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A Sense of Mission for Affordable Housing

Much of the discussion last week at Montgomery County’s 11th annual Affordable Housing Conference wasfamiliar: The inventory of affordable housing in Montgomery
County, as well as in America, continues to diminish; the rate of production of new affordable-housing units continues to fall; and providing affordable housing continues to
be a very low priority for federal, state and many local governments as well as for most Americans.

By Roger K. Lewis Washington Post

At some time in the not-so-distant future, could affordable housing become a revitalized public policy issue?

In Montgomery County and the state of Maryland, the answer might be yes, especially considering who was at the conference. As usual, county housing officials,
housing developers and managers, community service providers, bankers and financiers, lawyers, real estate agents, urban planners and even a few of us architects were
there. But also actively participating were leading county and state government political leaders and political aspirants.

After opening remarks from County Executive Douglas M. Duncan (D), the county’s congressional candidates engaged in a lively "town meeting," generally agreeing that
affordable-housing policies and practices need substantial revision, both in Annapolis and on Capitol Hill. After lunch, U.S. Sen. Paul S. Sarbanes (D), U.S. Rep.
Constance A. Morella (R), Montgomery County Council President Steven A. Silverman (D-At Large) and two Republican gubernatorial candidates — U.S. Rep. Robert L.
Ehrlich Jr. and Ross Z. Pierpont — spoke to attendees.

The conference focused on the growing number of people who need affordable housing, on the complex process and programs through which affordable housing is
developed, financed and operated, and on the difficulty of preserving the existing inventory of such housing.

Keep in mind that affordable housing today is not just a matter of concern to the poor and destitute, families on welfare, people with disabilities or the elderly. Many
households headed by fully employed, healthy, middle-class wage earners are struggling to find housing simply because costs have become so high, outpacing wage
growth. Housing can now eat up disproportionately large percentages of household income. Instead of paying a quarter or a third of their income for housing, low-income
families sometimes pay half or even more for a place to live.

Finding affordable housing is not just a problem for minimum-wage earners flipping burgers or cleaning buildings. In communities where they work, public employees such
as teachers and police officers have great difficulty renting or buying homes they can afford, as do millions of other individuals furnishing indispensable labor in America’s
service economy.

"Overcoming Obstacles When Developing Affordable Housing" was the topic assigned to a panel on which I served, although the architecture of housing and obstacles to
design were not the issue. Rather, we addressed zoning, land availability and cost, the local politics of public reviews, bureaucracy, the building permit process and
financing.

The most serious obstacles cited are also the most persistent.

• Land availability and cost. Finding land for moderately priced dwellings in acceptable locations is increasingly difficult, and the cost of acquiring and improving land
almost anywhere has become prohibitive.

• Zoning. Zoning regulations often restrict density and limit housing types in locations that might otherwise be suitable for affordable housing, in effect excluding the less
affluent from many neighborhoods.

• Financing. To finance affordable housing, sponsors must now bundle together many federal, state and county programs providing capital funds, operating subsidies and
investment tax incentives. Funding fragmentation is administratively onerous, with sometimes-conflicting program constraints. Money is still scarce even with the many
programs.

• Bureaucratic and regulatory complexity. Obtaining official approvals for affordable-housing projects entails ever-increasing amounts of patience, time and money — for
architects, engineers, transportation consultants, lawyers, economists. There are seemingly endless administrative and overhead costs related to public hearings. High
levels of aggravation and expense, coupled with thin profit margins, explain why many developers, for comparable effort and risk, choose to build for the more affluent.
Those factors also help explain why so many landlords do not renew rent subsidy contracts when they expire, choosing instead to convert previously affordable units to
market-rate-sale or rental housing.

• Citizen opposition. Public hearings concerning proposed affordable-housing projects bring objections galore, mostly from neighbors who cite adverse effects on traffic,
infrastructure and public services, schools, the environment, property values and crime rates. Frequently unstated is the desire to maintain a neighborhood’s
socioeconomic homogeneity and exclusivity.

• Lack of political constituency. Despite statistics showing affordable-housing shortages, there is little effective public or institutional support for new affordable-housing
initiatives, and little support for measurably increased public funding.

What can be done to overcome these obstacles? The conference consensus seemed clear: Reform and improve public policies, practices and financing.

To make more land available and affordable, master plans and zoning laws must designate and promote increased residential densities, especially near transit stops and
in locations with adequate infrastructure, including older suburban neighborhoods. Speakers noted that many government-owned, well-located but underused sites could
be used for affordable housing.

Fewer, simplified financing programs but more public funds are needed, first to subsidize housing production and rehabilitation, and second to subsidize operating costs —
mortgage interest, taxes, insurance, utilities, maintenance and repairs — directly affecting the cost of renting or owning existing property. Federal and state legislative
reforms could consolidate, simplify and financially enhance subsidy programs. Also needed are legal and financial mechanisms to ensure that affordable housing units,
once created, remain affordable for more than a decade or two.

Jurisdictions must reduce the morass of bureaucratic red tape — and thus reduce burdensome administrative costs for nonprofit and for-profit housing developers — by
streamlining regulatory processing and permitting requirements, without lowering design and construction standards.

Finally, strong political leadership could help change prevailing indifferent or negative attitudes toward affordable housing. More forceful, persuasive arguments for social
and economic justice can be made. But citizens will be more easily persuaded seeing neighborhoods where affordable homes are attractive and sustainable, where crime
has not risen while property values have.

What are the chances of achieving all this?

Americans made affordable housing a national priority after the end of World War II, and it stayed on the agenda until the 1970s. But since about 1980, affordable housing
has all but disappeared from the public’s radar screen. Fortunately, housing is still within radar range in Montgomery County and in Maryland, and the blip just might get
brighter.

Roger K. Lewis is a practicing architect and a professor of architecture at the University of Maryland.

© 2002 The Washington Post Company

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A61849-2002Mar8.html

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