‘Everywhere and invisible’: avoiding a concentration of low-income housing
This map shows the disbursement of homes acquired or built by Tenants to Homeowners, also known as the Lawrence Housing Trust, which allows homebuyers to purchase at a discounted rate. The Cedarwood Senior Cottage Townhomes, one of the locations on the map, comprises 14 homes for seniors and is set to open this year. A three-home project at 900 LaSalle Street will also be done this year.
Editor’s note: This is the last story in a five-part series exploring the shortage of affordable housing in Lawrence, which is designated through national health rankings as a “severe” problem in Douglas County. We covered the attention that issue has received in the past year and what measures city leaders and others are proposing, moving forward, to improve it. Read the rest of the series here.
You can’t get where you’re going until you know where you’ve been.
It’s a cliché, but in the matter of Lawrence’s affordable housing efforts, it’s a concept being put to use.
In talks about what Lawrence is going to do with money it dedicates to affordable housing, or what policies it will put in place to grow the affordable housing stock, an issue invariably comes up: avoiding a concentration of poverty.
Those leading the charge on the initiative, including heads of housing organizations, are weary of lumping below-market developments where they are already.
“What I see that works best, what I read that works best is that affordable housing is everywhere and invisible,” said Dan Partridge, director of the Lawrence-Douglas County Health Department.
Partridge presented to the Affordable Housing Advisory Board in April the adverse health effects of creating low-income neighborhoods.
“It isn’t in that neck of the woods; it’s not across that set of tracks; it’s not on that street. It’s everywhere and invisible,” he continued. “Because it’s more complex than just having a roof over your head. It’s the neighborhood you live in. It’s the built environment that you’re living in.”
Existing subsidized housing
Assistant City Manager Casey Toomay said Lawrence is working to map Lawrence’s existing affordable housing in an effort to clearly see where it is and where it needs to go.
Though there’s some debate about what’s “affordable” — something the Affordable Housing Advisory Board will begin to define in upcoming conversations — fair market rents in Lawrence are high enough that only subsidized units are really what’s affordable, said Rebecca Buford, director of Tenants to Homeowners, also known as the Lawrence Community Housing Trust.
Most subsidized units in Lawrence are operated by Tenants to Homeowners and the Lawrence-Douglas County Housing Authority. And most of those units are in the eastern half of the city.
“Our challenge over the last 10 years has been to get pockets, or scattered sites, on the west side of town,” Buford said. “We all agree that would be ideal.”
The local housing authority maps where its tenants are located in Lawrence. In 2015, the 1,225 individuals or families housed with vouchers or living in public housing were located around Lawrence, but a large group of them (368) were in an area bounded by Massachusetts Street to the west and Noria Road to the east.
That’s where most of the public housing, besides Peterson Acres, is located, said housing authority Director Shannon Oury.
On a list provided by Tenants to Homeowners of approximately 140 addresses it has rehabilitated, acquired or developed, many were in the same area, and few were west of Iowa Street.
“I do think hard units that are agency-owned are predominantly in the east side of town,” Oury said.
Other units in Lawrence offered at below-market rent were developed using low-income housing tax credits, which allow property owners to reduce debt in exchange for charging tenants less. Of the 23 projects in Lawrence using the tax credits in 2015 — the most recent information available — 11 are located east of Massachusetts Street and north of 23rd Street.
The housing authority began mapping where its tenants were going because “we were worried,” Oury said.
“We were concerned people were going to be shut out from the west side of town,” she continued. “That’s what they refer to as a concentration of poverty problem, and we’re not interested in it.”
Lawrence’s new city manager isn’t interested in it, either.
Trying to find solutions
City Manager Tom Markus has publicly talked about his experience with creating affordable housing in his previous position in Iowa City.
One of the things he brought along with him to Lawrence is the idea of putting affordable units into residential developments receiving city incentives.
The new affordable housing requirement is included in a larger package of proposed changes to the policies that govern Lawrence’s economic development incentives. The mandate stipulates that developers charge income-based rent for a portion of units. As the proposal is written now, the units would have to remain affordable for the duration that the project is incentivized, but no less than 15 years.
The requirement has garnered some criticism from the city’s Joint Economic Development Council and Public Incentives Review Committee. It will go to the City Commission for consideration later this summer.
Markus said it would accomplish getting “scattered sites” of affordable housing.
“When you think about it, it probably moves affordable housing into a wider array of locations in the community, which helps the scattered site approach,” Markus said. “Our belief is that scattered site is a much better approach than over-concentration and its impact on schools and everything else associated with plopping it in one location.
“It’s not good for schools; it’s not good for the people living in those places. I think, in the long run, people understand that there is a need for affordable housing throughout the community.”
Partridge agreed that the new incentive policy could help achieve that goal.
“To me, that’s the place to look first,” he said of the policy. “That gets it out. What we don’t want is what we did in the 1960s and ’70s, is building the projects.”
Dispersion improves health
In his presentation to the Affordable Housing Advisory Committee, Partridge explained the link between housing and a community’s health.
He showed the group that a national ranking of health by county designated Douglas County’s housing problem as “severe” and the second-worst in the state in 2016 behind Riley County.
The ranking shows Lawrence’s housing situation is 150 percent worse than the top cities for housing in the United States.
He said later it was one of a few “anchors” that held back Lawrence’s overall health. Other challenges in the city include excessive drinking, social isolation and income inequality, he said.
“When you work on affordable housing and get people housed, you make them healthier,” he said. “That’s just a fact.”
According to a report from the Center for Housing Policy, obtaining affordable housing frees up resources for healthy food and health care; it leads to higher levels of self-esteem, leading to improved mental health; and it reduces stress, which, according to the American Psychological Association, is one of the leading causes of poor health.
Having the basic need of shelter also allows people to focus on chronic disease management, such as diabetes or high blood pressure, Partridge said.
He stressed the importance of dispersing affordable housing, saying people’s health would be improved by being closer to transportation and healthy food. Tobacco is more highly advertised and available in low-income areas, he said, and there are fewer recreational resources.
Partridge cited research that suggested moving from a lower to a higher income neighborhood, without changing anything else, increases quality of life by 10 to 15 percent.
“There’s a saying in public health that’s said a lot: Your zip code is more important than your genetic code,” he said.
Besides health, dispersing housing out into all parts of the community is also about deflecting a stigma, Partridge said. When an issue is stigmatized, he said, solutions are harder to achieve.
That stigma is something Kayla Brown, newly moved out of the Lawrence Community Shelter and into an apartment in Lawrence’s west side, is trying to deflect herself.
Brown, who chose to leave an abusive partner and go to the shelter — where she lived with her two children for about seven months — wants to go back as a volunteer and motivate other shelter residents.
“I had to swallow my pride, go out to that shelter and tell them I need help,” Brown said earlier this month, just after she moved herself and her two kids into Rohan Ridge apartments. “That’s what I did, and look where I’m at. I just want to let people know, they’re not the only ones that’s out there that’s been through it. Just keep pushing.”
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