The Guru Is In
Shift the focus of effort
By David A. Smith
4 min read
Confession time: these days I seldom go to big-tent national affordable housing conferences. Half a day’s panels of my peers discoursing in informed erudite polyphony on the latest Washington bad news past, present or possible future leaves me enervated. Instead I go to statewide conferences, industry-specific subgroups (the more specific the better), and cross-sectoral gatherings (healthcare, urban resilience), from all of which gatherings I come away with new ideas, energy and clarity of purpose.
Between the two types of gatherings, why the energy difference? Focus of effort. Washington is where housing urgency, housing policy, housing program innovations and housing resources go to die; states are where the action is.
Via the Tax Cuts and Jobs Act late in December, preserving housing tax credits and volume-cap bonds and cutting brackets, the 115th Congress said everything it intends to say about housing policy. The Administration’s echoing coda is its proposed FY19 HUD budget, an idealess fadeout to funding diminuendo. For now in Washington, the rest is silence.
At the level of states, by contrast, we hear the lively snatches of orchestras warming up. State conferences are growing rapidly, some topping 1,000 attendees, attended or presented by everybody who is anybody in their states, with multiple tracks of programming, including crossover expertise panels. Eight reasons explain the shift:
- You can focus on specifics. All real estate and all politics being local, at a state-level conference the dialog rapidly moves out of symbology into practicality, so the conversations proceed at a more advanced level and there’s more opportunity to discover unusual and promising combinations.
- You can take off your LIHTC mental blinders. As I’ve written extensively before, state-level housing challenges go well beyond what LIHTC tackles: workforce housing, chronically homeless individuals, veterans, employer-assisted, stabilizing impacted neighborhoods and entrepreneurial dormitories have all come up.
- You can tackle NIMBYism and development barriers. Because land policy is state/local, removing the debate to Washington takes completely off the table any examination of development barriers, NIMBY-ism, and the exorbitant costs of crowbarring new housing into communities that profess inclusion and practice exclusion. At the state level, you hear home truths.
- You will discover unexpected industry and personal allies. Change the subject from federal to state/local and people whose views you thought you knew will surprise you, and the conversations you will then have will be more real.
- You have elected officials’ attention. Unlike a national government, which may choose to overlook housing in its own back yard, mayors and governors are tethered to local concerns. In 21st century America, housing is an enduring flashpoint: state and local officials regularly facing headline-hungry press and irate electorates have to do something…and it usually needs to be something dramatic. (Witness the recent spat between Bill de Blasio and Andrew Cuomo over who’s more at fault for NYCHA or homelessness.)
- You have a voice to advance change. Federal housing policy is all but impossible to influence personally, but inside a state any rational, consistent, dedicated voice can be heard.
- You only have to reach the governor. With the right governor, or even the right state house speaker or state senate president, housing policy and housing resources can be rapidly changed – and many more and shorter roads lead to the governor’s office than to the White House.
- You can get things done. Due to the urgency of housing challenges, localized visibility and specificity of problems, and elected officials’ inability to escape media and voters on housing all state and local governments are making new partnerships, passing new laws and spending new money.
The proof is in the performance, as illustrated by these two examples out of many I could cite:
- California recently enacted its biggest and most important package of statewide housing reforms in two decades, with faster approvals, stronger inclusionary-housing requirements and new dedicated housing revenue sources.
- Wisconsin’s House has passed a State Housing Tax Credit that is expected to become law shortly. Meanwhile, Wisconsin Housing and Economic Department, in partnership with Local Initiatives Support Corp., launched the Wisconsin Business Opportunity Fund to leverage New Markets Tax Credits for urban economic development that will complement housing delivery.
States have realized and are actively voicing the strong connection between housing affordability and sustainable urban areas via economic development and job growth. And they’ve realized that Washington’s not the place to go for housing help. Instead we need to activate the tax act’s consolation prize – Opportunity Zones. They’re all we’re going to get from Washington, and they can be huge new capital sources – if we can just figure out how to tap them, state by state.
Give me six hours to chop down a tree and I will spend the first four sharpening the axe.
– Abraham Lincoln
