Wages connect to quality of life. . .duh!

People like me, very fortunate and privileged people like me don't worry about housing in terms of "having it" or losing it or the basic quality of it.

In fact, most of us seldom give a thought to the cost of housing as it relates to wages earned in the work place and how this connection drives the quality and reality of the rest of life.

For example, most readers at this site have never considered breaking down their monthly housing costs in terms of hourly wages required to afford a two-bedroom apartment. Take a look at the chart below that indexes housing costs to hourly wages required.

Reactions?
 

Housing facts of life

Most of us don't understand the housing dynamic at work across the nation and how it drastically affects low-income Americans .  Here's a description of  part of the reality we face in urban areas:

"Nationwide, even as the rental market is growing across all income levels and homeownership has decreased for eight years running, new apartments are predominantly built for the rich. Only about 10 percent of rental apartments coming into the market are affordable to people who make less than $35,000 per year — that is, the group that encompasses half the total number of rental households. The Joint Center for Housing Studies of Harvard University reports that the median asking rent for a new unit in 2013 was a startling $1,300 a month. Meanwhile, the rate of both subsidized and “naturally occurring” affordable units is shrinking, because owners are either raising rents in strong markets or, in weak markets, they let the units deteriorate until they become unlivable."

Source here.

Dallas Slum Lords Feel Unstoppable!

Here's what "poor folks" face in countless Dallas neighborhoods. 

We need to find a remedy.

Small, simple, functional. . .beauty

For the past few weeks I've been on a self-imposed, "blog sabbatical" prompted both by the most jammed schedule of my work life and "idea fatigue."

With what follows, I think I'm "back."

But, with this many words and phases inside quotation marks, who knows?

Whatever the case, I found the following clip an interesting challenge to our tendency to require, better, demand large living spaces.

I find "small housing" very attractive.

How about you?




[Personal note: R. I. P. Clyde Erwin! We are remembering you on your birthday and for Normandy!]

Housing and the "shutdown"

For your information (From the Texas Homeless Network’s Newsletter):

Effects of Shutdown on HUD

On the morning of October 1, federal employees were required to show up for work to implement steps to close down federal activities. HUD’s shutdown contingency plan left fewer than 400 employees “excepted” from the shutdown to ensure that basic activities occur. The criteria for an activity to be excepted is “where the failure to address issues result in a threat to safety of life and protection of property.” Excepted activities include most functions of homeless assistance programs, the distribution of HUD block grants, and FHA insurance programs.

HUD’s largest rental assistance programs (tenant-based rental assistance, public housing, and project-based rental assistance) appear to have previously-obligated funding or advance appropriations funding to continue normal operations through October and, for the project-based program, “into November,” according to an October 2 update of HUD’s Contingency Plan. HUD also says in the October 2 update that it will continue to process project-based contract renewals during the shutdown to the extent there is available funding into November.

An October 4 memo from the Center on Budget and Policy Priorities states that since funding for the public housing and housing choice voucher programs are made for calendar years, Congress has already appropriated these resources. It is now a matter of whether or not HUD will have sufficient staff due to the shutdown to administer these funds. The administration of funds may fall under HUD’s plan to deploy staff excepted from the shutdown to prevent imminent threats to the safety of human life or the protection of property.

For tenant-based rental assistance, HUD has disbursed October housing assistance payments and administrative fees, but there are no payments beyond October scheduled at this time. HUD is not processing requests for tenant protection vouchers for public housing or multifamily actions.

HUD’s contingency plan predicts that most of the country’s 3,300 public housing agencies (PHAs) have the necessary funds to continue providing public housing assistance for the remainder of the month. Funding beyond October will depend in part upon the resources of individual PHAs.

Homeless Assistance activities that “protect against imminent threats to the safety of human life” are continuing, including housing for people with AIDS and supportive housing for veterans.

HUD will disburse HOME Investment Partnerships program, Community Development Block Grants (CDBG), and other block grants for which funds have already been appropriated.

View HUD’s contingency plan for additional details on agency functions that will continue or have already halted at: http://www.hud.gov

View the Center on Budget and Policy Priorities’ October 4 Memo on the shutdown’s impact on housing programs at: http://bit.ly/176QLiz

  

Paula Maroney

Director - Continuum of Care

Metro Dallas Homeless Alliance (MDHA)

2816 Swiss Avenue, Dallas, TX 75204

"Not in my back yard". . .and it is a large yard we have!

Dallas housing developer and urban planner, Bob Voelker presents valuable information on a consistent basis from his blog, Fair Housing for Developers.  Voelker pays attention to trends and market realities. 

Recently, he has noted the difficulty experienced by affordable housing developers from all across the country with NIMBYism ("not in my back yard") among neighbors and neighborhood groups who oppose placement of various kinds of affordable housing in proximity to them and/or their property. 

Fact:  no matter how much preparation, advance notice or participation that developers invite, almost every development anywhere near market rate housing or properties faces neighborhood opposition.  That certainly has been true here in Dallas, Texas.

In view of these stories, and many more just like them, from across the U. S., in may be time to modify the Fair Housing Act and other state statutes to define the availability of decent housing as a basic human right. At the end of the day our current experiences as a nation beg the question, "Where are poor people to live?"

Take a look at this limited litany of discrimination and opposition to low-income persons and families.  Many more examples could be produced, but these provide  real insights into the problem. 

Medford, Oregon

Highland Park--Minneapolis, Minnesota area

St. Bernard Parish, Louisiana (racial slurs painted on buildings)

Schereville, Indiana

Durham, North Carolina

Montclair, New Jersey (housing for people with mental health issues)

Clovis, New Mexico

Westchester County, New York

San Francisco, California

Thanks, Bob for the enlightening, but disturbing reports.  Keep up your good work.

CityWalk@Akard--a real winner!

Central Dallas Community Development Corporation's
City Walk @ Akard Development Wins National Award

City Walk @ Akard (City Walk), a fifteen-story Dallas landmark that has been transformed from a neglected and abandoned office building into a thriving mixed-use development, was recognized at the NALHFA (National Association of Local Housing Finance Agencies) 2011 Educational Conference in San Francisco with the Award for Redevelopment Excellence.

The award was particularly meaningful since the title of this year's NALHFA Conference was Transformative Change in Affordable Housing. John Greenan, Executive Director of Central Dallas Community Development Corporation (Central Dallas CDC), whose vision and unflagging efforts made City Walk possible, accepted the award.

City Walk was thoughtfully restored by Central Dallas CDC into a green-minded, mixed-use, mixed-income development, including ground floor retail, two floors of office space, eleven floors of apartment homes containing two hundred affordable apartments, fifty of which are reserved for the formerly homeless, and one floor comprised of six for-sale condominiums. 7-Eleven chose City Walk as a location for one of their new urban-styled stores. The physical address for City Walk is 511 N. Akard, located in the heart of the Downtown Business District, and within an easy walk to public transportation as well as the Dallas Arts District and the emerging system of downtown green-spaces.

The Central Dallas Community Development Corporation, a sister 501 c 3 non-profit corporation, was created in 2002 by CitySquare (formerly and at that time Central Dallas Ministries) to engage in housing development for low-income residents of Dallas.  CitySquare provides community life services at CityWalk as well as funding for the leadership staff of the Central Dallas CDC. 

Karen Schaffner, Manager of the Dallas Housing Finance Corporation nominated City Walk @ Akard for the prestigious award. The City Walk development had the support of the Dallas City Council and The Mayor of Dallas from its inception. Central Dallas CDC worked very closely with public officials in designing the project and creating public opportunities for community input. Additionally, The City of Dallas participated in the financing of the project by providing Homeless Bond Funds in the amount of $1,500,000 and Community Development Block Grant Funds in the amount of $750,000.

This is not the first time that City Walk has been honored. The development won Dallas Business Journal's 2009 award for Best Commercial Rehab or Reuse, and Preservation Dallas' 2010 Achievement Award for Commercial Rehab or Reuse.

For more information about Central Dallas CDC, its mission, and its developments, contact Lori Beth Lemmon at lblharrison@centraldallascdc.org, or visit http://www.centraldallascdc.org/.

For information about CitySquare, its mission and opportunities for community involvement, contact Shawn Wills at swills@CitySquare.org or visit http://www.citysquare.org/.

Housing--Detroit

Abandoned Detroit Building Converted To Apartments For Homeless

April 15, 2011 8:30 AM

DETROIT (WWJ) – The old Michigan Bell building in Detroit is being converted into an apartment building for the homeless.

WWJ’s Rob Sanford reports work will get underway next week on the housing project.

The $5 million project calls for the construction of 155 one-bedroom apartments, along with in-house services for the homeless.

Neighborhood Services Organization developed the project. The organization raised 80% of the renovation costs, with the rest made up of donations from several foundations and business organizations.

Also moving into the 255,000 square foot building will be a federally funded health care clinic.

The hope is that construction can be completed by the fall of 2012.

[Source:  CBS Detroit]

Central Dallas CDC News: Dallas Observer report on Downtown affordable housing

The following most interesting column by Dallas Observer writer, Jim Schutze reveals the something of the growing importance of the work of the Central Dallas Community Development Corporation.  Worth your time if you care about affordable housing in Downtown Dallas. 

Dallas City Hall gets whopped upside the head for its low-income housing policy

By Jim Schutze Thursday, Feb 17 2011

Tell me first. To be a cool place to live, what does downtown Dallas need? Action. Tons and tons of people, not all super-rich, not all homeless, either.

But that's the problem with downtown. Rich people in the towers. Desperadoes in the alleys. Long empty sidewalks between.

For that to change, downtown needs to become affordable to jobsians. Not rich. Not poor. Not white, black or brown. Just people with jobs.

Guess what. I think maybe that door just cracked.

In a small room in the bowels of City Hall at 8:30 in the morning on one of those hard weather days last week, an obscure body voted to change direction on the renovation of a handful of old office towers—known as the Atmos Project.

It was the first hint of a whole new thing, and it only happened because some guys whopped the city upside the head with a two-by-four. I will come back to that, of course, because I know you love head-whoppings.

The important thing is this: The city board, whose name is too long for me to mention yet, voted to put way more subsidized low-rent apartments into the Atmos re-development deal than originally planned.

For decades, Dallas has taken federal funds designed to foster low-income housing downtown and used the money instead to make downtown hotsy-totsy. The result is what you see now—notsy.

Click here to read the entire essay and get to the part about the Central Dallas CDC. . .

Futuristic Housing New Orleans Style

Back in the November 2009 issue of The Atlantic, Wayne Curtis offered a great report on housing renewal in New Orleans since Katrina.  Worth taking a look.  Could be lessons for the entire country. 

Reactions invited!

Houses of the Future


Four years after the levee failures, New Orleans is seeing an unexpected boom in architectural experimentation. Small, independent developers are succeeding in getting houses built where the government has failed. And the city's unique challenges—among them environmental impediments, an entrenched culture of leisure, and a casual acquaintance with regulation—are spurring design innovations that may redefine American architecture for a generation.

To read the entire essay click here.

Poor folks Downtown?

Are poor people welcome in Downtown Dallas? 

Great question. 

My office sits on the 3rd floor of our newly redone building at 511 N. Akard on the Arts District side of Downtown Dallas.  It is also going to be home to over 200 low-income persons.  So, since they live here, it's hard to say that poor people aren't welcome in Downtown.  We had help getting the development done, including help from the City of Dallas.  We're grateful for the partnership.

That said, it is clear to me that many people don't believe low-income folks can contribute anything positive to the revitalization of the central core of our city.  We've heard and received various expressions of concern and opposition to our City Walk project.  While the city's housing department helped us with the development by providing funds and counsel, compared to city support provided developments of upscale projects, what we received reflects the city's priorities about workforce and permanent supportive housing in the Downtown area.  Poor folks and their housing needs just aren't high on the city's list. 

Consider:  less than 1/10 of 1% of the general revenue operating budget for the City of Dallas goes to the Housing Department.  Most of those funds pay salaries and support specialized programs.  The city doesn't have a robust, adequately funded strategy for the development of affordable housing or permanent supportive housing.  The bulk of the development funds flowing from the city to developers comes from the federal and state governments.  Our local commitment to addressing the problem is anemic.

What to do? 

One:  begin a stairstep increase in the Housing Department's allocation from 1/10 of 1% to a full 1% over a 5 year period.  This would allow the department to implement an effective plan over 60 months as funds rose gradually.

Two:  craft, support and pass a bond issue to create a City of Dallas Housing Trust Fund of $50 million in the next bond election, hopefully no later than 2011.  Such a trust fund would ensure the availability of resources for developers committed to building affordable housing and permanent supportive housing (PSH) for low-income residents of Dallas.  Once established, at least 30% of the fund's earnings should be earmarked for PSH.

Check out article in The Dallas Morning News today about CityWalk@Akard!

Great story by Kim Horner in this morning's edition of The Dallas Morning News concerning our CityWalk development!

Here's how it begins:

Low-income development is changing minds in downtown Dallas

By KIM HORNER / The Dallas Morning News
khorner@dallasnews.com

Skeptics envisioned a skid row when developers first proposed 200 downtown apartments for low-income and formerly homeless residents.

Sharon Denise Tillis, who used to live in a shelter, was among the first to move into CityWalk@Akard, a new low-income housing development. The waiting list has 300 people on it.

But so far, the project, CityWalk@Akard, has not lived up to those fears.

The 15-story apartment building opened just three months ago, and only 10 residents have moved in so far. But neighboring property owners say the project has already improved, rather than hurt, the neighborhood.

To read the full report click here.

CityWalk@Akard: Photos

To get a glimpse of our newly restored, Downtown office tower, know at CityWalk@ Akard, click here.

The project is mixed-use: office and retail. . .

Mixed-income: 200 units of affordable housing with 50 units reserved for formerly homeless persons and 6 market rate, for sale condos.

Our grand opening will be Thursday, March 25 from 4:30 to 7:00 p.m.

CityWalk@Akard Grand Opening

Speaking of Permanent Supportive Housing. . .check out information regarding the Grand Opening for our CityWalk@ Akard project right here.

"Not Welcome" in Frisco

What follows is a report on a propsed affordable housing development in Frisco, Texas, a far North Dallas suburban and one of the most affluent communities in the nation.  The report describes a plan to open up living options to low-income persons. 


The reaction of a rather large number of Frisco citizens is interesting, but not too surprising to me. 


Read it and let me know what you think. 

Here's how the report begins: 

Frisco affordable housing plan gains board's support but meets resistance
Friday, February 12, 2010
By VALERIE WIGGLESWORTH / The Dallas Morning News

In a first of its kind effort, Frisco is helping developers build affordable housing with money from a nonprofit in Dallas.

The catch: The partnership with Inclusive Communities Project Inc. requires some of the low-income apartments be available first to certain Dallas Housing Authority clients with Section 8 vouchers.

That has some people in this affluent suburb concerned.

"How does this help residents of Frisco?" asked Mark Walsh, who raised concerns in an e-mail to his neighbors. "It's helping Dallas Housing Authority people to move to Frisco."

Betsy Julian, president of the nonprofit, said Dallas residents want what everyone wants: attractive communities with amenities, good schools and low crime rates. Frisco fits that bill.

"Our mission is to promote healthy inclusive communities, and if there's no affordable housing, it's not an inclusive community," she said.

The two apartment complexes proposed on vacant lots in Frisco are dependent on acceptance into the state's Housing Tax Credit program. The competitive program provides federal tax incentives for developments with rents at below-market rates. Developers in the Dallas region have applied for more than $92 million in tax credits for 60 projects. The state has about $10 million available for the region this year.

To read the entire report click here.

What would it be like to live in a community with continual awareness that you and yours were regarded as "a real problem"? 

CityWalk@Akard--all about people and homes

CityWalk @Akard is now leasing up!  To read a feature story in today's edition of The Dallas Morning News click here. 

Last week, after four challenging, at times maddening, years, the property located at 511 N. Akard in Downtown Dallas received the certificate of occupancy needed to open the basement through fifth floors to office and residential tenants. 

If you follow this blog, Central Dallas Ministries or the Central Dallas Community Development Corporation, you know about CityWalk and its development.

Of course, the real story involves the people who will live and work in the 206 units of housing and the retail and office spaces available in the building.

Two hundred units will provide high-quality housing for low-income residents by the definitions of the Texas Department of Housing and Community Affairs.  Of those, fifty units are set aside for formerly homeless persons.  Six of the units, all located on the top floor, are market rate condos designed for sale.  All six have been sold. 

The basement through the third floor will house retail and office tenants, including the administrative and law offices of CDM and the offices of the CDCDC.  Additional business and non-profit tenants will join us on the building's first and second floors.  The basement will provide storage space for tenants as we open. 

The mixed-income, mixed-use nature of the project lead me to think of it as "a neighborhood in vertical."  It really is about like a city block that enjoys an unique mixture of uses, personalities and opportunities.  I can't image a more interesting place to live or to work. 

For us though, the real story involves the people who will live in the building who've come through rough, challenging times. 

People like Sharon Tillis.  Take a moment and read her moving story here on the CityWalkTalk blog. 

I'm eager to meet Sharon.  I know she will be a good neighbor.

You and/or your group can furnish a home for a homeless person

People frequently ask me, "Larry, what can I/we do to help a homeless person?" 

Or, "What can I/we do to make a real difference in the life of a 'poor' person?"

Often, folks are looking for up close and personal moments, times that are very difficult to "arrange" without the loss of dignity or authenticity. 

Almost universally, though, those who ask about what they can do, really mean it. 

People want to do something.  They seek tangible involvement.  They want to look back and be able to say, at a minimum, "I did it!"

Defining the "it" is the challenge!

Well, here is something you, your family (possibly as part of an alternative Christmas giving approach), your business, your civic club, your Sunday School or Sabbath School class, your fraternity or sorority can actually do:  furnish one of the apartments set aside at CityWalk @Akard, our new building located at 511 N. Akard in Downtown Dallas.

Above you'll see a visual of the furniture for a typical studio apartment floor plan.  In addition, with my plan you'll also be furnishing the basics for cooking, cleaning and just living in a new place. 

The cost to completely outfit a unit with everything a person will need to set up housekeeping? 

$3,700.00.

Interested in putting your name on a unit? 

Email me at ljames@CentralDallasMinistries.org.

So, what's to be in my back yard?

Now, here's an interesting alternative to the oft-heard, "NIMBY"--not in my back yard!

Any neighborhood, true believers out there???

Our latest E-magazine

Check out Central Dallas Ministries' latest e-magazine here.

Reactions welcome!

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Numbers and the Texas Housing Trust Fund

Since first posting on Senator Royce West's proposed legislation (SB 950) that would impose a small ($20 maximum) recording fee on all real estate transactions in Texas as a means of beefing up the state's Housing Trust Fund, I've received several inquiries and criticisms about the actual amount of revenue that the plan would produce.

My first post on the subject estimated $30 million annually to grow the fund that would benefit housing production for our poorest citizens. A number of people called my numbers "funny," inaccurate and flat bogus!

To clarify, the estimate is based on work from two sources.

First, the Texas Comptroller of Public Accounts provided the Legislative Budget Board the following estimates of new income to be collected from the proposed recording fee by budget years:

2010 $25,506,000
2011 $31,250,000
2012 $31,906,000
2013 $32,544,000
2014 $33,195,000

Second, the Texas Department of Housing and Community Affairs provided a more conservative estimate of what might be expected from the new plan. They determined that the state would realize approximately $24 million annually.

Take your pick. The impact of Senator West's solid plan will be substantial and would provide a relatively painless plan to grow this much needed fund.

Read more about this issue in the Op-Ed essay published by The Dallas Morning News last week.

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