moving in. Our affordability is so out of whack with our high incomes in the area. Just a reminder, people qualify for section 8 with the following incomes:
1 Person $ 28,300
2 Persons $ 32,350
3 Persons $ 36,400
4 Persons $ 40,400
Looks like in the 72 units – 12 are starting to get affordable.
26 or 36% of the units are affordable at 60% AMI – and the income limits for that are higher than section 8
1 $33,960
2 $38,820
3 $43,680
4 $48,480
5 $52,380
34 or 47% of the units are affordable at 50% AMI
1 28,300
2 32,350
3 36,400
4 40,400
5 43,650
6 or 8% of the units are available at 40% AMI
(sorry don’t have those numbers)
6 or 8% of the units are available at 30% AMI
1 17,000
2 19,400
3 21,850
4 24,250
5 27,910
At $673 a month a mom on W-2 with 2 kids makes $8,076 per year.
If someone gets $1000 a month from social security, they get $12,000 a year.
This isn’t really low income housing, maybe there are 6 units of it. Our community doesn’t need more market rate units for Epic employees and rich college students. We need affordable housing for waiters and waitresses, nurses, teachers, etc etc etc. Market rate housing right now is EXPENSIVE for almost everyone and keeps some sort of affordable cap on the housing prices is very necessary.
Anyways, here’s the letter. And what people might hear tonight.
Common Council Members and Mayor Soglin:
I’m contacting you in regard to agenda item #5 to renew for another 12 months the conditional rezoning for a project at 1910 Tennyson Lane to provide for 2 residential buildings containing 72 “affordable” apartment units in a neighborhood that already has more than its share of low-income dwellings and families.
I am an attorney on the Northside of Madison and have serious concerns about the pending current request to extend conditional re-zoning at 1910 Tennyson Lane. The last thing the Northside needs is greater density of residential buildings that are not market rate, given the challenges the Northside faces, including but not limited to drug dealing, gunshots on the street, arms trafficking, family disputes, population turnover, traffic, challenging business climate, and schools with unusually high proportions of low-income children. (The three elementary schools on the Northside have the highest low-income concentrations in the City of Madison, exceeding 75%.) See, three attached maps showing low-income housing concentration in contiguous census tracts. You will note on the second of these maps three contiguous low-income census tracts in the heart of the Northside (#002200, #002301, and #002402).These three areas lie less than a mile south of the two low-income/”affordable” buildings proposed for Tennyson Lane.
As you may know, the City of Madison Zoning Code provisions in Ch. 28.002(1) mirror the zoning principles in state law at Sec. 62.23(7), Wis. Stats., in calling for a requirement that municipal zoning give due consideration to the character of the district and its peculiar suitability for particular uses, as well as to stabilizing, protecting, and enhancing property values. The Madison code specifically cites as key purposes of zoning the encouragement of reinvestment in established urban neighborhoods while protecting their unique characteristics, and the promotion of land use consistent with the neighborhood plan. This proposed Tennyson Lane project deviates from the neighborhood plan which calls for single-family housing in this location, and changes the characteristics of the immediate neighborhood, which is primarily single-family housing. It appears incontrovertible that such a re-zoning would not stabilize or enhance property values in this area. Actually, not one of the above-noted zoning code purposes is served by erecting yet one more low-income/”affordable” housing complex on the Northside, which has struggled for decades to meet the burdens of the challenges which such a great density of low-income housing creates.
Please, for all the reasons stated above, vote against extending this improper conditional re-zoning.
Thank you for your time and consideration.
Dolores A. Kester
1818 Winchester Street, Aldermanic District 12
Kester Law Offices
P.O. Box 14073
Madison, WI 53708
Tel. 608-770-7061
So, if not here, where? Where should affordable housing go? Every neighborhood seems to make the same argument, they already have enough. That begs the question, if we have so much affordable housing and the neighborhoods are overwhelmed, why do we need to build 1,000 units a year for 26 years in Dane County to meet the need?
