Ellen Carlson’s Post

📣 Support Affordable Housing Initiatives in our Community 🏡 👀Did you know that in our city, the average homeowner pays $5,340 per month, which is 87.8% of income, and the average rent payment is $2,414, which is 39.64% of income? 📈 🤯 Imagine struggling to make ends meet because most of your paycheck goes towards housing. This is the reality for many families in our city. It's time to change this reality! The lack of affordable housing affects us all. Affordable housing is essential for creating strong and equitable communities. It allows families to thrive, children to have access to better schools, and businesses to grow. Together we can contact our local representatives and demand policies that promote affordable housing. Join us in demanding concrete solutions ✍ . Share your thoughts 💭 and this post to raise awareness. Affordable housing is a right, not a privilege! Together we can build a fairer future.  This campaign is part of the pilot Policy Fellowship program of Newcomer Women's Services Toronto.  #CommunityVoices #HousingAffordability #CommunityDevelopment #PublicPolicies #HousingForAll Sources: https://lnkd.in/gfnpBeEX https://lnkd.in/gWEhdW99

We're excited to share our submission to the Everybody’s Home led People's Commission to the Housing Crisis. Our submission covers three main areas: 1. Broad upzoning’s effect on social housing 2. Community consultation reform 3. Renter democratic deficit in local democracy 1 | UPZONING NECESSARY BUT NOT SUFFICENT • Broad upzoning is necessary but not sufficient for solving housing affordability. It lays the foundations for more supply of both market-rate and social housing. • Research from New Zealand highlights how upzoning help the state housing agencies build more homes on their existing land. • Social housing projects need to be protected from third-party appeals due to the abuse of these appeals by local NIMBYs. 2 | EXCLUSIONARY CONSULTATION • Community consultation processes are often unrepresentative, privileging voices of older homeowners over renters and young families. • A recent example of exclusionary consultation practices comes from Ku-Ring-Gai Council. Renters make up 20% of the local community—whilst they only made up 4% of the respondents. • We need to transition towards representative consultation methods to avoid bias. 3 | FEUDAL LOCAL DEMOCRACY • Small local councils reflect historic communities rather than current wider metropolitan landscapes. • This disenfranchises people wanting to move into an area from having a voice. • Homeowner-dominated councils often lead backlash against social housing projects. • We recommend amalgamating local councils into metropolitan-wide governments.

September 4: Solutions for Making Madison’s Housing Market More Affordable --submitted by Sharyn Alden   On September 4, Rotarians heard from Matt Wachter, Director of the City of Madison’s Department of Planning, Community, and Economic Development, and Nicole Solheim Vice President of Development for Cinnaire, a nonprofit Community Development Financial Institution (CDFI) about challenges behind affordable housing. The City of Madison has been growing at about 1 percent a year since World War II. In 2021, the demand for affordable housing shot up due, in part, to younger renters with employers like Epic. Construction couldn’t keep up with demand. Coupled with extremely low employment throughout the city, it became apparent that demand was outstripping supply. Wachter noted that since 30 percent of income goes into housing costs, about half of renters in Madison couldn’t afford housing. This significant problem needed to be solved. Over the past 10 years, the city has allocated more money into increasing affordable housing choices. One interesting option is the ‘downtown height bonus” for constructing buildings up to 116 feet in height as long as affordable housing is part of the plan. If you missed our meeting this week, you can watch it here: https://lnkd.in/gWcQFvnu.

Terwilliger Center Advisory Committee members Henry Cisneros and Steve Stivers recently penned an excellent op-ed for Newsweek. The piece explores the unique opportunity before Congress and the administration to leverage previously appropriated funds to create a demonstration program aimed at streamlining the construction of affordable housing. The pressing need for such initiatives cannot be overstated. While estimates vary, the United States has underbuilt housing by millions of units over the past 15 years. This shortage has led to a significant rise in housing costs.    The proposed demonstration program prioritizes responsible deregulation, fostering public-private partnerships, and increasing access to affordable housing in opportunity-rich neighborhoods. Find out more: https://lnkd.in/eztVd3WH  

Over 301,000 lower-income households in Jacksonville are spending more than 46% of their income on rent and utilities. To provide adequate affordable housing, the city will need $1.3 billion in funding to meet demand. Addressing affordable housing in Jacksonville requires a unified effort between privatized affordable housing companies like PadSplit, nonprofit housing organizations, and publicly funded initiatives. History has proven that these strategic private-public partnerships have paved the way for some of Jacksonville’s greatest achievements. We now have a once in a generation opportunity as a city to have a lasting, positive impact on affordable housing. Innovative solutions like updating zoning laws or implementing a lodging license process to create opportunities for collaboration to solve the housing crisis. PadSplit is leading the way in providing a scalable solution, but we can achieve even more when public and private sectors unite with local community organizations. The time is now time to work together for sustainable, equitable housing solutions in Jacksonville. Thank you Jacksonville.com and The Florida Times Union for the opportunity to be a guest columnist! https://lnkd.in/evz-mc-t

Last Friday, I attended a thought-provoking research launch on community-led housing that aimed to influence action, not just document findings. My personal takeaways: 1. The often-overlooked contribution of Black and minority ethnic communities to England's affordable housing movement is significant. From the Windrush generation's role to cooperatives in the 1980s and the emergence of community land trusts in the 2000s, their impact has been foundational yet under-recognized. 2. Community-led housing, rooted in civil rights and social action, delivers beyond just affordable homes. Evidence shows it strengthens community cohesion, reduces loneliness, and empowers residents to have a meaningful voice in their housing future. 3. While the sector flourished with funding in the 70s and 80s, today's landscape presents new challenges. The closure of the Community Housing Fund (established 2016) has created significant hurdles for new initiatives. 4. Systemic inequalities persist, often perpetuated by the very institutions meant to drive change. The research emphasizes the urgent need to diversify leadership and participation in community-led housing, beginning with comprehensive data collection. As Henri Baptiste noted at the launch, true transformation requires both the "gift" (capability) and the "will" (desire) to enable change. Too often, institutions possess the former but lack the latter. At Pathway Fund, we are applying these insights to the development of our wholesale investment and community engagement strategies. Want to dive deeper? Check out the full report and executive summary published by Leeds Community Homes Ltd and the research team (links in comments). I'd love to hear your thoughts on the future of community-led housing. Claude Hendrickson MBE, Pathway Housing Solutions, Nationwide Foundation #CommunityLedHousing #HousingEquity #SocialInclusion #ResearchInsights #BlackHistoryInHousing

Our President and CEO, Tami Bohannon, was recently featured in a KJZZ article discussing the challenges older adults face with Arizona’s limited affordable housing. As she shared, "We have 24 affordable housing communities throughout the state of Arizona, about 998 units. So every night, over 1,000 older adults have a place to call home." Here at FSL, we're dedicated to being part of the solution by providing affordable housing and essential support services. Her insights are a powerful reminder of why this work is so important. 👉 Read more in the full article: https://lnkd.in/guZSDwHd #AffordableHousing #FSL #CommunitySupport #SeniorHousing #HousingCrisis

Henry Cisneros and Steve Stivers take notice! Veteran Housing Corp applauds all efforts to build affordable housing but would challenge the US Congress and every local, state, and federal housing agency or affordable housing developer to do better in 2024 and beyond. Veteran Housing Corp demands permanent affordability for all projects receiving government funding, subsidies, tax credits, or other incentives! Veteran Housing Corp demands transparency and every local, state, and federal government agency and other stakeholders MUST provide answers to questions about the housing projects that are built with government funding, subsidies, tax credits, or incentives, including the following: 1. How much funding, federal tax credits, or government benefits or incentives from all government sources did the projects receive? 2. What is the affordability period for each project? 3. What guarantees exist that tenants will not be displaced after the "affordability period expires? Every local, state, and federal housing authority and affordable or workforce housing stakeholder should adopt the State of Vermont's "permanent affordability" policy as a model for all future government funded or subsidized housing projects or developments, no exceptions!  https://lnkd.in/eFEUC8c8 Additionally, local, state and federal housing agencies should look to the Helsinki, FINLAND MODEL of ending homelessness by providing affordable housing for all 'It’s a miracle': Helsinki's radical solution to homelessness https://lnkd.in/er9HZSQU U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development AGREES THAT adopting FINLAND'S MODEL OF ERADICATING HOMELESSNESS may be of great value to resolving the affordable housing and homelessness crises in America https://lnkd.in/gkSZWYRU

I like this opinion piece, especially this suggestion, “Such a demonstration program would be launched in eight to 10 geographically diverse communities, selected through a multi-agency "notice of funding availability." When choosing communities, agencies would prioritize those demonstrating a significant need for more affordable homes and anticipating both job and population growth from recent federal investments. Communities that receive funding would commit to removing local regulatory barriers—such as exclusionary land use and zoning regulations, environmental impact reviews, and parking minimums—that can add to construction timelines and project costs. In turn, the federal agencies involved would streamline federal regulations that impair the swift construction of affordable housing, while maintaining those needed to ensure safety, fair housing, and accountability.” It can work. We had this opportunity as part of the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development when the City of Rockford Illinois was a SC2 community, but we squandered it and got too mired down in working to kill a project, vs recognizing the need to change the systems of housing. #BeTheChange #DataMatters #ResearchBased

Thank you Urban Institute for putting together this brief on housing decommodification. It is vital that we understand the roots of the housing crisis in order to address it. The policies that allow housing to serve first as an investment and second as a place to live must be addressed, otherwise housing will remain out of reach for far too many. We are living in the aftermath of both the 2008 financial crisis, which allowed investors to swoop in to claim large swaths of the housing market, as well as the public health emergency from COVID-19, after which we've seen massive increases in rental pricing. This follows decades or disinvestment from public housing and legislation that requires the number of public housing units stay the same as it was in the 1990s! (Faircloth Amendment) While creating more housing stock is important to meet the demand, it is too slow to be the only solution. Viewing housing as a human right, and acting accordingly by taking more of existing housing stock out of the traditional economic structure, is a way for us to make more housing affordable now. We need to start shifting the narrative and talk more about how we can implement social housing, tenant owned communities, and community land trusts to address the housing crisis. A better future is possible! https://lnkd.in/grSDTUQj