And no one is going to stop it. After spending over 5 years of my life working on the City’s Inclusionary Zoning Ordinance, its hard to let it go. However, after spending over 5 years of my life working on it, its equally hard to argue to keep it. The worst part about it is that with the ordinance gone – set to end January 2, 2009 – the new neighborhoods built on the periphery and the downtown condos will not have houses/condos priced for lower-moderate income people to move into. And, on the council, we will have no tools to stop that from happening. And we will get back to building more exclusive/separated neighborhoods where even the rentals will be too expensive until they have become outdated 10 to 15 years down the road.
SO, WHAT WENT WRONG?
(This explanation might sound like I’m blaming other people – it’s not meant to. It’s just a few of my observations about what I saw, and participated in – and there is plenty of blame to go around – including myself.)
– Compromise.
In efforts to get the ordinance to pass and work with developers and other alders, we agreed to things that we never should have agreed to. The first, and perhaps most damaging, was the so-called “equity model”. The equity model was complicated, buyers didn’t understand it and the realtors and others used it to scare buyers from buying the units. We fixed this with the second version of the ordinance, but the bad reputation stayed with the ordinance and the realtors didn’t get re-educated.
The second compromise that didn’t work out so well, was the so-called “incentives”. Like the “equity model”, we’ve had two different versions of this – neither of which is working. Even though developers helped develop the list of incentives for them to build slightly more affordable housing, the truth of the matter is, all they want is cash payments. The first version was based on points. The second version was based on a promise by the mayor’s office that “we” would put a cash value on each of the incentives. The model was largely developed by representatives of the developers and called the “gap analysis” – but they now complain it is, also, too complicated. And, they say there are “no incentives” which I interpret to mean, no cash. We should have done like other cities, we should have made it a requirement like streets and stormwater and parks, etc.
There are many, many, many other compromises in the ordinance. Many of them minor, but in the end, we had an ordinance unlike any other Inclusionary Zoning ordinance in the country. And much more complicated as we attempted to address every issue the opponents of this ordinance put out there.
– Rental.
The rental portion of the ordinance was disappointing from day one. First of all, it was really moderate rental housing, not housing that was truly affordable. But, be that as it may, when the Apartment Association of South Central Wisconsin won their law suit, and rental was removed entirely, then the ordinance only helped people making a relatively decent living. That’s when I began to be really disappointed in the ordinance.
– Developers/Realtors didn’t want to do it.
The games that were played, the media campaign, and the gymnastics people went through to get out of the ordinance were truly amazing. And the drumbeat of misinformation by the Realtors and the media was hard to overcome. It was everything from advertising “units” that weren’t built and were in fact a pile of dirt to not offering any realtor’s fees for finding buyers for the units. Everything was a fight. Developers threw fits at the plan commission meetings and stormed out, they tried to re-negotiate the deals they got when they figured out they didn’t get what they wanted and they tried to use the affordable units as an excuse as to why they couldn’t do anything good in the project. (Stormwater, parks, driveway placements etc.) More information about all the antics is here. With the exception of a few developers, this was to be fought at all costs.
– Staff didn’t want to do it.
There were, very few staff that were supportive of this effort. In fact, most were skeptical, if not blatantly opposed to the ordinance. Which of course, it didn’t help when they basically told the developers this or rolled their eyes at the mention of IZ. And, we had a city attorney that would tell us why we couldn’t do something, but didn’t really help us figure out how to do it. In many ways, the internal battle over IZ was much, much worse than the public one.
– Complexity.
I’m not sure that the ordinance was too complex. We’re a smart city with smart people who can figure out very complicated things. But, it became a mantra of just about everyone who didn’t want to deal with it. And, in many cases, I think people tried to make it overly complex. As I noted above, as we tried to fix issues that arose, we kept adding to it and in an attempt to make sure people didn’t take advantage of the program, we put in lots of “protections”. In effect, we played right into the hands of people making this argument.
– Other.
The market slowed way down! With rental gone and the market slowing down with many, many, many projects already approved, and a few loopholes that the developers found, we could never meet the goals originally sought in the ordinance. The numbers in the program are small, because very little is getting built. Plus, people started to look to this ordinance as THE solution to affordable housing, instead of just one piece of the solution and piled expectations on the ordinance that could never be met.
The hardest part of letting this go is looking at the 33 units that would not have been affordable. Some of which they were able to get people as low at 30% AMI into them. That’s 33 units we would never have had. Which, is a significant number of low-income housing units to have been built. Consider how many owner-occupied non-profits created with City Assistance during this same period of time.
2008 (Estimated)
1 – Commonwealth Development ($50,000 City Assistance)
7 – Operation Fresh Start ($372,000 at $53,143 per unit)
8 – Movin’ Out ($390,361 at $28,795 per unit)
2007
7 – Operation Fresh Start ($372,000 at $53,143 per unit)
5 – Movin’ Out ($216,000 at $43,200 per unit)
2006
7 – Operation Fresh Start ($308,000 at $44,000 per unit)
7 – Movin’ Out ($217,570 at $31,081 per unit)
2005
7 – Operation Fresh Start ($308,000 at $44,000 per unit)
10 – Movin’ Out ($252,000 + 38,536 at $29,839 per unit)
It’s unclear how many homes Habitat for Humanity did during this time with the reports that I have. During this period of time we gave them $1,050,000 for Twin Oaks I, $405,228 for Twin Oaks II, $88,000 for Arboretum Co-Housing, $560,000 for Northport Commons and $200,000 for Hauk/Marquette.
I’m guessing the Community Land Trust and maybe Wisconsin Partnership should also have some units in here, but it also wasn’t clear from the City Investment Report that I have.
When I told one staff person about the fact that no one was likely to oppose the sunset, the staff looked at me and asked “how are we going to get affordable housing?” I wish I knew the answer to that question given the above numbers.
SO, WHY NOT FIGHT FOR IT?
The Name/Brand.
After all the crap that has been said about the program, no matter what we do, its an uphill battle that we won’t win. Any affordable housing program that would get re-tooled or a completely new program, just needs a new name. There is too much baggage that comes with the Inclusionary Zoning brand. Sadly, our ordinance wasn’t really an Inclusionary Zoning ordinance like so many others, but the name sticks and so does all the garbage that goes with it.
Complicated.
The ordinance has been made complicated by people not reading it and in some cases just not wanting to understand it. Intelligent people can figure it out – but it’s been made complicated all the same. Untangling where we are at is near impossible. And starting with this ordinance and trying to fix all the silly compromises simply isn’t worth the brain damage.
Staff and Political Support.
Without widespread staff support, and as long as the program is a political football – we will continue with these same problems. Hopefully, if we abandon this and “try something new” it will have more support. However, I have to say I am very skeptical. We’ve tried all kinds of things to help with affordable housing and very little has been effective. Partially, because it is difficult to do. Partially, because so many people don’t think we need affordable housing and equate it with crime problems in our community – so it doesn’t have support.
WHAT’S NEXT?
Little hope
So far we have an Affordable Housing Trust Fund that we fight to get money in, a 10% TIF set aside program that has hardly been used and a dead IZ ordinance. Short of putting alot more money into affordable housing, which we allegedly can’t afford, I’m not sure what we are goint to do. Unless, the federal government finally puts in more money?
A committee.
Red flag! Creating a committee of alders to do what the Inclusionary Zoning Oversight, Housing, Affordability Subcommittee of the Housing Committee, CDBG, Plan Commission, CDA and many, many others have failed to do . . . doesn’t seem like its going to be the answer. But I’m ready to roll up my sleeves and try, try, try again.
A different committee.
What we really need to do is re-form our Housing Committee and make it include people from the above committees. I will be proposing this soon. I’ve talked with several people about it and it does seem to have support.
It’s pretty anti-climactic. And its a sad statement about our commitment to having housing for everyone in our community, maybe the new administration in Washington we will get some change and they will help us out?
