Government’s deafness on affordable housing

Despite the hand-wringing, pious statements, sympathy and woeful admissions that a lack of affordable housing is a serious problem, government – fulfilling Nixon’s image of it as a “helpless, pitiful giant”, is largely throwing its hands in the air while pleading poverty. The shame of it is that there are solutions at hand but our elected representatives refuse to employ them.

Everyone agrees that money is at the core of the problem; the disagreement appears to be how to solve the money problem. Ever since redevelopment funds disappeared government seems helpless to replace the revenue necessary to facilitate the creation of affordable housing. We say “seems helpless” because government, in fact, has a number of options at its disposal. We’ve enumerated these options in several past editorials, and we’ll continue to do so until government pays attention; here they are again:

1. Raise the TOT (Transient Occupancy Tax) 2% (both city and county) and place those revenues in an affordable housing fund for land purchases, buyer subsidies or non-profit developer assistance.
2. Dramatically increase commercial “housing impact fees” on new development and add those revenues to the affordable housing fund.
3. Create an affordable housing “trust fund” to which donations are tax-deductible, and use those revenues to facilitate the creation of housing.
4. Look into the ramifications of increasing the Real Estate Transfer Tax paid upon the sale of property, and if increased, place those revenues into the affordable housing fund.

These four suggestions alone would produce millions of dollars in revenue, not enough to fully solve the housing problem, but enough to give its creation a boost. It would be, at least, a beginning.

Government needs to do more than just talk about affordable housing, it needs to do something and it needs to do something quickly. The long term health of our economy depends upon having adequate local housing for workers. A well-balanced community includes citizens at a variety of income levels. Making sure the people who work in the City and Valley can live in the City and Valley is simply right and ethically sound.

And yes, we plan to keep harping on this topic until we have evidence that government is listening.

The SUN Editorial Board