A Community Response to Affordable Housing
Affordable housing is more than just building new, partially subsidized single-family homes. In order for a market to remain accessible, there must be a variety of housing types across different income levels to ensure people can find adequate shelter to meet their needs.
Omaha is seeing a massive boom in luxury rental development in the up-and-coming neighborhoods like Blackstone and Little Bohemia, but as the word “luxury” denotes, these new units aren’t for everyone.
Income, location, housing quality, and type (single-family, duplex, apartment, etc.) play a major role in the affordability of a neighborhood. As new luxury construction continues to rise, older housing stock continues to degrade, widening the gap of affordability which can ultimately lead to displacement and the forlorn word, gentrification.
In response to these alarming trends, community groups and neighbors are gathering to share their experiences with housing and devise collective solutions that can address many different needs simultaneously.
Policy Research and Innovation, a local non-profit think tank, hosted a meeting called Gentrification, Affordable Housing, and Race at Augustana Lutheran Church in November 2019.
Residents of all ages and backgrounds from surrounding neighborhoods mostly located in North Omaha attended.
The meeting featured a panel of representatives from various housing advocacy organizations including Together Omaha, Omaha Together One Community (OTOC), and Missing Middle Housing Campaign. Panelists introduced their organizations and the aspect of housing in which they focus.
OTOC is a community group that has been active for 25 years and works within religious and secular groups to build local power and advocacy. They have six action teams, one of them is housing. Their approach is to enact city policy change, most notably the current rental housing inspection policy which to-date is complaint-driven. Meaning that unless a formal complaint is filed with the city inspections office, a rental unit will not be inspected.
After much effort from OTOC and community members, an ordinance was passed to move Omaha rental into proactive inspections on a 10-year cycle that will begin in 2022. Advocates want to see that reduced to a three-year cycle to further protect residents, as conditions can degrade severely over a decade.
It is believed that if inspections are more regular, landlords will be held accountable to maintain their properties, which can ensure healthy housing conditions for renters, and extend the life of affordable housing stock. Insect and rodent infestation, lead contamination, high moisture, and poor ventilation, and faulty wiring are among the most concerning conditions for OTOC.
Erin Feichtinger of Together Omaha believes housing comes down to fundamental values. “We are not at a place where our city leaders believe that housing is a human right,” said Feichtinger.
“We have two competing theories of change in this city,” said Feichtinger. One, she explains, focuses on supporting people within their neighborhoods in order to stabilize rising costs including healthcare needs, transportation, and community involvement.
The second theory she believes is dominating, is a focus on changing neighborhoods with a new type of person who can afford high-end luxury costs of living, without proactive regard for those who have lower incomes or are living in substandard environments.
“One of the challenges we face in this community is that housing is not fair,” said A’Jamal Byndon, PRI board member. He went on to list numerous barriers including entrenched segregation in housing policies, lack of equity for low-income residents, the need for stronger enforcement against housing discrimination, and lack of racial diversity on the Omaha Municipal Land Bank board.
A majority of OMLB properties are in North Omaha, city council district 2, but there is not a voting board member for the area. Three African-Americans are present on the board: Ben Gray, Precious McKesson, and Teresa Hunter, and are all non-voting members.
Byndon also spoke in favor of term limits, “Because at the end of the day, if the people we elect don’t help transform our community, then why should we have them elected?”
Image illustrating “missing middle” used on the campaign’s Facebook page.
Patrick Leahy of the Missing Middle Housing Campaign advocates for changes in City Municipal Code to allow for different housing types in more areas such as duplexes, triplexes, and accessory dwelling units (ADUs), like converting a garage into an apartment or building an additional “mother-in-law cottage” on a property.
Leahy calls these changes “low hanging fruit” and a way to create more housing options that increase neighborhood density and keep overall costs low. The City of Minneapolis abolished single-family zoning to allow for more diverse housing types in residential areas.
Supportive financing for affordable housing can be difficult to access and the City of Omaha currently has few means of incentivizing new construction, one method is Tax Increment Financing (TIF). At the time of this meeting, the city had approved over $37 million in TIF for mostly luxury or market-rate housing, meanwhile, the average wage in Omaha has not increased. Residents suggested tying TIF to affordable housing policy.
“There are things that are happening right in front of us and we really have not even learned how to articulate it to deal with it. We know something bad is happening,” said Byndon in response to a question about gentrification and if it is already occurring in Omaha. “If we are serious about this gentrification, I saw it when I went to Brooklyn, New York, I saw it in Chicago, and even here and there are some of us in positions of leadership who won’t call it out because there are deals that have already been made. Some of it is pure economic, some of it, race.”
1954 aerial view of the Logan Fontenelle Housing Projects, also known as “Vietnam.” Opened in 1938, and completely demolished in 1995. - North Omaha History
After lengthy panel discussion, a resident who grew up in the Logan Fontenelle/Vietnam Projects addressed the room, “We have a horrific history in this city of not only unaffordable housing and terrible living conditions for people, but... in order to truly have affordable housing, you have to have economic stability to even afford ‘affordable housing.’” Many attendees nodded in agreement.
Once the panel concluded, audience participants were invited to work with their tablemates to come up with proposed solutions and action items to address the overarching issues.
Resident Melissa Polendo, the founder of Black Wall Street Omaha, a directory of local Black-owned business, thinks change won’t come until we begin with ourselves, “We can go on about redlining, the issues, and come to these meetings but change is not going to happen until we start looking within and start shopping amongst our family members and putting our money where our mouth is, buying those lands.”
Residents suggested:
Evaluate Urban Indian Health Coalition’s new affordable housing development in South Omaha
Consider barriers such as felony records, poor credit scores, financial literacy, and legal assistance
Collective action, unified vision, and organizing to approach housing on neighborhood scales
Mixed-use new builds to enable commercial on the bottom and residential on the top
Flexible affordable housing beginning under subsidy that decreases over time and encourages upward mobility
Property tax abatement for low-income homeowners to aid in building wealth
Increase communication channels and timelines
Explore tiny houses, villages, and other forms of non-traditional housing construction
Cooperative ownership models that disperse cost burdens to make purchases more affordable.
One resident’s response was simple, “Rebel.”
The latest in development news shows housing affordability affects all people, no matter their income, and a solution will require an effort that is created by the community and reflected in government and market policy. Public meetings like these suggest if we listen to each other, we might just come up with solutions.