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Lisa was indeed a frequent visitor at Horn - I featured her in one of my
Horn Terrace newsletter photo collages as a matter of fact. Lisa also voted
with the good guys when the Affordable Housing Task Force report was adopted in
the summer of 1999 but amended by CM Campbell to move the proposed definition
of “affordable” housing from 30% of Metro Median Income (MMI) to
50% of MMI. This latter version had the support of Mayor Sayles Belton and
Council President Cherryhomes and I believe their
collective evisceration of that report did grave damage to our housing
situation and contributed mightily to their demise as municipal leaders. Their legacy, however, lives on. Lisa’s map conforms
to this official revisionism in that it has become the norm to deem such
“affordable” housing (defined at 50% of MMI) the appropriate
solution to very low income market demand and civic responsibility under the
1995 Land Use Planning Act (LUPA) to move toward adequate housing supply.
Regretfully there are many thousands of households and individuals who are
nowhere near the 50% MMI ($37,350 annual income for a family of four) for whom
the officially affordable housing is intended. MPHA’s
40 highrises and its townhomes
and scattered site housing are significant exceptions to this Potemkin Village situation - they
operate with 30% of income rents thanks to substantial federal subsidies. The Rybak administration seeks a
middle road by honoring the notion that housing should be affordable at 30% of
annual income but does not embrace a computation of affordable housing at 30%
MMI. With no hard target, whether metropolitan median income or more
realistically municipal median income which would be a substantially lower
benchmark, touting the ideal of 30% of income is basically a throw-away line
because we are still defining affordable housing at 50% MMI when it comes time
to require 20% set-asides and other public sector requirements about including
affordable housing components in new construction. It would be interesting to know, for example, how many of
the units in the proposed Urban Village Development on the north edge of the
Midtown Greenway between Aldrich and Colfax, or maybe Dupont, which I am now
told are meant to include MPHA participation, will come in at the 30% MMI
level. There’s the rub in a nutshell. If this project, which is surely
Lisa’s pride and joy, has a 20% inclusivity
feature accomplished in part with MPHA participation but the affordable
component is configured at 50% MMI, then what is happening is that the public
housing authority itself is also conceivably buying into the notion that
providing housing for more prosperous folks is a deemed a solution to the
shortfall in housing for very low income households. Not showing the big highrises on a
feel-good municipal map adds to the problem by not observing the major
high-density residential facilities that do come in at 30% MMI. Anyone who has
not been following the affordable housing dialogue is left without that
structural reminder that very low income public housing is very much in our
municipal mix and, I believe, needs to expand substantially. Given the mission
drift away from 30% MMI as a municipal planning goal, even conceivably by the
public housing agency itself, I felt it useful to tap a sore nerve in the
matter of Lisa’s map. No offense to Lisa, she’s a pip and as
I’ve said, it a great map; but the intractable shortfalls are still with
us and the map conveys a roseate view of our municipal scene. Fred Markus Horn Terrace Ward Ten |
