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The new face of 'affordable'

A recent dispute over a proposed townhome project in Tarpon Springs proves that misunderstanding about "affordable housing" still exists, despite efforts by the government and the media to erase misconceptions.

Two property owners wanted land use and zoning changes so that they could build a townhome project on 16 acres along Jasmine Avenue, which is east of U.S. 19 and north of Keystone Road.

The city staff and the City Commission appeared interested in giving the landowners the extra density they needed to build the townhomes, saying it was a redevelopment opportunity for land that has a horse stable, an assisted living facility and a warehouse.

However, neighbors didn't much like the idea. Jasmine Avenue is a narrow street, and residents feared worsening traffic. Some just didn't want any new, denser development.

But people really got upset after a representative of the landowners mentioned at a City Commission meeting that the townhome project would "provide for workforce housing." Residents informed city officials in letters and e-mails that they did not want the "blight," "poverty" and "crime" of "low-income housing" in their neighborhood, and they predicted the project would devalue their own homes.

"Workforce housing," also known as "affordable housing," seemed to conjure up, for these Tarpon residents, images of public housing projects like the old, notorious Condon Gardens complex in Clearwater.

Places like Condon Gardens aren't being built anymore - in fact, like Condon Gardens, they are being torn down all over the country. "The projects," as they were called, were warehouses for people on welfare, and whole generations of families grew up in them, each generation marked by the hopelessness, poverty and crime fostered in such places.

So much has changed, it is difficult to know where to begin.

Today, experts know it was detrimental to concentrate a particular socioeconomic level in one place. Now, people who cannot afford to pay the market price for housing live among everyone else, and through special programs they just pay a lower rent or pay less to buy their home. Their neighbors probably don't even know their housing costs are subsidized.

Unlike those generations of individuals who got free or virtually no-cost housing in public housing projects, today's subsidized housing clients usually work hard. The 1996 Personal Responsibility and Work Opportunity Reconciliation Act, pushed through and signed by President Bill Clinton, instituted tough limits on how long people could receive public assistance, or "welfare."

In the ensuing 10 years, welfare rolls have been reduced by millions of people, and many who would have spent their lives on welfare subsistence have gotten the education or job training they needed to join the workforce.

Even if the government wanted to build a project like Condon Gardens these days, the money isn't there. The U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development has stopped the money train for such construction projects. Local housing authorities supported by HUD funding now focus on handing out so-called Section 8 vouchers, with which people go out and find housing in complexes that accept the vouchers, or on acquiring or building communities where their clients are mixed in with residents who pay the full market price.

Some great-looking apartment complexes around Pinellas County actually are owned by local housing authorities. The Mainstreet Apartments on Missouri Avenue and the Hampton of Clearwater on McMullen-Booth Road are owned by the Clearwater Housing Authority, but people of all income levels live there, and there is no way to tell whose rent is subsidized. Some new houses in Pinellas were built by private or public programs that offer the homes to their clients at lower-than-market prices.

Also, much of today's "affordable housing" is built by private developers and owned by private parties, not the government.

But perhaps the biggest change in the affordable housing arena has been brought about not by any government or reform, but by the economy. The cost of housing has soared; salaries have not. A vast portion of the American middle class is caught in the middle, struggling to get by. These are not "welfare cases," as people living in the old free or subsidized public projects used to be called. They are your dental hygienist, the receptionist at your office, the X-ray technician your doctor employs, the 911 operator you call in time of trouble, the teacher at your child's preschool, the police officer who patrols your neighborhood.

They are people you need in your life and your community, yet housing is getting too expensive for them to live here. It is for them that developers and governments are building "affordable," or partially subsidized, houses and apartments or arranging to have a few subsidized units in full-price complexes.

Yet people still misunderstand and predict that the arrival of those people in their neighborhoods will bring poverty and crime.

"It's such a challenge for us," said Anthony Jones, Pinellas County's community development director, who urges residents to find out the kinds of people who will live in new housing before opposing it. He meets with groups frequently to try to educate them about housing assistance.

"People say, 'Those programs aren't for me. I have a job.' The impression is that these programs are for poor people," he said. "But affordable housing is now housing for the people who are your friends and co-workers or your kids.

"It's kind of like that Buick commercial. It's not your daddy's Buick anymore."

Diane Steinle can be reached at steinle@sptimes.com.

[Last modified December 9, 2006, 21:22:03]