. . . if we don’t need the money for anything else . . .
Under the Mayor’s plan for affordable housing ($300,000 per year), its going to take 24 years to fund the Affordable Housing Trust Fund to the point where we have a fund that operates the way it is intended. Ald. Austin King and Ald. Brian Benford thought this was unacceptable, and attempted to add another $200,000 at the Board of Estimates. I asked Austin not to do this because we end up fighting about the Affordable Housing Trust Fund every year at budget time and every year we put ridiculous strings on it. The strings usually have some political implications and cause us to fight about the same money for the Affordable Housing Trust Fund two or three more times during the year. And for the past two years, we don’t end up with any additional money.
This year, we’re headed down the same path. Austin’s motion was amended . . . so that we have strings again! The $200,000 will only be put in the Affordable Housing Trust Fund if there is money left in the contingent reserve at the end of the year. What kind of a priority is that? Affordable Housing is important . . . if we don’t have anything else we need the money for.
And while we did get $100,000 in 2004 under this type of plan, we didn’t get any extra money in 2005 and we won’t get any in 2006 due to the strings that were attached. So, these votes let people look like they support affordable housing and yet allow voters to forget the result of the vote – did we actually get money for affordable housing? In short, based on the last two years of experience, its a waste of everyone’s time.
Funny thing is, Ald. Zach Brandon and I were the ones to argue against this type of budgeting at the Board of Estimates meeting. We agree that we should either fund it or not, but not put these (usually politically motivated) strings on the funding. (2005 strings were so that we wouldn’t use the contingent reserve for other needs. 2006 was to get us to agree to sell properties in James Madison Park.) Unfortunately, Zach agreed that while we agree this budgeting is not the way to do things, he also made it pretty clear he wouldn’t vote for the funds.
All of this just doesn’t make sense. Our goal is to get to $10M in the fund so that we can make a sufficient amount of interest on the money so that we spend only the interest and use the $10M to generate interest. At this rate, at $300,000 a year, it will take 24 years to get to full funding. At $500,000 a year, it will take 14 years to get to full funding. Meanwhile, we’re not creating affordable housing and our money isn’t working as hard as it should. Funding this program now can help us make more interest sooner to create affordable housing, instead of sitting there making a more modest amount of money while we wait another 14 – 24 years before we can start creating a more substantial amount of affordable housing.
