Kudos to Sutner

Story in Telegram today titled "City's housing development at issue".  Will comment on these stories all week as the low income housing tour continues all week throughout the city of Worcester. 

For the first time I have read a story that at least starts to ask questions about this and not merely issue press releases. We need more trasparency as to how these monies are allocated especially considering the amounts of monies in question.  As I have maintained for years this has become District 4's biggest business and the people who are receiving the bulk of the HOME funds do not want to see any changes in the current policy.   Even to the point that a group, consisting of our Mayor and the District 4 Councilor, have been meeting since last winter "to map out a strategy to combat what they saw as an imminent assault of low-income housing in the poorest neighborhoods."

Here are some facts.
1)   The new housing policy will broaden the pool of developers, including private builders, with the goal of attracting more affluent residents and spur business growth and not merely give monies to the CDC's as the "preferred" developer.   A good thing, right?  Not for some of the CDC's and private developers, however, whose business model relies on these funds to continue.   A broadening of the pool, to even include private builders, is in fact an imminent threat, thus the meetings.

2)  The new housing policy will cap developer fees charged by non-profit and for-profit developers.  A good thing, right?  Not for some.  The article details  the third phase of the Gardner-Kilby-Hammond project consisting of 10 units with a total cost of $2,700,000 million dollars.     Where else can you build units in the this area that cost you $270,000 per unit, sell for half the cost and still make $370,500?

3)  The new housing policy will favor a combination of both low-income and market-rate housing.   A good thing, right?  Not for the current developers, whose recent projects (May Street, City Builders, Piedmont Street and the Hadley) are either 100% affordable or close to it.   They are at 100% affordable, since monies associated with the affordable units are typically given in the form of grants that you do not have to pay back.  Although a combination of low-income and market-rate housing is exactly what the city needs, a project that limits affordability to say 15% will force the developer to find conventional sources (private monies) for their financing needs and not rely solely on government grants (public monies).

4)  The new housing policy will merely create more competition and no longer give carte blanche to "preferred" developers.   A good thing right?      If you are the Executive Director of the Main South CDC making $104,000 per year with additional $14,000 in benefits, any move toward including the dreaded private sector is not a good thing.

In closing "CDC officials argue that most private developers avoid publicly-funded projects because they don't want the income and other deed restrictions that come along with public money."   If that is in fact the case, then what are they worried about?