Paul Bass Photo
Delores Robinson, Church Street South’s last tenant, at the complex before moving out.
Markeshia Ricks Photo
LCI’s Serena Neal-Sanjurjo and City Plan’s Ed Mattison at Thursday’s meeting at City Hall.
The city’s newly appointed Affordable Housing Task Force is looking to come up with a uniquely New Haven definition of “affordable.”
The task force put that at the top of its to-do list during a meeting Thursday at City Hall, as it tries to wrap its arms around a glaring problem that has arisen since the city has become a boomtown for high-end luxury apartments.
The task force has about six months to develop policies and recommendations to help the city preserve and encourage the creation of affordable housing including single-room occupancy options.
But first, members have to figure out what that means in New Haven.
Colon: We are in a crisis.
Hill Alder Dolores Colon, a task force member, said the city is in crisis particularly given several high-profile housing emergencies that left people temporarily housed in hotels. She pointed to the years-long removal of more than 288 families from the currently being demolished Church Street South apartment complex, and the condemnation of the 66 Norton St. complex, which resulted in the dislocation of 80 families in the Edgewood neighborhood.
“There is an urgency to this now,” she said. “We can’t be sitting around looking at reports … We need to solve it like yesterday.”
As the city has worked with developers looking to provide market-rate housing in the city, “affordable” has meant encouraging developers to set aside up to 30 percent of their units for people who make no more than 80 percent of the area median income, or $70,480 out of an $88,100 benchmark for a family of four. That is the model that has been used in the Hill-to-Downtown project being developed by Randy Salvatore.
The U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development says affordable housing shouldn’t consume more than 30 percent of a household’s income and provides rent subsidies to help low-income families meet their housing needs. The National Low Income Housing Coalition has determined that New Haven’s “housing wage,” or the hourly wage needed to afford a two-bedroom in the city, is $25.48, or about $50,000 a year. The median household income in New Haven is far short of that, at $37,162.
Johnson
Ed Mattison, a task force member who helms the City Plan Commission, said the state and federal definitions of affordability don’t seem to fit very well when it comes to New Haven, though he noted that New Haven is not the only city grappling with the problem.
Otis Johnson Jr., a task force member who heads up the city’s Fair Rent Commission, said what he knows for sure is that he receives phone calls from people with subsidies who still can’t afford where they live.
“We do have a significant number of low-income, working-class people who go to work every day and can’t afford a place to live,” he said.
Johnson said he mostly hears from people in the city who are renting on average a two-bedroom apartment for about $850 a month. That seems reasonable until one learns that the apartment doesn’t meet code. He said if they were to go out and attempt to rent an apartment that was up to code it would cost them $1,250. That was largely the case for the families who were displaced from 66 Norton St. who struggled to find apartments on their construction worker and certified nursing assistant incomes.
Serena Neal-Sanjurjo, executive director of the city’s anti-blight agency Livable City Initiative, said that income is a major driver for the affordability conundrum. She said developers have the ability to create 1,000 units and can have them 95 percent leased before they’re even built.
“There’s no shortage of folks who can afford a market-rate apartment,” she said. “But there are a whole level of folks who can’t.”
In the coming months, the task force will develop a definition of affordable housing for the city, hearing presentations from local, state and federal experts as well as looking at models from around the country for solutions.
I define as affordable an apt. in Scandanavia.