Yesterday I went to the meeting on Allied Drive to see the grand unveiling of the “plans” for Allied Drive. Fortunately, I didn’t expect much, otherwise, I would have been sorely disappointed. They presented two different plans, that are completely different than the three plans that the neighborhood came up with in their 4 day charrette process in September 2006. And unfortunately, the questions remain the same.
What we do know is that
- there will be 40 – 47 rental units and the rest will be owner-occupied; and
- the units will be made affordable by taking current section 8 vouchers and making them “sticky” (i.e. the will stay with the unit, no the person who lives in the unit so when they move out, they lose the rental subsidy) [This statement is in error, see correction here.]
What we don’t know is:
- How affordable will the units be?
- How many rental units there will be?
- How many owner-occupied units there will be?
- How many of the owner-occupied units will actually be affordable for the people who live in Allied Drive?
- How many of the rental units will be 1, 2 and 3 bedrooms?
- Will all the rental units use “sticky 8’s”
- Will there be community space?
- Will there be space for the non-profits that work in the neighborhood?
- Will the 32 families still on these properties be able to live in the new apartments? What if they don’t qualify for Section 8 because they make too much money or for other reasons?
- How will this all be financed? Even if they get the $7.5M in tax credits, where does the other $1.5M come from?
It’s much the same as it has ever been. Not many answers for the community. And even trying to find out when the answers will come is difficult. Either this Friday or Saturday the financial information about the affordability will be available. Tho, they don’t have a meeting scheduled, yet. The community might be having another meeting on January 7th if it works out for them (sounds like they will decide that at the Allied Drive Task Force meeting on Thursday). Then on the 9th the Housing Committee will be discussing the resolution that the CDA has already passed. Several other committees (Community Development Block Grant and Board of Estimates) will have to vote on it and then the Common Council will vote on it on the 22nd of January so that the application to WHEDA can get in by February 1. That’s about 6 weeks, and we still have many missing answers and if you ask me, the solutions we do know about are less than satisfactory. My major concerns still remain:
- There are currently 140 rental units on this property and over 80 of them are three bedroom rental units. In the new plan, there will be 20% of the rental units that are three bedrooms. That means 8 – 9.4 units. Tho, they’ve said several things and I did hear them say that there would be 12 3-bedroom units. I also heard them say that there would be 20 3-bedroom units.
- The “sticky 8’s” are not a very satisfactory way to make the units affordable.
- First of all that means that whenever we decide to do this, there has to be 40 section 8 vouchers that do not go to families that can use them throughout the entire city. Since about 12 vouchers are available per month, that means that for 3 – 4 months, families who need those vouchers will have to wait until those vouchers go to Allied Drive.
- We are already getting free land, demolitions and tax credits to make these units affordable, why do we need to layer these vouchers on top of that?
- The people who move into these units become “trapped” in the unit if they continue to need subsidy. In other words, if they decide to move, they will no longer be able to use that Section 8 voucher in the market the way the program was intended to work.
There are many other issues, too mundane to mention here or where we still don’t have enough information to know if the resolution will be satisfactory or not. The council will be voting on this 5 weeks from tomorrow. Hopefully by then, they can fill in some of the blanks.
