Zach left out a few of David Rusk’s lessons . . . #7 is the one Madison ought to focus on . . . cuz the amount of mis-information out there is staggering . . .
Lesson #1: Enact a mandatory, not voluntary, IZ law.
Lesson #2: Advocate IZ primarily as meeting workforce housing needs rather than advancing social justice.
Lesson #3: However, advocate firmly (if more quietly) that IZ must serve the full range of workforce housing needs.
Lesson #5: Use other public subsidies to achieve deeper affordability.
Lesson #6: Focus on getting an area’s first IZ law adopted.
Lesson #7: Counter fears and bad information with facts.
Lesson #9: Fight for Statewide IZ laws
I suggest you read the full document for yourself. But, in case you don’t, here’s some other highlights . . .
Rusk notes what he considers an IZ ordinance and what might be called IZ but he doesn’t count . . . i.e. things we should probably avoid doing in Madison . . .
Where are we? From studies by others, such as Non-Profit Housing Association of Northern California and BPI, I’ve compiled a master list of IZ communities. The criteria for getting on my list are pretty exacting:
1) the IZ law must be mandatory, not voluntary;
2) it must cover all residential construction above a certain minimum project size, or “trigger point;” and
3) it must be jurisdiction-wide (not just targeted on certain areas).On my list are 134 cities, towns, and counties with 13.2 million residents in Census 2000. That means that almost five percent of our country’s population now lives in communities that mandate mixed-income housing as a part of new housing developments.
My list is undoubtedly an undercount.
• I don’t cover Massachusetts adequately due to insufficient data about many towns’ inclusionary housing policies;
• I haven’t caught up with events in Illinois where the legislature enacted the Affordable Housing Planning and Appeals Act of 2003 – an extraordinary achievement for the housing advocates, led by BPI. The Act requires every one
of Illinois’ 2,824 counties, cities, and townships to have at least 10 percent affordable housing. An increasing number of local governments are adopting IZ laws to meet that goal;
• I refuse to list anything in New Jersey as long as Regional Contribution Agreements (RCAs) are in effect. RCAs were authorized by the state legislature to allow wealthy suburbs to sell back up to half of their “fair share” affordable housing quota to poor cities, thus escaping their court-ordered constitutional duty under the Mt. Laurel doctrine; and
• I haven’t listed New York City where a community coalition of thirty organizations has been successfully pressuring the city council to set aside 20-30 percent for affordable housing in recent major upzonings on a case-by-case basis.
He reminds us to keep our eyes on the prize . . .
What could IZ achieve? I have simulated “what-if” scenarios for the USA’s 100 largest metropolitan areas. What if mandatory IZ laws had been in effect throughout these metro areas for the past twenty years? I assumed a 15 percent set-aside (the most common standard) and a trigger point of ten or more units (the most common provision) that would cover about 80 percent of all new construction.
Between 1980 and 2000, 21.8 million new housing units were built in these 100 metro areas. IZ would have yielded 2.6 million inclusionary units – almost twice as many affordable homes as were built utilizing Low Income Housing Tax Credits (that HUD says help finance 90 percent of all affordable housing built). That would have met about 40 percent of the affordable housing need, according to the National Housing Conference.
Furthermore, suppose all these communities implemented Montgomery County’s policy of having its public housing authority buy or rent one-third of the inclusionary units to extend the assistance to very low-and extremely-low income families (less than 50 percent and less than 30 percent of Area Median Income, respectively). This would have reducedlevels of economic segregation in these 100 metro areas by 37 percent.
And finally, he reminds us . . .
Housing policy is school policy.
The lesson here . . . When someone is teaching you a lesson . . . maybe you should pay attention to the whole story . . . not just the parts that suit your politicial point of view . . . there is much more to learn from Rusk . . .
