BREAD Action
Meeting
May 21, 2001
Going the Distance!
Excerpt of Father Stan
Benecki's Action Meeting Presentation
The BREAD
Organization formed its Affordable Housing and Community Redevelopment
Committee in December of 1998 and immediately began an intensive program
of research into the affordable housing crisis that has plagued our
community. One of the earliest meetings was with county commissioner
Dewey Stokes. We have repeatedly met with Commissioner Stokes over the
past two years as well as on a couple of occasions with Commissioner
Shoemaker. And most recently, we have had a series of meetings with
newly elected commissioner Kilroy. The County Commissioners are familiar
with the dimensions of the problem. Much of the data about the
affordable housing shortage comes from county documents. They are also
familiar with what BREAD has proposed. As a matter of fact, Commissioner
Stokes was present with 1700 other concerned citizens at our March 27,
2000 action meeting with Mayor Coleman where the mayor pledged a 20
million dollar down payment on BREAD’s goal of a 50 million dollar
city contribution and promised to work with BREAD to, and I quote,
“seek more Trust Fund resources in our community to help meet your
goal of 50 million dollars.” Commissioner Stokes was present as well
at our May 16, 1999 action meeting with Mayor Lashutka at which the
Jubilee Housing Plan was launched. There are no surprises tonight about
what BREAD has discovered about our community nor about what BREAD is
seeking for our community.
There is a dramatic shortage of low to moderate income housing in
Franklin county:
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More than 76,000 low
income families in Franklin County are housing cost burdened, which
means that they pay more than a third of their income for housing.
And the problem runs deep: of these, over 43,000 pay more than 50%
of their income for housing.
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There is only one
affordable rental unit in central Ohio for every two extremely low
income renter households.
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The federal government
has cut its funding for low-income housing from $85 billion in 1977
to $16 billion in 1997 (in 1997 dollars).
The low income people who desperately need a hand up into decent
affordable housing are not to be stigmatized as those who won’t work.
More and more working people are being shut out of our local housing
market:
A 1998 survey by the
U. S. Department of Labor in the Columbus Metropolitan Area shows that
there are 338 occupations in our community where
average annual wages are less than 60% of area median family income.
These occupations represent a minimum employment of more than 500,000 people. They are people most of us see everyday: restaurant
servers, taxi drivers, cashiers, parking lot attendants, child care
workers, funeral attendants, file clerks, receptionists, bank tellers,
janitors, butchers, radio & television announcers, medical and legal
secretaries, typists, delivery truck drivers, television camera
operators, travel agents, barbers, court clerks, dental assistants,
roofers, jewelers, correction officers, plasterers, title searchers,
teachers, mechanics, and welfare interviewers, just to name a few.
When over two
years ago BREAD discovered the magnitude of the affordable housing
shortage, it proposed a joint Columbus and Franklin County Affordable
Housing Trust Fund as part of its Jubilee Housing Plan, so that our
community might take a significant step in solving this crisis. It
challenged the City and County to together contribute 90 million dollars
to such a fund.
In February
of this year, the Columbus City Council responded to this challenge by
passing Mayor Coleman’s Affordable Housing Trust Fund legislation,
along with a guarantee that at least one-half of the Trust Fund
resources would benefit people at or below 60% of median family income.
BREAD is excited about that effort and indeed has recognized the Mayor
this evening for his pioneering leadership.
In our two
years of talks with County officials, we began by suggesting that the
real estate title transfer fee or conveyance fee, currently $1 per
thousand dollars of the sale price and the lowest such fee in the state,
be raised by $2 per thousand and the resulting revenue increase be
dedicated to an affordable housing trust fund. Using historical data,
that increase would have generated over 8 million dollars a year.
There was
great resistance from Commissioner Stokes and opposition expressed by
the real estate community to an increase of that size. So BREAD adjusted
its stance to seek a $1 per thousand increase. We met the other side
half way. Even in the face of this compromise, resistance remained
strong to any increase at all. Then a January 4, 2001 Dispatch news
story reported that the County had ended the year 2000 with a $67
million dollar surplus carryover, while approving a $1.1 billion budget
for 2001, a nearly 10% increase!
In the face
of the County’s “robust financial health,” BREAD no longer saw a
need to increase the conveyance fee, but instead suggests that an
amount equal to the revenues from the existing $1 per thousand
fee be dedicated to an affordable housing trust fund. That would amount
to over $4 million a year.
Up until
quite recently County officials had insisted strongly that if the county
entered the affordable housing trust fund arena, it would be in a
separate fund over which the County Commission would retain ultimate
control. But county and city officials announced just four days ago that
the County would contribute with the City to a joint trust fund. This is
great news, news to celebrate. Unfortunately, there remains a fly in the
ointment. As reported in that same story, the County seems to be
considering a contribution of only 1 million dollars.
To try to get
a reasonable estimate of the dollar magnitude of the affordable
housing crisis, BREAD sought the assistance of local affordable housing
professionals. Those experts suggested that it would take a 2000 dollar
per year subsidy to make their present housing affordable to the 43,000
low income Franklin County families who now pay more than 50% of their
income for housing. That comes to 86 million dollars, a year.
There are
more than 13,000 substandard housing units in Franklin County reported
in the latest Consolidated Plan as suitable for rehabilitation. The
professionals we consulted suggested that conservatively it would take
20,000 dollars per unit, or 260 million dollars over a 15-year
rehabilitation cycle, or 17.3 million dollars a year, to bring the
housing up to code. Combining these measures of two separate aspects of
the problem means that there is a 103 million dollar annual unmet
housing need Franklin County.
One million
dollars out of a 1.1 billion dollar budget is simply not enough to
scratch the surface. Nine hundredths of one percent of the County’s
annual budget is not enough to give even hope of decent,
affordable housing to working families in Franklin County One million
dollars is not enough not because the money is there
(although it is!) but because the crushing affordable housing problem is
here.
Affordable housing is also a
problem with faces we recognize, faces of people who are here tonight.
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