New Orleans Hurt by Acute Rental Shortage

By SUSAN SAULNY

Published: December 3, 2007

NEW ORLEANS, Dec. 2 — Inside trailer No. 27 here at the A. L. Davis Playground, where the government set up a camp last year for displaced residents of Hurricane Katrina, Tracy Bernard’s meager possessions are all packed up, even though she has nowhere to go.

About a month ago, workers for the Federal Emergency Management Agency swept through her trailer park, a bleak tableau of housing of the last resort, taping eviction notices on the flimsy aluminum doors. Thousands of other trailer residents across Louisiana were informed by FEMA last week that they too would be evicted in the next six months.

But few of them will be able to return to the city from which they were flooded out 27 months ago.

More than two years after Hurricane Katrina, New Orleans is suffering from an acute shortage of housing that has nearly doubled the cost of rental units in the city, threatening the recovery of the region and the well-being of many residents who decided to return against the odds. Before the storm, more than half of the city’s population rented housing. Yet official attention to help revive the shattered rental home and apartment market has been scant.

In some core middle- and lower-income areas, blighted dwellings stretch for blocks on end, and the city has been slow to come up with ideas for what to do with those that have been abandoned. Last week, the city housing authority approved the demolition of 4,000 public housing units at five projects damaged by the storm. In their place, the authority plans to build mixed-income projects, large parts of which will not be affordable to previous residents.

Although repairs are being made and more housing is available now than a year ago, demand is still outpacing supply.

Ms. Bernard, a veteran worker for the local public transportation agency who has to move by Monday, has been scouring the city for a place to rent. Properties in her price range, if they exist at all, routinely come without finished walls or stoves. In New Orleans, decent affordable housing remains a casualty of the storm.

“A lot of the city is still boarded up,” said Ms. Bernard, who rented a one-bedroom house in eastern New Orleans for $300 a month before Hurricane Katrina. “Where are we supposed to go?”

One of the more striking changes to appear lately in New Orleans is the highly visible number of homeless men and women living under bridges and in parks. Social service groups say about 12,000 homeless people are living in the city, about double the number before the storm.

The sense of an impending housing crisis grew stronger last week with FEMA’s announcement on Wednesday that it would close all the trailer camps it runs for victims of the 2005 hurricanes on varying schedules by the end of May. More than 900 families are living in FEMA trailer parks around the city.

The agency said its action was intended to hasten the move of residents to permanent housing from trailers. It said counselors would assist every resident in the transition. “We’re with them every step of the way,” Diane L. W. Perry, a FEMA spokeswoman, said Wednesday.

But in interviews at trailer parks last week, a reporter found that some residents had not spoken with a caseworker in weeks, even though they were scheduled to be evicted within days.

“The caseworker is very hard to get in touch with,” said Martin Blossom, a pizza cook who lives in a trailer and who is not sure where he will move in the next few days. “I haven’t talked with the caseworker for two weeks.”

Others said the information they got from caseworkers was useless. Ramona Jones said her counselor gave her several listings, but some of the apartments were not ready for habitation by her eviction date — or they were, in her words, “rat holes.” Landlords are asking $1,100 a month or more. Though Ms. Jones and others are eligible for financial assistance to help pay the high rents, many are reluctant, knowing that, like the trailers, the assistance could disappear, leaving them stranded with huge bills.

“We done been through so much with FEMA till where it’s easy for the federal government to back out on their word,” Ms. Jones, a factory worker, said. “They did it before. Everybody’s looking at, ‘What if?’ ”

Time has already run out for some. Ms. Bernard, 40, and her two daughters got the final word on Friday that they were evicted, cast out of the only home they have had since the storm to whereabouts unknown. And they were not alone.

“I don’t know what’s going to become of us,” said Tiffany Farbe, who lives in a trailer park near the Mississippi River in the Uptown part of New Orleans with her son and mother. “They said get out. I’ve explained to them over and over again our situation. FEMA just makes you feel like dirt.”

The agency objects to that characterization, and says it is only trying to help.

“It’s the next step in the recovery,” said Ronnie Simpson, a FEMA spokesman. “It’s the individual’s responsibility to go out and find what’s suitable for them.”

While the agency provides listings, Mr. Simpson said it did not necessarily endorse the properties or know much about them beyond their locations and the basics, such as the number of bedrooms.

“We know it’s a tough decision, and that’s not lost on us,” he said, but “more and more housing becomes available every day, that’s a fact. The sooner you begin the process, the better. You want to start early and pick what’s right for your family.” He added: “We’re very sensitive to the fact that this isn’t an easy move. But it’s a necessary move.”

Before the hurricane, housing advocates estimated there were about 6,300 homeless people in New Orleans and neighboring Jefferson Parish. Today, the count is 12,000 and growing. Experts said it was hard to ignore the link between the housing situation and homelessness.

“FEMA and the federal bureaucracy seem oblivious to the fact that virtually no new affordable rental housing has yet appeared in New Orleans to replace what was lost,” said Martha J. Kegel, executive director of Unity of Greater New Orleans, a group of 60 agencies that house and feed the homeless. “It will take a long time for enough replacement affordable housing to be built. To withdraw housing assistance to the neediest people is a shirking of federal responsibility for the design failure of the federal levees in New Orleans, which was the cause of most of the destruction of affordable housing here.”

In the past several months, a homeless encampment has sprung up on the steps of City Hall — partly because it is a safe open space and partly because it is a political statement. Tents and sleeping bags are aligned in rows. The crowd of hundreds is a mix of young and old, white and black.

Michael Reeves, 45, sleeps on the grass outside City Hall. He used to rent a one-bedroom in the Ninth Ward for $350 before the storm. “Ain’t nothing left but the ground,” he said. “We didn’t have nowhere to go so we came here.”

Not everyone in the park is a native of New Orleans. Some people came here after the storm to do construction work without realizing they would not be able to find a place to live. Some sleep on-site in unfinished buildings; others have taken up residence in abandoned buildings or in parks.

Ken Cimino, 48, sleeps outside of City Hall, too. He does odd jobs at the Superdome, mostly picking up trash after Saints football games. Mr. Cimino drove to New Orleans recently from New Haven, Conn.

“I came here for construction work, and found the situation wasn’t quite what I expected,” he said. “I thought I’d live out of my car for a few weeks until I found a place. Used up my savings. I just got caught off balance.”

Now, Mr. Cimino says he cannot afford to drive back to Connecticut. He is just one of many laborers who find themselves without options.

Ms. Bernard said she might end up on a friend’s mother’s couch until she wears out her welcome. Then what?

“I know I’m going to find something,” she said. “I have faith. I know God’s going to work something out for us.”

Beyond the picket fence

Dec 6th 2007 | LAKE FOREST
From The Economist print edition

The debate over affordable housing in America's suburbs

CHICAGO'S northern suburbs are among America's most idyllic. None is grander than Lake Forest, where the average home costs over $1m. But the suburb, by definition unaffordable, is building something unusual: affordable housing. A new development in Lake Forest will include a few cheaper homes, as required by a new town ordinance.

The debate over low-cost housing has moved well beyond the inner city. America's suburbs have changed. No longer the province of the affluent and the middle-class, they are home to an increasing share of new immigrants and poor (in 2005 the suburban poor outnumbered their urban counterparts). This new reality, combined with a growing distaste for ever-extending sprawl, long commutes, traffic jams and the pollution they bring, is driving efforts to build cheaper housing nearer to jobs in existing suburbs. The subprime mortgage mess has driven the trend, too.

However, regulatory barriers are getting in the way. Zoning policies in most of America tend to favour low-density districts with single-family houses. Developers face a host of further obstacles, from long approval periods to fees that raise money for parks, infrastructure and education. (Residents fear especially that dense projects overburden schools, though the Urban Land Institute, a think-tank based in Washington, DC, points to studies that dispute this.) Economists such as Harvard's Edward Glaeser argue that restrictive land regulations have helped drive up house prices. Of course, that is something that makes home-owners happy.

Rules that limit building are still most common in the north-east and Midwest, according to a study published last year by the Brookings Institution, another Washington think-tank, though efforts to promote affordable housing have increased. One of the oldest and most controversial policies is in Massachusetts, where developers can override local zoning in towns where less than 10% of housing qualifies as affordable.

In greater Chicago there is a push to ease old rules to accommodate new demand. The share of Hispanics, who have a lower median income than the general population, is projected to grow from 17% in 2000 to 33% in 2030, mainly in the suburbs, according to a report by the regional mayors' caucus and Chicago Metropolis 2020, a civic group. The share of elderly is also expected to rise, from 11% to 17%. Where they will live is unclear, but it is a fair bet that big new single-family homes will not suffice. Groups such as Metropolis 2020 and the Metropolitan Planning Council are driving a two-pronged effort. One goal is to prevent older houses from being torn down. The other is to allow a diverse stock of homes to be built near transport hubs and employment centres, such as the northern suburbs.

Highland Park, a suburb with an average home price of almost $800,000, has served as a model. Measures to boost cheaper housing include density bonuses for builders, an ordinance requiring more affordable housing to be built as part of any new development, a trust to assemble land for development and a state programme through which the town and employers help workers buy homes near their jobs. Some nearby suburbs have taken note. (In a region prone to snow, it is not good if teachers live an hour away.)

The state, meanwhile, is doing its bit. One Illinois law requires wealthy towns to create affordable housing plans; another measure proposes to reward school districts when dense, cheaper projects are built within their borders. A new agency is hard at work creating a regional plan for housing and transport in the Chicago area. Still, zoning is ultimately controlled by municipalities—and greater Chicago alone has 272 of them. Change will be easier in some than in others.

Low Rent High Tech

Affordable housing advocates build green and inspire innovation

The Viking Terrace apartment complex in Worthington, Minnesota, is outwardly unremarkable. Its long, two- and three-story buildings, with their banal palette of tans and beiges, blend seamlessly into a neighborhood of cozy ramblers set on well-tended lawns. On the complex’s playground, next to a field of soybeans, kids giggle their way down slides as their mothers keep watch from shaded picnic tables. Residents file in and out of their apartments on their way to work or the nearby shopping centers, some stopping in the administrative office for a quick hello.

What makes Viking Terrace remarkable is what you don’t see. There are no stereotypical signs of “income restricted” housing; no crumbling structures, cracked sidewalks, or unsightly graffiti. And there are no clues that this once decrepit ’70s-era complex has been reinvented as an ecofriendly development. Geothermal units that draw the earth’s natural heat or coolness from some 200 feet underground are hidden below blankets of grass. Heavy-duty, superinsulated panes look like run-of-the-mill windows. A carefully planned ventilation system, hidden in the walls, keeps moisture in check.

Viking Terrace’s green upgrades, which were completed last summer, offer its melting pot of low-income and formerly homeless residents access to a world commonly reserved for companies and individuals with the financial means to go green. Affordable housing developments like this one are springing up across the country, showing that green homes can and should be built for everyone, not just because they’re good for the environment, but also because they’re healthier, more comfortable, and—yes—more affordable.

Popular conceptions of green building peg the movement as the domain of hippies or hipsters. A “green” house is either an off-the-grid backwoods cabin built by an aging boomer who organically grows his own out back, or else a futuristic, airy rectangle inhabited by a thirtysomething yuppie with the disposable income to spend on a solar-powered iPod. In both cases, living green comes across as a lifestyle whose extra costs are worth paying for the sake of the earth, not to mention one’s own conscience.

But if you ask the people at Viking Terrace what green building has meant to them, you’ll get answers that don’t seem particularly ecoconscious.

“In the wintertime now, you can get warm and stay warm,” says Dave Cummings, a physical education and health teacher and 14-year resident. Cold winds don’t blow through the windows anymore, and neither does dust. The place is simply cleaner, he says, and the air is healthier.

Del and Kathy Konakowitz, who have been managing the property for 14 years, talk about maintenance calls. These days, they’re more likely to hear from a resident who needs a refresher on how to work a dual-flush toilet than from someone whose air-conditioning is busted.

Jorge Lopez, senior project manager for Southwest Minnesota Housing Partnership, the nonprofit developer of Viking Terrace, marvels at the new gabled metal roof. “It was leakage after leakage after leakage,” he recalls of the previous flat roof. “This roof, we know it’s going to last 50 years.”

Then there are the lower utility bills. Everyone likes those.

“Folks who have less money aren’t less concerned about the environment, but their concerns are practical,” says Ed Connelly, the president of New Ecology Inc., a Massachusetts nonprofit that promotes affordable sustainable development. “Health, costs, comfort . . . those are very important, powerful environmental issues.”

They’re also tangible personal issues that have the potential to appeal beyond the save-the-earth contingent. What’s more, addressing one of those issues often helps with the others.

Take, for example, air ventilation, says Connelly. Making sure that ducts are properly sealed lowers heating bills by saving energy. It also helps keep out the bugs and other unwelcome critters that can cause asthma and allergy flare-ups. Similarly, using building materials free from formaldehyde, which is in various finishes and paneling, and from other volatile organic compounds, like those found in many paints, is good for both the environment and the health of residents.

It’s not surprising that advocates of affordable housing are the ones bringing such synergies to the fore. People who are surviving on low incomes are at a far greater risk than others of suffering from asthma and other serious, costly respiratory ailments. And unexpected medical bills can wipe out the budget of a family that’s living from paycheck to paycheck.

You can find the rest of article here

The Planning Tax: The Case against Regional Growth-Management Planning

by Randal O'Toole

Regional growth-management planning makes housing unaffordable and contributes to a business-unfriendly environment that slows economic growth. The high housing prices caused by growth-management planning were an essential element of the housing bubble that has recently shaken our economy: for the most part, this bubble was limited to urban regions with growth-management planning.

In 2006, the price of a median home in the 10 states that have passed laws requiring local governments to do growth-management planning was five times the median family income in those states. At that price, a median family devoting 31 percent of its income (the maximum allowed for FHA-insured loans) to a mortgage at 6 percent, with a 10 percent down payment, could not pay off the mortgage on a median home in less than 59 years. In contrast, a median home in the 22 states that have no growth-management laws or institutions cost only 2.7 times the median family income. This meant a family could pay off a home in just 12.5 years.

Growth-management tools such as urban-growth boundaries, adequate-public-facilities ordinances, and growth limits all drive up the cost of housing by artificially restricting the amount of land available or the number of permits granted for home construction. On average, homebuyers in 2006 had to pay $130,000 more for every home sold in states with mandatory growth-management planning than they would have had to pay if home price-to-income ratios were less than 3. This is, in effect, a planning tax that increases the costs of retail, commercial, and industrial developments as well as housing.

The key to keeping housing affordable is the presence of large amounts of relatively unregulated vacant land that can be developed for housing and other purposes. The availability of such low-cost land encourages cities to keep housing affordable within their boundaries. But when state or other planning institutions allow cities to gain control over the rate of development of rural areas, they lose this incentive, and housing quickly becomes unaffordable. States with growth-management laws should repeal them, and other states should avoid passing them.

A New Push for Affordability

By VALERIE COTSALAS

Published: December 9, 2007

OFFICIALS from seven counties in southern New York State want to give a total of $87.5 million to local towns and villages as an incentive to build more housing affordable to young professionals — who by many calculations are leaving Long Island and other counties at high rates.

Steve Levy, the Suffolk County executive, who formed the coalition with county supervisors from Suffolk, Dutchess, Orange, Putnam, Rockland and Westchester, announced the group’s proposal for state legislation here late last month.

The law, if enacted, would give cash to local governments based on the number of affordable homes or units built over the next five years. It would also reimburse local schools for taking on any extra students introduced by new affordable development, and provide zero-interest infrastructure loans for improvements like road paving or sewer expansion.

Yet critics of the proposal say it fails to address the real reason that affordable housing isn’t being built: local opposition to just the kinds of developments most often proposed, in which homes are clustered into attached two-family units or multistoried buildings.

“The reason we don’t have affordable housing on Long Island is that the local zoning authorities have not permitted it,” said Matthew Crosson, president of the Long Island Association, the island’s largest nonprofit business and civic organization. “Incentives alone are not enough to change the local dynamic.”

The Long Island Association had supported a bill proposed in 2003 by Thomas DiNapoli, a former state assemblyman who is now the state comptroller, and Michael Balboni, a former state senator who is now the state homeland security director.

That bill would have required towns and villages to pass laws dictating that builders include a percentage of units below market rates, in exchange for the right to add more floors, or increase the number of units buildable on an acre of land. Such laws are called inclusionary zoning.

It has been opposed locally and is stalled the Albany Senate — though Mr. Crosson said he was working with State Senator Dean G. Skelos on yet another new bill requiring local governments to provide affordable housing.

Inclusionary zoning would make it easier for local governments to resist opposition and approve projects providing affordable housing, Mr. Crosson points out. “It’s not high-minded,” he said. “It allows local officials to deflect some of the heat. They can say that they are not choosing to do it, the law is making them do it.”

The need is great, according to a study by the association’s chief economist, Pearl Kamer. At least 127,000 affordable homes are needed on Long Island over the next 10 years to stop what is called “the brain drain” of young professionals.

Right now, Mr. Crosson said, the type of housing on Long Island, even in comparison with other nearby suburbs, is steeply tilted toward single-family homes. Only 17 percent is rental apartments. That contrasts with a range of 35 to 40 percent in other New York City suburbs, including Westchester.

Yet not all in the development community see so little to like in Mr. Levy’s proposal.

Not having a mandate written into the law “is good and it’s bad,” said Diana Weir, executive vice president of the Long Island Housing Partnership, a nonprofit housing organization that secures local and state and federal funds to offset new home prices. “The towns that want to build affordable housing will have the incentives to do it,” Ms. Weir said. On the flip side, “those communities that are resistant to affordable housing will continue to resist.”

Some of those might be on Nassau County’s North Shore, known as the Gold Coast, where sprawling homes are nestled among tall trees on big professionally landscaped lots. The high property taxes in those areas also feed highly rated school districts.

“Housing choices dictate more than just where you live,” said Sarah Lansdale, executive director of Sustainable Long Island, a nonprofit planning and housing advocacy organization. “They dictate the quality of education and your life opportunities.”

Sustainable Long Island has been involved in a $60 million revitalization project in downtown New Cassel, a struggling hamlet in the town of Hempstead in Nassau County. The project, being completed with both private and public funds, consists of five complexes of mixed retail development and hundreds of affordable housing units.

For less affluent communities trying to revitalize, the new proposal would help, Ms. Lansdale said. In New Cassel, infrastructure improvements covered by the proposed law could be completed faster and help secure additional funds.

Mr. Levy, the Suffolk supervisor, says the proposal is now in draft form and does not set out a goal for the number of affordable homes that officials hope to build over the next five years.

“We don’t know how much is going to be built” or whether $87.5 million is sufficient to make an affordable dent among seven counties, he said. “If it works,” Mr. Levy added, “we’ll put more money in.”

Columbia: No evictions in expansion

BY FRANK LOMBARDI
DAILY NEWS CITY HALL BUREAU

Thursday, December 13th 2007, 4:00 AM

Columbia University officials testified Wednesday that they won't use eminent domain - or evictions - against residential properties or tenants in its $7billion campus expansion.

But they still left open using the government property-condemnation process against three holdout commercial landowners.

Questioned at a City Council hearing, Robert Kasdin, Columbia's senior executive vice president, asserted, "Under no condition will Columbia University use eminent domain against any residential properties."

And, he added, "We will not use evictions to further our project."

Kasdin and other Columbia officials also said the new 17-acre university complex - with its array of new academic, residential and retail facilities - will have "no gates" and be accessible to its West Harlem neighbors.

The 25-year expansion plan requires rezoning of the area by the City Council, which has the final say in the Uniform Land Use Review Procedure. The Council faces a Jan. 15 technical deadline to act.

Two key subcommittees heard testimony from a parade of Columbia supporters and detractors at a hearing that drew more than 200 spectators. But unlike the out-of-control session last month when the City Planning Commission approved the plan, the Council hearing was kept in tight check by officials.

Still, Columbia President Lee Bollinger drew a murmur of discontent when he said a sense of "trust" had been established with the community.

Also testifying for the expansion was former Mayor David Dinkins, a longtime professor at Columbia.

"I want you to know that I have studied the university's Manhattanville proposal and am convinced that it can and will be a good thing for both the university and its Harlem neighbors," Dinkins said.

Also testifying was Tom DeMott, a leader of the Coalition to Preserve Community, who said Columbia was using its "connection to the politicians" to do an end run around community opposition to the plan.

Still unresolved is a community benefits agreement. A sticking point is Columbia's pledge to create a $20 million revolving loan fund to build or preserve 1,100 units of affordable housing.

flombardi@nydailynews.com

N.O. housing demolition protests gear up

By CAIN BURDEAU, Associated Press Writer Thu Dec 13, 6:49 PM ET

NEW ORLEANS - In normal times, redevelopment of public housing to make way for mixed-income neighborhoods might have gone largely unopposed. But passions are high in hurricane-ravaged New Orleans, where residents are desperate for cheap housing.

The U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development wants to demolish about 4,500 public housing units at four of the city's largest complexes and replace them with mixed-income neighborhoods.

Protesters have marched on Mayor Ray Nagin's home and disrupted City Council proceedings with chants.

At least two protesters apparently occupied one of the buildings scheduled to be bulldozed, draping two handmade banners from the side Thursday. One read, "Reopen now," and the other, "No demolition."

Protesters kept up the pressure with a march at the HUD offices in Washington.

On Thursday, civil rights lawyers also filed an 11th-hour suit in state court after a federal court suit failed to derail the demolition plan.

Protesters were able to temporarily halt crews from demolishing decrepit buildings at the B.W. Cooper housing site on Thursday. They vow to continue disrupting work there and at other sites around the city.

The protesters have won the blessing of one presidential contender, John Edwards.

"There is a housing crisis in New Orleans today — the result of government policies that have failed the people of the Gulf," the Democrat said in a statement this week. "Rents have doubled, families are being evicted from FEMA trailers and now the current administration is trying to make a bad situation worse."

Opponents are suspicious of HUD because the redevelopment plans — following a model used around the country to break up concentrations of poverty — call for a reduction in subsidized housing and allow commercial development on the sites.

Tessua Faulk, a 31-year-old teacher, said she doesn't trust the plans because demolition at New Orleans' St. Thomas development, where she grew up, left some of her old neighbors homeless.

"They were too slick about the whole process, the so-called 'rebuilding,'" Faulk said as she watched the protesters chant "Housing is a human right!" and stare down demolition crews at B.W. Cooper. "It needs to be a two-way street: Residents need to be involved from the beginning, every step of the way," she said.

The St. Thomas redevelopment has been a major source of distrust of housing plans in New Orleans. After it was torn down, a Wal-Mart superstore was built and most of the former residents wound up in other neighborhoods.

Many more demolitions are slated to begin after Saturday.

About 5,100 public housing units were occupied before the storm.

Meanwhile, air-quality tests on government-issued trailers housing thousands of hurricane victims were to begin by next week, nearly two months after the Federal Emergency Management Agency postponed them.

On Nov. 2, CDC scientists were scheduled to start testing FEMA trailers in Mississippi for levels of formaldehyde, a common preservative and embalming fluid found in building materials for manufactured homes.

FEMA postponed the tests, however, saying the agency needed more time to prepare.

Harvey Johnson, FEMA's deputy administrator, disclosed the agency's latest plans for the tests during a hearing Wednesday in Washington before the Senate Homeland Security Committee.

Senators pressed Johnson to explain the delays in testing 500 occupied trailers in Mississippi and Louisiana, where tens of thousands of homes were damaged or destroyed by Hurricane Katrina in August 2005.

"It's taken a long time in part because we have not had this problem before," Johnson said. "This is the first time we've had people be in travel trailers for this length of time — up to two years — in which case some of these symptoms and the impacts on health have become more apparent."

Officials from FEMA and the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention were expected to outline the new testing plans Thursday at news conferences in New Orleans and Washington.

Many trailer occupants are blaming ailments on formaldehyde, which can cause respiratory problems and has been classified as a carcinogen by the International Agency for Research on Cancer.

Bill will require low-cost housing

City Council approved the measure, under which developers must build or fund affordable units.

By Jeff Shields

Inquirer Staff Writer

Developers will be required to build affordable housing as part of every major residential project or contribute money toward that end under legislation City Council passed yesterday.

A divided Council approved Councilman Darrell L. Clarke's inclusionary housing bill by a 12-5 vote, reflecting concerns raised by developers.

The bill is a first for Philadelphia, and it gained the support of the Philadelphia Campaign for Housing Justice, a coalition of housing advocates.

"The passage of the bill is a huge win for low- and moderate-income families struggling with the cost of housing across the city," said Mary Ellis, a leader of the Association of Community Organizations for Reform Now.

Although the law cannot go into effect until Council passes companion legislation offering incentives to builders who must bear the financial burden of the program, developers condemned the requirement as a potential death knell for residential construction.

Developer John Westrum said the uncertainty of what those incentives would be - and how they would affect profitability - could prevent developers from obtaining the financing they need.

"Its passing will have a profound, adverse effect on any developer trying to start any new project over 20 units," Westrum said. "Because the lending institution and lenders don't know what the outcome will be."

Under the legislation, the housing must target families making up to $90,000 a year, or 125 percent of the area's median income. Clarke's revised bill sets aside half of all units for sale or rent to families earning up to 80 percent of the median income. Developers unable to build such units must make payments to the city Housing Trust Fund. Half of that fund targets families making 30 percent or less of the median income.

In its final scheduled meeting of 2007 and of the four-year election cycle, Council also approved:

A bill making it a crime, punishable by up to 90 days in jail and a $1,900 fine, to display symbols of hate - defined as a noose, swastika or burning cross - in a workplace or public space.

Zoning required for a new Youth Study Center - the city's juvenile detention center - in West Philadelphia.

One of two pieces of legislation required for the Fox Chase Cancer Center to begin an $800 million expansion over the next 25 years that includes building on a portion of Burholme Park.

A system to regulate the city's tow-truck industry through a service-rotation list.

A requirement that stores program their cash registers to require a birth date to prevent the sale of spray paint and etching acid to minors, a move that Clarke requested.

A requirement that landlords provide carbon-monoxide detectors in rental units.

State OKs first 75 'Katrina cottages'

La. OKs first 75 'Katrina cottages'

Tuesday, October 30, 2007

By Bill Barrow

Capital bureau

BATON ROUGE -- The state housing board has cleared the way for construction of 75 "Louisiana cottages" at Jackson Barracks, the first site for a long-planned pilot project financed by a $75 million federal grant to develop alternatives to emergency travel trailers.

But the first round of Louisiana cottages, the name given to modular units commonly called "Katrina cottages," will not be available to the general public. They are reserved for civilian and uniformed employees of the state military department, a restriction in a little-noticed agreement forged months ago between the military and the Louisiana Recovery Authority.

Jackson Barracks is headquarters for the Louisiana National Guard.

It remains unclear when any of the other planned 530 cottages will be available to victims of the 2005 hurricanes. Two other sites, in Baton Rouge and Lake Charles, have been approved but await federal environmental inspections before construction can begin.

Mississippi, which was awarded a $281 million grant as part of the same program, started placing residents in June and earlier this month surpassed 200 cottages.

Construction in 30 days?

Louisiana Housing Finance Agency President Milton Bailey said construction could begin at Jackson Barracks in 30 days, provided lingering contract negotiations are completed with builders and a third-party construction monitor.

Maj. Gen. Hunt Downer said the restriction for military employees is necessary because of security restrictions at the 100-acre base, which was inundated with 10 feet of water in post-Katrina flooding. He also said the plan is a vital part of rebuilding the installation and the surrounding 9th Ward in New Orleans.

State Treasurer John Kennedy and other housing agency commissioners said they understood Downer's explanation, but said they were surprised that the detail had not surfaced in previous discussions of the Alternative Housing Pilot Program.

Kennedy pressured officials from the LRA, which originally collected proposals for the federal grant program, into admitting that the military department had an agreement with Gov. Kathleen Blanco's office when the state first submitted its proposal to the Federal Emergency Management Agency.

An Oct. 17, 2006, letter from Downer to LRA Chairman Norman Francis suggests that the terms of Jackson Barracks' participation has long been a matter of public record available to the housing board. "It should be understood that the military department reserves the exclusive right to determine who will occupy such housing," Downer wrote.

The letter is included in the project proposal compiled by the Cypress Group, a consortium that will build the structures, and submitted to FEMA last fall, three months before the federal agency announced the disbursement of $388 million in housing grants to the Gulf Coast states.

Downer said Monday that the new units are key in moving Jackson Barracks back toward the 650 full-time employees it had before the storm, with about 100 living on base. There are about 50 employees working there now, Downer said.

Ben Dupuy, a Cypress spokesman, was less optimistic than Bailey about when construction might begin at the barracks. Dupuy noted that Cypress cannot begin its work until the Louisiana Housing Finance Agency signs the formal agreement with landowners, in this case the military department. "We expect it will take several weeks to assess each site for potential challenges and develop a projected construction timeline."

California hire

The agency also must continue to negotiate Cypress' deals with its construction subcontractor, the Shaw Group. The firm sought approval during Monday's meeting, but board members refused, saying they had only received the proposed document late Friday. The full board authorized two of its members to approve a final version in the coming days.

Board members also balked at a proposed $900,000 deal with a California company that would serve essentially as a third-party monitor of the project. "I don't think you award a $900,000 contract to a California company . . . without giving everyone a shot," Kennedy said, before winning approval to seek bids for the job before the Nov. 14 board meeting.

The firm, Luster National Inc., was already hired without board approval to help negotiate the Louisiana Housing Finance Agency contract with Cypress. After some board members expressed anger over that move by agency staff, they approved paying the outfit $93,000 for its services.

Luster also will be able to bid for the monitoring contract.

Want to Live Where You Work? New National Effort May Help.

Fairfax County Is Test Market for D.C.-Based Housing Center

By Michael Laris

Washington Post Staff Writer
Sunday, October 28, 2007; Page PW05

For years, Pamela Patenaude commuted from her Tysons Corner home to the headquarters of the Department of Housing and Urban Development to get a far-reaching view of the nation's housing problems.

Now the former assistant secretary for community planning and development can just look outside.

Patenaude was lured from her federal government perch to head a new national center to promote the construction of "workforce housing," buzzwords for the quest to build houses and apartments for middle-class families that are generally priced out of wealthy areas such as Fairfax County.

The private-sector effort is targeting three markets -- Florida, Atlanta and the Washington region -- to find, develop and replicate the best ways to increase the availability of affordable housing. Those ideas, in turn, can be used as models for the rest of the country. In this region, Fairfax and Montgomery counties and the District are the focus of the initiative.

"There's no one place to go to see how they work," said Patenaude, director of the ULI Terwilliger Center for Workforce Housing, created as part of the Urban Land Institute, a District-based land-use research group.

The issue of workforce housing can be contentious because of political and philosophical sparring over whether it makes sense to offer government help to people earning what in many parts of the nation would be considered excellent salaries. The target demographic across the country is 60 to 120 percent of the median income. In Fairfax, that means households making $60,191 to $120,382.

The proposals can also spur already-heated debates over development because trying to create more of any kind of housing, even with the noblest of intentions, can anger neighbors concerned about the latest wave of people moving into their neighborhoods.

But the downsides of mass commuting from jobs in Tysons to more affordable housing in Prince William County or Winchester are also great, for both individuals and the environment, advocates say.

"By living most of the last 30 years in Atlanta, I have been acutely aware of the lack of mobility and the problem that presents to workers," said J. Ronald Terwilliger, chairman and chief executive of Trammell Crow Residential, a major builder of apartments and condominiums nationwide. That includes "the physical toll, the emotional toll, the marital toll, obesity."

Terwilliger, who grew up in Arlington, funded the center with a $5 million pledge.

"It's certainly better for society that working people that make [our] lives comfortable be able to live reasonably close to where they work," he said.

The effort, launched this summer, will include endorsing particular development projects as well as pushing for government incentives and streamlined public approval processes. For example, industry experts in Florida affiliated with the new group will help Broward County school officials hire a developer to build housing for teachers.

The goal is to construct 3,500 affordable units in five years across the country, 1,200 in this area.

"We hopefully will be the group that takes the concept of workforce housing and turns it into bricks and mortar," Patenaude said.

"We're moving in that direction. This is happening," said Rodney Lusk, a Fairfax planning commissioner who has worked on the issue.

Last week, the Board of Supervisors approved changes to the county's zoning law that require developers of high-rises to designate at least 12 percent of their residences as reduced-price housing. In exchange, the developer gets to build an extra unit for every one set aside.

Before, high-rise developers were exempted from having to designate units for lower-income individuals, which was already required in many other developments.

"We missed out on the last housing boom," Lusk said. "The intent is that, for the next one, we'll have in place a series . . . [of] requirements and regulations that will allow us to get these much-needed workforce units."

San Diego’s Downtown Has a Sunnier Disposition

FOR Sue and Steve Burkhart, a real estate broker and custom-home builder, the 355-mile trip from their home in Phoenix to their second home in San Diego is well worth it, considering that they usually lose about 30 degrees or more.

They bought a 1,000-square-foot, two-bedroom, two-bath condo in the Alta, a 21-story downtown residential tower. They make the five-hour drive, or take an inexpensive flight, once a month or so in the winter and several times a month in the summer.

“There’s a lot going on: boating, fishing and diving,” Ms. Burkhart said. “But temperature is the No. 1 thing. When it’s 110 or 115 in Phoenix, it’s 80 in San Diego.”

Weather, in fact, is almost everyone’s first reason for buying a second home in San Diego. Midwesterners and Easterners have bought homes to escape the brunt of winter, while Arizonans — dubbed Zonies here — and some desert-dwelling Californians have purchased homes to escape the triple-digit temperatures of summer and bask in the cool ocean breezes.

“Weather is the main reason,” said Russell Valone, president of MarketPointe Realty Advisors. “It’s 75 degrees and sunny most of the year.”

Peter Rodman has a commute similar to the Burkharts’; he travels between his San Diego home and one in Palm Springs. But Mr. Rodman said cooler weather is not the only draw, adding that the image of the city itself has changed.

“Not long ago, downtown San Diego was a Navy town, full of brothels,” he said. “Now it’s a modern city on the water.”

The down-at-the-heels Navy town image was one reason this city was off the radar screen for second-home buyers for so long. A city of nearly 1.3 million, it is home to five Navy and Marine bases with 95,000 uniformed military personnel.

In the last few years, however, San Diego has morphed into one of Southern California’s most desirable places for vacation homes. San Diego has the usual attractions of a major American city, like theater and professional baseball and football teams, parks and its world-famous zoo.

Like other places in Southern California it has beaches, but it also has something remarkable for that region: a thriving and traditional downtown. Buyers from Orange County and Los Angeles have bought second homes to be close to the Gaslamp Quarter, the heart of San Diego. On weekends, the sidewalks are crowded and dozens of restaurants are bustling.

“The second-home market is growing more with the advent of condominiums downtown,” Mr. Valone said.

Robert Fields, a real estate broker from Rancho Santa Fe, 30 miles north of San Diego, bought a pied-à-terre in the Alta building, because of the city feel in downtown San Diego that was missing in the suburbs. “I grew up in New York and I was enamored with the smells, sound and energy of the city,” Mr. Fields said.

He paid $400,000 for a 1,000-square-foot condominium with 14-foot ceilings. His monthly $1,700 payment is less than his car payment, he said. “San Diego is like an adult Disneyland, and this way I don’t have to drive home after going to a ballgame or out to dinner.”

Builders and real estate agents in San Diego credit the construction of Petco Park, the new home of the San Diego Padres, with revitalizing the downtown and surrounding areas. Brett Schaffter, an agent with the Bosa Development Corporation, a Canadian company that has built nine residential towers in and around downtown, estimated that the park, projected by city officials to spur half a billion dollars in other development in the region, brought in closer to $3.5 billion.

"We get people from Las Vegas, Arizona, even people from Orange County and Los Angeles who want to get out of the L.A. rat race,” he said of condo buyers.

Many of the new condominiums overlook the Gaslamp Quarter, the ocean and ships in the harbor, including the Midway, an aircraft carrier that is now a museum. Prices start at $1,000 a square foot or more.

A 23-story Bosa tower called the Legend is built just beyond the outfield fence of Petco Park. Residents on two sides of the building can watch the Padres play from their sofas, while others can go to a seventh-floor lounge to watch the game.

Mr. Rodman’s son recently bought a place there. “We had the Rolling Stones here,” Mr. Rodman said, nodding toward the baseball field.

About 15 to 20 percent of the residents, Mr. Schaffter said, are second-home buyers.

Also downtown is a new Hard Rock Hotel, a condominium “lifestyle hotel” with 420 rooms. In this condo-hotel, owners buy guest rooms ranging from studios of about 325 square feet to 1,800-square-foot loft suites. Prices run from $350,000 to $2.2 million.

The owners have access to their rooms up to 28 days a year. The rest of the time the room is rented, and owners get a portion of the proceeds.

So far, half of the room owners in the hotel, which is scheduled to open the last week of October, are from greater San Diego, while the rest are from across California and other parts of the country, Hard Rock officials say.

The hotel — whose motto is “life behind the velvet rope” — is loaded with amenities. Near the pool, for example, there are cabanas with wet bars and Wi-Fi.

“It’s a high-end hotel with a little more V.I.P. feel, a scene that has been lacking in San Diego,” said Sandra Nagy, a real estate investment analyst in the Waikiki area of Honolulu, who bought a suite. She said she would use the room to put up clients and her family, who often visit from Japan.

“And it has Nobu,” she said, referring to a high-end Japanese restaurant that will be in the hotel. “Everyone’s looking forward to that.”

OTHER areas near San Diego have also become popular for buyers. Coronado is a town just over the bridge from downtown, and Coronado Shores, a series of 10 towers built in the 1960s and ’70s, has long been a site for vacation homes.

The development has 1,465 units that have sold for $600,000 to $3.75 million. Nearly all of them are second, third or fourth homes, according to Ara Koubeserian, an owner of the development. There are tennis courts, pools and a private beach club.

“Buyers are looking to lock their door and leave and not have to worry about anything,” Mr. Koubeserian said.

While most of the buyers in Coronado seek condos, he said, people are buying and building detached single-family homes. He just sold a home on a 7,000-square-foot lot for $1.46 million. “That’s just for the lot,” he said. “The house is a tear down, a disaster.”

The cost of homes in Coronado or downtown has become prohibitively expensive for some. That’s why buyers like Rick Lombardo, a 51-year-old lawyer near Kansas City, Mo., who bought a three-floor town house in Carlsbad, about 25 miles north, have looked farther out. This 3,000-square-foot home is on the beach, and he said it cost about half of the $1,000 a square foot that his previous home in Coronado Shores was worth, about $1.5 million.

“My kids are surfers and it’s right on the beach,” he said. “I can walk four blocks and catch the train and 45 minutes later, I am in downtown San Diego.”

Slideshow: Instant Housing and Designing for Disaster

By Jenna Wortham

See related story:

10.22.07 | 12:00 AM

When disaster strikes, the need for short-term housing is immediate and urgent. The Department of Homeland Security estimates that more than 800,000 people were displaced after Hurricane Katrina in 2005, and UNICEF reported 130,000 residents were made homeless by the 2006 earthquake in central Java, Indonesia.

State-provided housing is expensive, too temporary and can be potentially harmful to residents. A growing number of architects and designers is exploring humanitarian design for people displaced by a natural disaster or other emergency. This gallery shows some of the most promising quick-fix shelters, from inflatable concrete tents to houses made from recycled wood pallets.

Left: Shipping containers, found in abundance all over the world, form the basis for the Future Shack, a self-contained, modular refugee-housing unit. It can be mass-produced with a minimum of materials and is easily stockpiled, making it a versatile emergency-housing unit.

Disaster sites, often covered with debris, require laborious grunt work before shelters can be erected. The Future Shack comes equipped with telescoping legs for support and can be fully assembled as needed within 24 hours on almost any terrain -- with no excavation, which means construction does not add to soil erosion problems or create additional damage to the area. When the structures are no longer required, they can be quickly packed back inside themselves and relocated around the world.

Designed by Australian architect Sean Godsell, the Future Shack has a parasol-style roof made from recycled plastic to collect water for storage, and includes solar cells to generate electricity.

Photo: Courtesy of Sean Godsell Architects

Housing requirement creates schism

City divided over growth guidelines

By Kristina Peterson / Daily News Staff Writer

A split occurred in Palo Alto Monday night over whether the city can support its sizable share of a regional affordable housing plan.

Divided residents and a fractured city council took passionate stances at Monday night's study session over whether the city can build 2,860 more affordable homes by 2015.

Every seven years, the state Department of Housing and Community Development releases a statewide affordable housing goal, which the Association of Bay Area Governments then divvies up among local cities.

Following a process of appeals that ends in June 2008 for the next seven-year period, the city will have one year to develop a housing plan that identifies where the affordable units can be built and create appropriate zoning, in order to be certified by the state and remain eligible for housing grants and tax credits, said the city's Planning and Transportation Director Steve Emslie.

Emslie said the city has little discretion over ABAG's housing allocations.

"They're really not guidelines at all. They legally amount to mandates," Emslie said.

If the city does not meet its requirement, it would be open to lawsuits from public interest groups and could lose state grant money.

Still, the housing numbers provoked strong disagreement among both residents and council members over whether Palo Alto has the physical space to accommodate thousands more homes and whether the city should be actively working to reduce its allocation during the appeals process.

Already, city staff has succeeded in persuading ABAG to transfer 645 units originally assigned to Palo Alto to unincorporated Santa Clara County, where they are currently being built by Stanford University, Emslie said. And city staff is also hoping to persuade ABAG that its "aggressive growth estimates" are erroneous, resulting in a need for fewer homes. Emslie said they expect a reply next month.

But many residents argued that Palo Alto, as an affluent community, must commit to regional housing planning and build its fair share of housing if it intends to live up to its environmental goals.

"The region is trying to house more of its workers, current and future, within the region," said Stephen Levy, director of the Center for the Continuing Study of the California Economy in Palo Alto.

Minimizing the distance between work, home and social activities will help reduce family energy consumption, said Palo Alto resident Steve Raney. "Pro 2,860 (units) means pro-climate," Raney said.

And showing unusual ire, Council Member John Barton said while difficult, embracing the housing guidelines is necessary.

"We can't talk about being green and sustainable and do it with a few LEED-certified buildings," he said, referring to the U.S. Green Building Council's design guidelines.

But other community members countered this statement with equal fervor.

"As much as we want to be green, we have to be realistic," said Council Member Jack Morton, who called the housing situation "an impossible problem."

Resident Bob Moss estimated that building the recommended number of units would require an additional 70 acres of land.

"Let's get real," said an openly frustrated Vice Mayor Larry Klein. "Has anybody from ABAG tried to identify where those 70 acres are?"

And Council Member Judy Kleinberg worried about the lack of public transportation in the area and the impact on local schools of more families flooding the city.

Council Member Bern Beecham said the debate over the allocation is pointless.

"It doesn't matter because this won't happen," he said. "This community will never support these numbers."

But not giving in to regional demands may carry a price, he warned. Palo Alto's unwillingness to build more housing may represent its "signature failure" in the fight against global warming.

"I don't care to see my neighborhood bulldozed, but I'm frustrated by what that means for the future," Beecham said.

The process of refining each city's housing allocation will continue until next June.

New Orleans Unveils Rebuilding Plan

By AP/BECKY BOHRER

(NEW ORLEANS) — After struggling for months to come up with $1.1 billion for stage one of New Orleans' hurricane rebuilding plan, city officials faced with growing public frustration intend to move ahead with a drastically scaled-back first step of $216 million.

The blueprint being released Friday by city Recovery Director Ed Blakely is far more modest than the one he issued in March. But he said it will at least get the rebuilding started and give the public desperately needed signs of progress — which, in turn, will encourage private investment in New Orleans. "Plans help you make progress," Blakely said.

The plan — the general outlines of which were approved by the City Council earlier this year — is not the radical remaking of the city urged by some urban planners who wanted to see a New Orleans with a much smaller footprint, and with people moved out of flood-prone areas.

Instead, it largely embraces Mayor Ray Nagin's settle-where-you-will philosophy, while also endorsing the removal of blight and the creation of parks, affordable apartments and vibrant communities.

Under the plan, work would begin in the next few years on green space, health clinics, community centers, housing and libraries. Shopping centers would be redeveloped and streetscapes and storefronts spruced up.

Among other things, Blakely also eventually wants to see the mostly poor, mostly black Lower Ninth Ward become an Afro-Cuban version of the French Quarter, with music and art, architecturally diverse homes and restaurants. By one estimate, rebuilding New Orleans could cost $14.4 billion in private and government money and take at least a decade.

But two years after Katrina laid waste to much of the metropolitan area, the rebuilding is slow, stymied by red tape, bureaucratic infighting and what some see as a lack of political leadership.

Blakely, who began work in January, more than 16 months after Katrina, had hoped to have $1.1 billion in federal grants, private investment and hurricane bond proceeds for the rebuilding. But the money has been slow in coming through, particularly the private investment New Orleans needs so badly.

So Blakely said he will move ahead with $216 million, consisting almost entirely of federal grants, and hope more money will follow. "It's certainly enough to lay the first couple of stones," he said.

Some of the city's more affluent neighborhoods, such as Lakeview and Broadmoor, have significantly rebounded as residents invested their own money or solicited private help.

But other places are in poorer condition, including the Lower Ninth, which remains largely desolate, with decaying houses, overgrown lots, putrid trash piles and swarms of bugs. Only about 10 percent of the pre-storm population of 20,000 is back.

LaToya Cantrell, president of the Broadmoor Improvement Association, worries the sluggish rebuilding may have a chilling effect on private donations. She said groups donating money to jump-start neighborhoods want to see timelines for completing projects. "There seems to be a lack of urgency within those halls and walls of City Hall," she said.

Blakely said his plan includes priorities identified by neighborhood residents, such as affordable housing in the Lower Ninth and parks in eastern New Orleans.

Blakely said buildings in flood-prone areas will be elevated and efforts made to preserve the architectural and cultural feel of New Orleans' many neighborhoods, with their shotgun houses, Creole cottages and Napoleonic-era buildings.

Homeless Families on the Rise, with No End in Sight

by Pat Eaton-Robb

AMHERST, Mass. - There is just enough space for Lisa Rivera’s family to sleep at Jessie’s House homeless shelter.
In one room, she fits the full-sized bed she shares with her 9-year-old daughter, the trundle for her 11-year-old son, a twin bed for her 14-year-old daughter and a playpen for her 1 1/2-year-old son.

“It’s comfortable, but it’s hard sleeping all together,” the 32-year-old woman said. “Oh my God, sometimes it’s so hard.”

Faced with domestic abuse, high housing costs and unemployment, Rivera’s family finds itself among the growing ranks of the homeless in Massachusetts — and possibly, the country.

About 1,800 homeless families were in Massachusetts shelters last week — up from 1,400 in June 2006 and just under 1,200 in June 2005, according to state figures. There are more families in shelters now than at any time since the inception of the state’s family shelter program in 1983, according to the Massachusetts Coalition for the Homeless.

State officials blame a wide range of problems — from cuts in assistance to the recent housing crisis.

“We’re very concerned that this is going to keep going,” said Julia Kehoe, commissioner of the state Department of Transitional Assistance.

Massachusetts is one of the few states that keep government records of the number of homeless families in shelters because state law requires the commonwealth to shelter any family that meets income and other guidelines. The state keeps a daily count to show how many beds it needs, said Robyn Frost, executive director of the Massachusetts Coalition for the Homeless.

Nationally, the picture is much less clear.

Data from the Department of Housing and Urban Development suggests there about 750,000 homeless in the nation on any given night, with about 40 percent of those members of homeless families, said Philip Mangano, director of the U.S. Interagency Council on Homelessness.

Up to 26,500 Washingtonians are without a home or safe place to sleep on any given night, according to recent estimates. Families with children are the fastest-growing segment of the homeless population nationwide and make up nearly half of all people staying in King County homeless shelters.

The overall number of homeless people is up from a few years ago, Mangano said, but nobody can pinpoint an exact number of families because reporting requirements vary widely from state to state.

“Our desire would be to have many more states step up and track the data,” Mangano said. “Research and data, that’s what should drive the resources that we make available. Instead it’s often anecdote, conjecture and hearsay that does that.”

Kehoe attributes the increase in Massachusetts to a convergence of low wages, high housing costs, an increase in housing foreclosures and cuts in federal and state housing assistance programs. Two years ago, lawmakers also lowered the financial eligibility requirements to qualify for homeless benefits from the poverty level to those making 130 percent of what would be considered a poverty wage, she said.

“I think what we are seeing here is a perfect storm,” she said. “Until we have some investment in affordable housing, and some flexibility in using our resources, we’re not going to see a leveling off of these numbers.”

Rivera lost her apartment in Springfield in 2005, when a domestic-abuse case involving the father of her youngest child prompted the state to remove all four youngsters from her custody, she said. Without the money she had been receiving in Transitional Aid to Families with Dependent Children, Rivera could not pay her rent.

She moved in with friends, worked at a gas station, went to school to become a medical receptionist and fought in court to get her children back.

A judge eventually restored custody, but without a place to live, the family has moved from one shelter after another.

“It’s hard to get an apartment anywhere, especially with the size of apartment I need,” she said. “There’s none out there, and once one comes available, there are just so many of us out here that need, it gets taken up with the snap of a finger.”

The New England Farm Workers Council, a private non-profit agency contracted by the state, is helping Rivera look for permanent housing. She has an income of just over $1,400 a month, all from either TAFDC or Social Security, which she receives for her 9-year-old, who suffers from epilepsy.

The agency requires that families spend no more that 50 percent of their income in rent, a figure designed to make it more likely that families won’t get behind on those payments.

But rents for a three-bedroom apartment in the greater Springfield area range from about $800 to $1,300 without utilities, said Tom Salter, the vice president of the agency’s shelter and housing division.

“A minimum-wage job for 40 hours a week is just not going to pay the rent in any area,” he said. “It just isn’t.”

There are state programs that help once a homeless family finds a new place to live. Rental assistance, however, often is difficult to get. The state spends about $30 million on rental subsidies, compared with about $120 million 15 years ago, and there also have been no new incremental increases in major federal subsidies in about a decade, Kehoe said.

Commissioner Kehoe and Frost said families also are being squeezed by the recent national lending crisis, as high mortgages that have forced some landlords to sell or face foreclosure.

“Although most of the homeless were not homeowners, many could have been people living in units that had been foreclosed,” Frost said.

City woos educators with Bronx housing plan

BY CARRIE MELAGO
DAILY NEWS STAFF WRITER

It's like a $28 million apple for city teachers.

Two apartment buildings slated for construction in the South Bronx will provide affordable homes for teachers, administrators and aides, officials announced yesterday.

The 234 units, financed through a $28million bond bought by the Teachers' Retirement System, are designed to retain educators who can't afford steep New York City rents.

"Teachers who work in the city want to stay in the city and want to live in the city. They want to have families grow up in the city," said teachers union President Randi Weingarten. "This project is a way of doing that."

City Controller William Thompson, whose office oversaw the financing, said the program could be replicated for other professions, such as police officers and firefighters.

"We'll expect to see other instances in the future of housing for municipal workers," he said.

Rents will range from $806 for a studio to $1,412 for a three-bedroom. To be eligible, educators can earn up to 110% of the area's median income, which is $76,000 for a family of four, officials said.

The apartments are part of a housing development called Boricua Village, built by Atlantic Development Group and financed by the city's Housing Development Corp.

The housing plan is the latest incentive program aimed at retaining city teachers, more than 5,000 of whom moved from the city in 2005 alone. Last year, the city began providing housing subsidies for teachers in hard-to-staff subjects such as science, math and special education.

The new program would be open to educators at private and charter schools as well.

Yesenia Moran, 27 - a first-year teacher at Public School 169 in Brooklyn - said the plan sounds good.

"The cost of living is definitely rising," she said. "Anything that recognizes teachers' effort is a plus."

cmelago@nydailynews.com