So, after the Housing Committee meeting last night and a series of three discussions, with a 4th one interwoven, I can clearly say, the state of affordable housing in this City is disastrous. Here’s my takeaways from the discussion.
TAX-EXEMPTION ISSUE
Mind you, I wasn’t the primary advocate here, and I’m merely telling you what two fellow committee members were saying. Mario Mendoza from the Mayor’s office came to report on one of his two biggest issues in the last year. How we lost the battle for our non-profits to be tax-exempt, jeopardizing the small amount of affordable housing we currently have.
The first person who asked Mario questions started out by giving his perspective of what has happened and raised multiple issues along the way. Apparently, the way we got into this mess is an activist city attorney proactively raised the issue and wanted a test case that they could seek clarification on the law. So, in other words, after years and years of this law being on the books and being applied throughout the state, we stirred the pot. We got a rules from a judge and then sent it to the state and the state made a ruling. The court case was considered a “victory” by the city attorney’s office – but the end result was that many of our low income housing providers now have to pay taxes.
Mario didn’t dispute any of this. And worse yet, didn’t have any answers. Or try to defend it. It he just shrugged his shoulders.
Then the questions started to flow:
Why is only Madison affected by this, why not the rest of the state?
Why is Madison so aggressively pursuing this?
How many units will be affected?
Can we put this off for another year while we figure things out and hope for a state solution?
Why did the city attorney’s office pursue this in the first place?
What was the Mayor’s role in this? Why did he let it happen?
How does this affect the CDA?
Again, no answers.
So, we asked that the City Attorney (both Michael May and Larry O’Brien) be at the next meeting. We should probably also get the City Assessor there. And the press! If this looks like it is as bad as it sounds, this is horrific.
I also learned this little tid bit. I proposed two budget amendments to allow the Affordable Housing Trust Fund to be used to help pay the taxes that the non-profits are going to have to pay. Mario informed me that the City Attorney’s Office has determined we can’t do that. Funny, they never told me. I wonder at what point they were going to let that come up?
Anyways, there may be hundreds of affordable housing units that will end up getting sold off to the private market if we don’t end up with a solution. Or which become significantly less affordable.
CDA
So, Gregg Shimanski was up next. He’s the volunteer citizen chair of the CDA. I kind of feel sorry for him. Cuz you just know he’s not getting the kind of staff support he needs to be effective. Nothing could have been more clear when I asked the following two questions:
1. My first (admittedly unfair) question was: What is the need for affordable housing in the City of Madison? The answer, of course was, “I don’t know.” There’s a good reason for that. Because we don’t have the data and the information to figure it out. I asked, because I thought maybe some of the data that they have might help us in the quest to figure it out. I’ve had long discussions about how we get to that answer. In 1998, I figured the number was between 11,000 and 17,000 households under 80% Area Median Income that were paying over 30% of their income towards rent. It’s a ball park figure, and the methodology is subject to discussion and it’s based on old numbers, but it all doesn’t matter. The number is so overwhelming that whatever we do, it won’t be enough. So, I kind of dropped it. But, how can you come up with affordable housing solutions if we don’t know the need and can’t target the programs?
2. My second question to Gregg was: During the Inclusionary Zoning wrap up discussions, one of the questions we had was “What is the CDA going to do when the houses come up for sale?” According to the ordinance the CDA is the one to purchase the houses. Gregg’s answer: Um . . . . . (confusion). He didn’t even know it was the CDA’s role. They have no plan. He didn’t even know that there was actually money available to purchase the houses. I’m quite certain the CDA never even had a discussion about this. I don’t think the staff ever told them. Most likely because the staff doesn’t care and wants the program to go away. (And by staff, I’m talking about the top! Not Percy or the others.)
So, that was depressing. During the discussion Gregg also mentioned that the City of Madison has no more affordable housing for its population, comparatively speaking, than it did 38 years ago. That’s right. He’s right. Despite all the discussion, despite all our resources, despite our claims of being liberal – we aren’t making any progress. I’m paraphrasing him.
HOUSING REPORT
Next up – something we’ve been discussion for FOUR FREAKING YEARS. People have come and gone and we’re still talking about how we can get a city report that does the following:
a. Pulls together the easily accessible data that we have on housing into one report. The report could include information on:
1. Building Inspections
2. Building Permits
3. Evictions
4. Police Calls
5. Zoning/planning approvals
6. Assessments
7. Needs of families, individuals
8. Homelessness data
9. Many other things that we have yet to identify
b. Identify the needs, set measurable, achievable goals for the city.
Once we have the info that is scattered throughout the city, we can then determine what other information we need and how we can get it. But, we can’t even get the basic information together!!
I want to be clear, I’m not really blaming staff here. They’ve sort of tried, but it takes leadership and internal coordination. And we’re sorely lacking in both. Plus, we don’t have a housing department that focuses just on housing of all types. We don’t have staff dedicated to housing. It’s something that several departments deal with, but there’s no coordination.
WHICH COMMITTEE?
Sadly, after I just said that above, we have the same problems with our committee. We now have so many housing committees or committees dealing with housing that it makes my head spin. So many that, they need to have a meeting to try to figure out who’s doing what. I’ve been saying for quite some time we need to break the housing committee into its two subcommittees (Landlord/Tenant and Affordability) and then create a committee that has people from various committees like: CDBG, Office of Community Services, Planning Commission, Zoning, CDA, Housing Diversity Committee, the consolidation committee, Tenant/Landlord and Affordability, Inclusionary Zoning etc. Then we’d have a committee that could focus on housing. But we also have to staff it with someone who knows about housing. Right now, the housing committee is staffed by the building inspection department. Which is great, if we have a building inspection issue, but not so hot on the other issues.
CONCLUSION
Disaster.
We’re going nowhere, and not even doing it quickly. In fact, we seem to be sliding backwards. More to come . . .
