The Affordable Housing Action Alliance asked the City Council candidates their views on several housing questions. Here are their answers for District 10
YANNETTE FIGUEROA COLE
Describe what you see are the main housing problems in Madison.
As an advocate for people experiencing homelessness, I am distraught by the continuing increase in need and the lack of coordination and collaboration in services. The moratorium ends this month which will cause even more despair and housing insecurity for many. Hence one of my goals is to focus on collaboration. The city, staff, county, and nonprofit organizations have to do a better job at working together.
In addition, we have too many new developments that do not serve the needs of the people, building luxury high-rises for profit, or apartments that segregate low-income people so they can be exploited by landlords. We need more family housing and low-income housing paired with the services needed for people to stay housed and thrive.
Give your opinion of the site for the new men’s shelter, which is proposed for the East Towne Mall area.
A men’s shelter is overdue. A good transit system provides access to all basic needs, having this location on the main bus route is essential. The area also provides the potential for future service increase; the potential to include space for culturally competent services focused on securing permanent housing, and connecting with mental health, substance abuse recovery, and re-entry programming.
Due to COVID, some residents without housing set up camp at McPike Park in Madison and had been staying there since last summer. The City of Madison is no longer allowing camping in that park and made the people staying there leave. Do you support this decision by the City of Madison? Please explain your position
Unfortunately, the encampment was not adequately supported with paid staff which led to disorganization and a very challenging environment. At times, the encampment was unsafe for the people who needed help the most. I understand why the city closed the encampment, but wish that greater efforts were made to provide more accessible alternatives for people who were living there. As elected officials, we need to provide a safe place for people to be where they can access the service needed to survive. The City and County should continue to focus on having shelter spaces that provide an abundance of diverse, culturally competent services focused on securing permanent housing, and connecting with mental health, substance abuse recovery, and re-entry programming. The City and County should be maximizing federal COVID recovery funds, including FEMA reimbursement for non-congregate shelters, to address the unmet needs of people experiencing homelessness and create permanent housing stability solutions.
Please provide your opinion of AHAA’s housing agenda outlined in the attached flier. Below, write next to the corresponding number for each proposal whether you support it and give your reasons.
- Tenant right to counsel for evictions – Yes, I support a legal fund to protect tenants and will advocate for tenant rights changes at the state level.
- Support permanent affordability – These are great ideas for transitional housing and housing affordability. Looking forward to learning more about it and finding collaborative ways to make solutions such as this one work.
- Incentivize good landlord behavior – I would absolutely support diverse cultural competence in every setting. Educating, training landlords, and having defined and clear expectations is a good way to build relationships between the city, the landlords, and the community.
- Support non-profit capacity building – Yes, I support the use of every tool accessible to us to develop sustainable and affordable housing paired with the coordination of resources from the government and non-profit organizations.
- New homeless services position – The problem is that someone needs to coordinate this effort. A doubled-up population is really challenging because we need a plan to actually obtain the data. The limited funding from the federal Housing and Urban Development Department means that this group, which doesn’t meet HUD’s definition of “literal homelessness”, receives very few services. We have to prioritize those limited funds and there hasn’t been enough money to serve the doubled-up group. We don’t have nearly enough staff working on homeless services and a dedicated position would help us identify strategies, data collection methods, and funding options to support this need.
- Start a social housing pilot – Absolutely! We need housing options that incorporate multi-income, multi-generational, multicultural, and multiracial communities with proper access to basic services.
- Opportunity zone code of conduct – Don’t fully understand how this works or how to implemented in Madison but it sounds like we do have a various economically distressed community that if properly categorized could benefit from new investments that can be eligible for special tax treatment. We need to ensure that the City’s use of Opportunity Zones are used to expand housing opportunity for folks with housing barriers and not contribute to or accelerate gentrification. I will work with AHAA, as alder, to pursue additional oversight and possible regulation of Opportunity Zones.
MARA EISCH
Thank you for the opportunity to complete your survey. I support many but not all efforts endorsed by your organization. Should I win I plan to support affordable housing in Madison and would very much like to work with your organization to meet that end. We need to take action to address not only the need for affordable housing but with a 47% owner occupancy rate we have a need for affordable home ownership as well. At this time I cannot support all of your concerns and will not be completing the survey.
