Report due July 1, 2009. Ooops!
Remember this, this is the committee that is going to come up with a plan to accomplish the goals of Inclusionary Zoning. They were supposed to have their report done 17 days ago, but met for the first time on Thursday. Again, my comments [in purple, perhaps too many comments].
This is a good insight into what the committee members are expecting to talk about and what the Mayor isn’t going to do. And in interesting exercise in watching the morph that happens when there is a broadly written resolution and the Mayor who wants to do something different than what the council wanted.
WHO IS HERE?
Committee members:
– Alders Schumacher, Rummel & Compton.
– Former Alder Judy Olson (works in affordable housing)
– Marj Passman (School Board)
– Brian Munson (representing former Inclusionary Zoning Oversight Committee, Planner at Vandewalle & Associates, and by way of disclosure paid lobbyist for many developers)
– Dave Porterfield (representing Housing Committee and consultant in affordable housing development)
Absent: Alders Clear and Solomon
Staff:
– Bill Clingan (Community Development Director)
– Helen Dietzler (note taker from CDBG office)
– Mark Olinger [not sure if he is there for CDA or as head of the Planning Department (he is listed as staff to the committee, resolution creating the committee is silent about who the staff is but he is sitting at the table seemingly without purpose.]
– Ray Harmon from the Mayor’s Office also seats himself at the table.
Public:
– Phil Salkin (paid lobbyist for the Realtors Association of South Central Wisconsin)
– Carole Schaeffer (paid lobbyist for Smart Growth Madison)
– Me (“silenced” former member of the council)
GETTING STARTED
Clingan starts off the meeting since there is no chair. They decide they need to introduce themselves.
ELECTION OF CHAIR
Munson is nominated, Schumacher breaks in to explain that they can decide if the chair should vote and they decide yes, so Munson accepts and is voted in. Marj Passman is elected Vice Chair after some cajoling. Deciding that the chair can vote is not on the agenda. Schumacher explains not a long standing committee, short amount of time, extra obligation without right to vote. Porterfield asks why this is important since they can break the tie. [I honestly forgot if the voted on this or not. Doh! Best not to wait two days before writing this up!]
There is an amended agenda – there are additional topics on the agenda, but there is no attachments. So I don’t know what got handed out – very annoying.
HANDOUTS
Clingan starts to explain the hand outs. He hands out a list with all the housing related committees on it. Apparently they listed the Dane County Housing Authority, Housing Authority Merger Committee, Housing Committee and makes an offhand comments about the subcommittees [which happen to be the Tenant Landlord Committee, the Affordability Committee that are standing committees and ad hoc subcommittees on Property Tax Exemption and Housing Report.], Community Development Authority, Community Development Block Grant and the now deceased Inclusionary Zoning Oversight Committee. It apparently also lists who is in the committees.
He hands out the 2008 Inclusionary Zoning Report done by the committee, not the one done by staff. He says it is handed out because history informs us.
They are then interrupted.
MAYOR’S THOUGHTS
He hands out a letter. Of course, he doesn’t give others in the room a copy and its not attached to the agenda. He says the letter says everything he is about to say and then lists off the following items.
– Thanks them for agreeing to participate.
– First, resolution is broad and bare bones so giving ideas for what he thinks they should do. [I agree it is broad, but it is quite clear in saying:
BE IT STILL FURTHER RESOLVED, that the Committee is charged to engage with stakeholders to:
* Develop recommendations to create and promote a diversity of housing choices for families and households of all income levels in all areas of the City of Madison.
* Establish a process and timeline to implement recommendations.]
– He jokes about the July 1st deadline being missed and says “I’m disappointed in you”. [Really, is that funny? People who can’t afford the housing they are living in, or not living in, and the city not doing anything about it. I don’t find it funny at all, but maybe it is just me. I know the left is known for not having a sense of humor, but there are some things that I don’t find amusing.]
– Wants the committee to have recommendations done by the end of the year, that would be “terrific”. First quarter would be “great”.
– Says the impetus for the committee is the Inclusionary Zoning ordinance going away. He says the program did not work, despite best efforts. But goals of IZ should continue and be pursued. Primary goal is not just affordable housing, but to have affordable housing in more places in the city. Concentrations of poverty are not good. [I’ll just remind people the program ended up with at least 42 housing units, more than any other housing program probably developed in that same period of time.]
– Mayor says he is really pleased Passman is on committee, housing policy is school policy. 45% of kids in school are in poverty. We started IZ not as a housing policy, but as a school policy. Rusk came to talk about schools, not a housing policy. Need mixed income schools, by having mixed income neighborhoods. It’s all inter-related, including Dane County human services.
– Feels that affordable housing is not just the City of Madison problem, so hopes that the solutions are regional. [Note, the resolution creating the committee only mentions City of Madison, not areas outside the City of Madison. So I hope that is where they stay focused and that there isn’t alot of mission creep.]
– Says we don’t have any money. Don’t think about spending money, we don’t have it. Use the resources we already have in the Affordable Housing Trust Fund, Inclusionary Zoning Fund, CDBG funds, and do not come to him with new funding requests. [He missed Capital Revolving Loan Fund, HOME, HCRI, HPRP, ESG, TIF, the special programs for rental rehab for Bruer’s District, downpayment assistance programs, the Fannie Mae line of credit and CDAs Bonding Authority and I’m probably still missing some other federal funds that we get that are tucked away in CDBG and CDA. Perhaps they should start there in identifying what funds we have, where they go and what they do. We were trying to get that info from staff, but its kinda hard as its not located in any one place.]
– Homeownership is a good idea, but if there is anything we learned from the mortgage crisis, not everyone is ready to own a home, perhaps we got too aggressive because it was a big cause of current economic problems. Lets realize that alot of people are not there yet and good quality affordable rental housing is good for people.
– Keep the target population in mind. IZ started talking about really low income housing and we drifted into talking about workforce housing, families with jobs and incomes, just not very high ones. We lost focus. [Ahem . . . perhaps he should look in the mirror and ask himself why.] He says of course the supreme court didn’t help us when they knocked out rental. [With quite a bit of help from the Apartment Association of South Central Wisconsin.] Think of very low income people who may come with other issues about not keeping a job or having high skill levels. [I’m disappointed when people talk about low-income people and don’t acknowledge that many of them are sick, disabled and elderly and unable to work.] Then the working poor and third the group of people who have reasonable good income but still can’t find housing (police and nurses).
– Thanks them again and says he doesn’t want to lay a policy in front of them. He made the mistake of coming to council and community and saying that he has the solution. Learned something from the president, leave it to people smarter than him. Says there is not likely to be one policy, but likely a package. He says he’s open to anything.
Schumacher asks if he’ll come to the meetings? He says as a general rule he lets committee do their work but will come at their invitation. Mayor then leaves. [I’m guessing that is the last they will see of him until they are done with the work and then he tells them how they got it wrong.]
HANDOUTS
Clingan hands out the Inclusionary Zoning Ordinance. Says statement of purpose aligns closely to the mission statement of the group.
Compton asks if they have a mission statement.
Schumacher says she should look at the council resolution. [She’s been on the council for 16 years doesn’t know that, yet Schumacher figured it out after only 2 years . . . ]
MEETING SCHEDULE
Their next meeting is scheduled for the 31st of August. Munson asks how often do they want to meet.
Schumacher says due to the agenda there is not an opportunity to discuss anything substantive. He says they need strong staff support [something that has been lacking for quite some time, there just hasn’t been staffing resources allocated to housing issues, beyond personal commitments from some very dedicated staff], and that staffing ties into how often can meet. Schumacher says he’d like to get at the multiple definitions of affordable housing in Madison and across the country. [I think its pretty standard that your housing is unaffordable if you are paying more than 30% or there about for your housing costs. I think he is asking what income levels are targeted for affordable housing and that varies by income in the area and who the politicians are trying to help.] Second, he’d like to see inventory on housing stock in Madison, rental and ownership. [The IZ Oversight Committee spent alot of money trying to do that and get better information than we had and we didn’t do so well. The planning department information doesn’t really give you all the information that they want either. So, I hope they don’t break down here and end up just recommending another study.] And depending upon the info they get, they would schedule the meetings.
Compton asks if they can go around the table, and wants everyone to say what they feel the committee is all about. They agree to do that by addressing what the agenda items are for the next meeting.
AGENDA ITEMS FOR NEXT MEETING
Compton says talked to Mayor when he was trying to save IZ and she told him “what IZ did to destroy parts of the city”. She says she saw the social orchestration attempt of housing in placing affordable housing around the city as destruction of many neighborhoods. [Wow! That’s amazing, first IZ fails because it didn’t produce enough units but at the same time it destroyed neighborhoods. Very interesting.] She says city’s altruistic and laudable effort to place affordable housing her neighborhood caused the school to have 80% free lunch. She says if they will be looking at diversification of city, then she is willing to work on the committee. She says they can take old parts of city and revitalize it, use CDBG and CDA and Engineering to recapture the neighborhoods. That is what she thinks she is here for. She brings up the study she did with assessments of each district and figured out how many houses fell below 80% AMI. She notes there is a problem with determining if data should be compliled by school districts or other divisions. She says only 3 alder districts had 20% of their assessments that fell below 80% ami and should be subject to IZ. She would like a map of the city and where we have affordable housing, by school district or city aldermanic district. [So, we only need affordable housing in 3 aldermanic districts?] She says they have to look at more than a 8.5 x 5 piece of paper. And she talks about what is affordable by who’s standard. Her neighborhood was within two years part of the emerging neighborhood and has had 85 police calls in 2 months. She says the need plan commission to look at this. If we’re really going to diversify the city, it should be truly diverse.
Porterfield says this is a school district issue, need info from school district. Date to be done would be good. Need basic demographic info. He says that as a developer he has run into problem with edge school issues where the districts are not MMSD and students can transfer between school districts and it has an impact both ways. Especially if look at regionally.
Passman says that is also a problem even within the school district.
Porterfield brought up busing issue. He likes Larry Gleasman’s idea to transfer money for busing to another use for the family and stop busing kids. He says its a good idea especially given energy issues.
Munson said one of the struggles is defining the need, geographically and community need. How to create sustainability, and balance reinvestment vs building. We need a measuring tool of where we feel the affects of housing. School district and elementary level will give us info on neighborhoods. Housing committee has been working on a housing report/report card. Gathering information on permits, trends, etc so the decision makers have a base of information to base decisions on. That initiative could be something this committee could support and help move along. Also neighborhood indicators project could be tweaked to help with the issues. We have struggled with this in IZ and many other housing issues before this.
Passman says Compton said it for her, schools are totally dependent on housing. And the school people have no voice. She thinks coordination is key. Allied, Simpson, Raymond road, how can we stop that from happening. We need to predict what is going to happen and keep it multifunctional as possible and create a better situation for the students.
Olson says that we could kill trees on housing studies that have already been done. Wants to identify housing studies that have been done in the last 10 years. Say what they were, synopsis of what we found out, when completed, results from them, just have a list – no need to copy them. So that they could ask if they can see them. Also, at some point, she wants a brainstorming session to see what the full range of things are that are out there.
Rummel asks about inventory, what happened to IZ report? She also overheard at CDBG meeting and that merger committee has mapped out section 8 and we aren’t failing. Maybe we should look at some of that info. She would like to get best practices from around the country.
Schumacher has no outcome in mind. Not in support of any policy or program. Need to do brainstorming and organization. We don’t need an incomprehensible committee. Says he won’t spend time if going to talk about what affordable housing is and he doesn’t want to pray at the alter of affordable housing or despise it. Not reinvent, not overburden us with tons of reports, he wants to create a substantive report. Integrate some of the resources in the community – bring in people who work on this every day. Pull them in very effectively, may dedicate more time to them instead of them being invited for a few minutes. Have to manage our time effectively.
Compton says that we need to find out why the reports were ordered. I think it reflects different outcomes. As far as going around the country, they have had disastrous results. This has to be for Madison, what we need and how we can accomplish it. We can’t copy another city, what faulted us before is that we tried to be someplace else and it didn’t work here.[I think she is referring to IZ and if we had just adopted Burlington VT’s IZ ordinance it would have worked, it was our Madison incentives and equity models and waiver analysis that tanked the ordinance.] We need to do our own thing. She says part of the problems with the schools is that they brought kids from S Madison which is a different housing situation than the neighborhood.
Olson, doesn’t want all the reports to be reproduced, just wants a synopsis and list. One or two or three might be of interest.
Passman says she is chairing boundary discussions for the schools, so this has become very important. She says she wants to say something histrionic, in cities where 30 – 40% poverty rates we see an exodus, we now have 60 and 70%. This is absolutely crucial. Has done research and hasn’t found a school district that has been successful with those kinds of rates.
Schumacher says that excited by issues. It’s very noticeable that we have alot of committees that don’t communicate. He’s worried about sustainability and the process after that. Not create a uber committee, would rather have a committee in which housing policies arise. Committees only know what is going on if members overlap. Might need different infrastructure.
Rummel asks Munson to report the 5 big lessons form IZ committee. There was alot of work done there. She says if she couldn’t explain it, there was something wrong. There were lessons about downtown vs edge development and going up vs sprawl.
Munson says there were several lessons learned. Look at how committees overlap and interact, maybe even bring other committees in to talk to them and tell them how are we doing. He said they have often wondered who’s got the ball and who is running with it and what is the end game?
Munson says they didn’t take public comment.
Salkin says if he’d have been the same speaker instead of the mayor, you’d have heard the same thing. They have bought into this effort. As realtors they have MLS data [which doesn’t capture FSBOs], they work with government in providing data. Please call us, it is available, we will work with you. Especially in the state of the economy and the housing market, more effort going into looking at stats. They created a plan for affordable housing in Madison, vetted it with Mayor, Housing Committee and Dan Nehrad, he wants to come and discuss plan at a later point. Housing is three corner stool rental, homeownership and private/nonprofit. We can’t expect new money and we can work to use resources available. We are in historic turmoil, but this is also historic opportunity.
Harmon mentioned housing merger committee, they have maps and let me know when you want them, they will schedule a presentation. They only have two meetings left.
Schumacher says a map of Madison should be at every meeting. Some people think larger territory, could also help occasionally to keep us in line. Psychological affect as well.
Compton say helpful to have plan dept show were developments are.
Maps, maps, maps, everyone wants maps.
Munson says agenda for next meeting will be staff presentation of housing studies, summary of what is done, not contents – he tells staff to use their judgment.
Olson says other studies talked about fair share, where is all the housing going, she is thinking about subsidized housing and types of housing and maps. She clarifies she thinks Madison, not Dane County.
Compton says not they are not talking about affordable housing, they are talking about diversification which will have an affordability factor. Looking for pockets of poverty and high end housing. We have created pockets of poverty, we need to stop the destruction we are creating in our school districts and its not all about affordability, this isn’t a affordability study.
Munson wants the list of reports and then to update on Neighborhood Indicators and the data. He also says about update on Housing Study. Bring the list of what data is collected so we can decide if we need it and how do we get it all together. Find out what work is out there that is being done. He says he has to leave at 5 – but he says thanks. He’s excited about direction of discussion. Goes to core of quality of life of the city.
Schumacher says that we need to define the problem, can’t assume what it means. We need to understand what we are talking about and people might be making incorrect assumptions. He says an inventory of key players is necessary and he lists the Third Sector group, Tenant Resource Center anyone and everyone that we deal with. He says we need to figure out what are our assets in the community. Finally, need to look at who is in charge of housing in the city and decide if it should be a department. Who would the staff be? Who are all the key players? Wants info because they want to see what hte resources are. It could be a foundation if we want someone to be in charge.
Olson says that whatever we do, need to take into the account the annexations. Housing there and how do we deal with it.
Rummel says that CDBG has alot of stakeholder, housing piece at CDBG. Rummel also wants another meeting date. Also need to recommend to council to extend the report date.
They decide to set next meeting by email. Monday’s are out, Thursday’s might work, ask staff to id what is best, lunch time, after 5, etc. Bring that to next meeting on 31st. Will decide how often to meet and then calendar out to January date.
Compton makes motion to ask council for extension. Seconded and passes. Create a report asking for an extension to March 31.
Schumacher, detailed minutes might be helpful. More detailed will be important here.
Move to adjourn.
