Plenary Session Galvanizes Mayoral Resolve To Address National Housing Crisis
By Eugene. T. Lowe
July 1, 2002
On Sunday, June 16, mayors participated in one of the most energetic sessions of the 10th Annual Meeting in Madison. Conference President Boston Mayor Thomas M. Menino opened up the plenary session by saying that housing was his top priority. Mayor Menino then said to the mayors: "Now I'm asking you to help and launch this strong campaign to put workforce housing at the top of our national agenda."
That housing is a national crisis is quite clear to Mayor Menino who laid out the extent of the problem in great detail. Some of what he said he included: "Housing isn't just about helping low-income families get back on their feet. It's about middle-income famiies who can't find an affordable home in the neighborhood. It's about young people who are starting out living with their parents in historic numbers because they can't afford an apartment. It's about seniors who want to buy a smaller home in these specialized units, but can't afford anything that is safe and secure. It's about shrinking the ownership gap between African Americans, Latino families, and white Americans."
Commenting on the Mayors National Housing Forum held in Washington on May 20 — 22, when more than 140 participants came together to develop a number of innovative proposals that would create and preserve more housing, Mayor Menino said that while "these proposals won't solve all our housing needs, but they'll make a difference and put this issue on the national agenda."
Mayor Menino told the mayors that housing is a nonpartisan issue. He said: "Republicans and Democrats support housing because it is a real issue. It s an issue that affects all of us. President Bush has endorsed the idea of a homeownership tax credit. The Housing Trust Fund idea is sponsored by members such as Representative Bernie Sanders of Vermont and Representative Tom Davis of Virginia who runs the Republican Congressional Campaign. Committee."
Retsinas Leads Plenary Discussion
Following Mayor Menino's opening remarks, Nicolas P. Retsinas, Director of the Joint Center of Housing Studies at Harvard University led the plenary discussion. Retsinas who also was the chief facilitator of the Mayors National Housing Forum in May , told the mayors at the outset that they were not going to go over the National Housing Agenda report which all they had before them, nor were they going to go over the many details of the national housing crisis.
Retsinas did say, however, that "in the midst of the longest. run of prosperity this nation has ever enjoyed, the crisis of affordable housing has exacerbated over time. In a sense, the last decade was a missed opportunity. In part it was a missed opportunity because we did not have a national housing policy. We see the results of that absence today in our cities, our communities, all across this nation. Because we didn't have a housing policy, the job gains, particularly of lower-income Americans, have been especially difficult How do you keep a job if you keep having to move around? :How do you survive on a minimum wage with the cost of housing?"
Retsinas laid out several other consequences of the lack of a national housing policy. He said: "Because we didn't have a national housing policy, issues of health care remain critical. A recent study indicated that indeed the most critical variable effecting infant mortality in the United States is how much people pay for housing as a percentage of their income." Retsinas asserted: "That's a terrible, terrible allegation."
Retsinas continued his litany: "Because we don't have national housing policy, problems in our communities are especially difficult. How can we expect little children to learn if every six months they're forced to go from apartment to apartment. Because we don't have a national housing policy, we are scrambling to deal with problems of transportation and sprawl because we have no connection between jobs and housing. Because we don't have a national housing policy, some of the neighborhoods that we care so deeply about are struggling because people don't have a decent place to live."
Following his opening remarks, Retsinas introduced Stacey Davis, President and CEO of the Fannie Mae Foundation. Davis gave an overview(see accompanying article) of a national survey of affordable housing and working families. The results of the survey set the stage for the mayoral discussion which followed.
Mayoral Discussion
Joining Nic Retsinas in leading the discussion of "where we go from here" were the mayors who lead five breakout sessions during the National Housing Forum: Minneapolis Mayor R.T. Rybak on rental housing; Long Beach Mayor Beverly O'Neill (who filled in for Columbus Mayor Michael Coleman) on homeownership; Trenton Mayor Doug Palmer on the preservation of affordable housing; Akron Mayor Don Plusquellic on public housing; and Nashville Mayor Purcell on special needs housing. Key points in a wide ranging discussion follow:
There are not a lot of people talking about rental housing. But rental housing is the first step in the whole housing continuum. Data indicate the by 2020 half of the rental units will have people of color. Therefore, this is a civil rights issue. Moreover, as our population ages, seniors will look to rental housing. As for workforce housing, the rental market is the only place we're truly going to get at those who are at one-third of the metropolitan area's median income.
To address rental housing, we must get the private market involved and that means revisiting tax reform in the 80's and how it really shut off some of the private investment into affordable rental housing.
A logical ally to help is those interested in public education. We have schools within our city in which 65 percent of the school population moves each and every year. Not once during their childhood years, but many move every year. This creates challenges in their lives, and we must keep these children on course.
Some cities are saturated with affordable housing. It is not right for some cities to get all or 60 to 80 percent off affordable housing in a county. We need federal help to address this situation.
We need to expand the Community Development Block Grant (CDBG) program and the HOME Investment Partnerships program A homeownersship tax credit bill should also be passed.
We need to get transportation planners involved with affordable housing. It doesn't' do us a whole lot of good to build affordable housing that nobody can get to create ghettos in areas that are not accessible to public transportation.
We can get more homeowners with something similar to the GI bill. We know how to do it.
One policy issue is that is absent from this discussion is sprawl, people moving farther and farther out. If we are not willing to discuss what sprawl means to all of our efforts, subsidy programs will not matter. We've got to figure out a way to how to arrest all of this development where there is no demand for it.
You have to invest. Just because there is an abandoned area, you can't say, will that neighborhood is gone. It's up to the mayors to look at those neighborhoods as opportunities and invest in them. You have to make the neighborhood attractive. If you have a neighborhood that isn't attractive to invest in, to move in,nobody will want to live there. I don't care who they are.
We're building houses and neighborhoods where we still have abandoned houses that are boarded up. The housing value is continuing to be eroded. I am pleading that there's one issue that has been omitted from the discussion in this policy and if we don't acknowledge it, we're gong to be doomed in all our efforts.
The policy recommendations having to do with reinvestment address the problem of sprawl. One thing we do know, if we don't do anything , then sprawl and disinvestment will continue. No question about that.
One of the natural partners are employers, who are looking to redevelop in their neighborhoods. This includes providing housing to their employees.
We need to look at housing from a regional approach. We don't do housing within our own communities only.
We need to reach out to other organizations such as the mortgage bankers, the realtors, the unions and our private sector partners to help us when we start talking to folks in Washington.
We must conserve our public housing and make sure that it is always going to be there.
We should not allow affordable housisng to set up new ghettos in our communities. A city should control and administer the Section 8 program within its jurisdiction.
We need to expand HOPE VI and not have to compete with each other for the opportunity to get the benefits of the program.
We ought to be working towards changing the rules so that landlords could not discriminate and say no to a potential tenant because that tenant has a Section 8 voucher.
I'm a former school superintendent, and I spent 40 years of my life in education , and I watched those 40 years, and we took public education and we patched and patched it and we patched it and it's basically the same as it was 40 years ago, but times have changed. My concern is—maybe we should look at the situation, the national situation, and make sure that this is not a changing to times, a changing of events, and our country is moving another way in terms of housing and the cost of it, before we start putting more band-aids on what we have today. And I make that as a general statement because I fear that we're doing the same thing to our cities and to our governments and to our housing as we had done to public education.
Special needs populations, by definition , and by experience in most cities require our special attention, The populations are elderly, the disabled , the homeless. These are the populations that we understand will not rise, even if we are successful in all the other areas that we've discussed and those yet to come. A rising tide across the board will not rise — raise, rather, the level of housing available for these populations. This is an area that's going to require continued federal attention and increased federal resources.
Menino's Call To Action On Housing
Closing out the plenary session, Mayor Menino said that "housing must be on the national agenda. And mayors are the ones who are going to get it there." He then outlined a plan that includes a regional approach which will consist or regional teams comprised of mayors that will implement a Call to Action. Mayor Menino said that he will identify the regional team and their leaders by the Leadership Meeting that will be held in Boston in July. Mayor Menino also said that a legislative strategy that "we can take to Congress and the Administration" will be defined. This will be key priorities from the National Housing Agenda and "a strategy for moving them forward."
The mayor then challenged the mayors to take action now. He said: "We're in an election year. There is a House race in every city across the country. We must make housing a central theme in these races." He also announced a Lobby Day in September. Mayor Menino said: "I want each of you to make the commitment to come to Washington in September to lobby with us on housing and other key issues. You will have specific details on this the next weeks."
A media strategy for affordable housing will be defined which will be shared with the regional teams. In addition, details on the housing crisis will be sent to all mayors. Finally, the mayor identified several groups that will be asked to join our team including the AARP, the National Low Income Housing Coalition, the U.S. Chamber of Commerce Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac. The mayor said that most of these groups are already with us.
In their final act bringing the plenary session to an end, the mayors unanimously adopted the National Housing Agenda developed at the National Housing Forum.
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