I am one of the founding members of the Affordable Housing Action Alliance that formed in 1997. This group formed because housing issues had been ignored in this City for so long. We had an entire agenda that we wanted to accomplish 7 years ago.
We started with issues like minimum income standards and Section 8 (which was the beginning of my problems with the Wisconsin State Journal). This caused the city to have a silly housing summit (with useless report) and the City and County to form a Housing Committee, neither of which created one affordable housing unit and affordable housing continued to be a problem. Section 8 failed both at the City and County by one vote. (Mayor Buaman eventually changed her mind.) So we continued to push our proposals forward much to the dismay of others. And Landlords started dumping tons of money into elections. When Mayor Bauman was running after just 2 years in office (she took office mid-term) we continued to push to make affordable housing an issue and asked her to take a leadership role. And she eventually produced her own agenda. Unfortunately, it depended upon federal money and didn’t work.
Some sought out data. We organized in the community. Some attacked me and tried to kick supporters off committees. We continued to work with other groups. They accused us of being polarizing. Lots of groups formed. Mayor (Bauman) had a roundtable discussion. Developers started talking about affordable housing, but didn’t follow through. They held conferences. We protested at the U.S. Conference of Mayors. Meetings were held with HUD. Big money was thrown into mayoral races. Some “chump change” was given for affordable housing. Mayor’s changed, as did the council.
Through all of this ancient history and some of the more recent debate with some hard work and persistence, we’ve accomplished nearly half of the items we set out to do . . . and we’ve hardly made a dent in the affordable housing crisis. We worked on issues like TIF for affordable housing (supported by the CDA), pushed the CDA to respond better to clients, proposed to prevent discrimination against Section 8 holders at the city (more than once) and county levels and eventually passed a compromise ordinance, passed a minimum income ordiance, started talking about inclusionary zoning in 2001 (and the developers supported it then?), Todd Jarrell and Tom Powell pushed us to push for an Affordable Housing Trust Fund and it passed, but we’ve had trouble funding it ever since. Others have pushed things like a living wage, a local minimum wage and paid sick leave that impact affordable housing as well and we supported those initiatives. I’m sure I’ve neglected to list everything that we have worked on, and while some of our proposals have passed and are working, some have not passed or need more work.
Seems like we’ve tried so much at this point . . . and while we’ve kept the debate alive and made progress, there is so much more to do. Hopefully, Inclusionary Zoning will help some members of the community. The BIG question is, will all the rhetoric by the Realtors and council members about creating different housing programs, truly doing something for affordable housing for the lowest income people mean that we’re ready to get serious about affordable housing for those most in need? And will the Mayor include money in the upcoming budget to address these important issues? Or is affordable housing only for teachers, firefighters and nurses?
