Representative Hans Dunshee Answers the
Question—
“Will the Housing Trust Fund Be Increased to $100
Million this year?”
The answer is yes—if Representative Hans Dunshee has his way.
Hans is a fifth-term legislator from the 44th district, representing
part of Snohomish County stretching from Marysville to Mill Creek.
As chair of the House Capital Budget Committee, Hans is in a good
position to lead the charge. I caught up with him for a working
lunch on a sunny afternoon in mid-March to discuss the prospects for
the Housing Trust Fund and other housing-related issues.
As always, Hans bustles with enthusiasm for the task at hand. He
says that the Trust Fund is getting good support in Olympia: “People
care about it. It’s one of the priorities of the House Democratic
Caucus, especially since Frank Chopp arrived. It’s one of the things
we push for. It’s also happens to be good stuff.”
Hans Dunshee
Washington State Representative,
44th District
Hans and I share the view that the Trust Fund has support on both
sides of the aisle. He notes, in particular, the work of Janéa
Holmquist, representing the 13th District. Holmquist is the ranking
minority member on the Housing Committee and also serves on the
Capital Budget Committee. Hans describes her presence there as “very
supportive” adding “I’d like to compliment her; she has worked very
well in support of the Housing Trust Fund.”
With bipartisan support for the Housing Trust Fund, the issue
becomes one of competition for scarce resources. Hans says that the
major recipients of capital budget money this year will be higher
education, which is expected to receive $600-700 million; elementary
and secondary education, receiving $500 million; and the arts, which
will probably get $20-30 million.
It’s his view that, out of a total $2.4 billion budget, “$100
million for the Housing Trust Fund is just a drop in the bucket.”
With a gleam in his eye, Hans elevates the discussion to a more
speculative plane. “We’re not providing as much housing as we need
to,” he reasons, “so I think about taking it to the next level. What
if funding went to $200 or $300 million? What would that look like?
If we funded housing at that level, we would have serious fighting
over it. How do you build a political team to do that? What does
that coalition look like?”
That’s big thinking. But as he says, it would take a groundswell of
support to make it a reality. A key point to emphasize here is the
connection between affordable housing and job creation. Studies show
that for every million dollars invested in the Housing Trust Fund,
208 new jobs are created. That’s why He thinks it would be a good
idea for groups in the building industry—such as carpenters or
general contractors—or the banks to get involved in lobbying on
behalf of the Housing Trust Fund.
Another key development in the legislature, which Hans supported,
was the recent increase in the CTED housing division’s
administrative fees to a total of 5%. Our colleague at CTED, Stephen
Buxbaum, testified recently in the Senate, talking in essence about
the need to properly manage valuable state resources. He noted that
there is $420 million worth of property in Washington State that
needs to last 30-50 years. That’s why Hans actually supported House
Bill 1074 to provide the 1% additional administrative fee for the
Trust Fund. He based his decision on the workload that CTED was
carrying, and the testimony that the Trust Fund users have supported
this proposal.
As our lunch was drawing to a close, I asked Hans why affordable
housing was such a big priority, both for him personally and for the
Democratic caucus. His answer was instructive. He began talking
about his encounters with homelessness in his former district, the
39th, which is primarily rural. “I think of the hidden poverty and
hidden homeless out there in the woods,” says Hans. “The numbers are
just huge. We see the homeless people on the street in an urban
area, but there are plenty of people living in a car just pulled up
on a gravel road somewhere, or a tent or three trailers bolted
together. When I designed septic systems in the more rural areas I’d
bump into them all the time. They truly are unseen.”
Representative Dunshee is motivated to find solutions to help people
like these—whether they’re the urban homeless, migrant farmworkers
or people camping in the woods. He does it because, “It’s the
right thing to do.”
Hans notes that, “Kids don’t do well in school if they didn’t get a
shower, if they didn’t get something to eat, if they were sleeping
in a place that was unsafe.” But with effective affordable housing
programs, “I know people get a real place to live. From that, they
go get jobs. They get their lives stabilized.”
I agree with Hans Dunshee: Affordable housing solutions are the
right thing to do.
The Community Frameworks’ Self-Help
Homeownership Opportunity Program (SHOP) Continues to Inspire
Loyalty across Four Northwest States
Christopher Holden,
Director
Self-Help Homeownership Opportunity Program
In late February, when I decided to write about Spokane-based
Community Frameworks’ SHOP for this newsletter, my motivation was to
give the group kudos for an ongoing and incredible job well done.
This SHOP program, which works with a wide range of organizations in
the states of Washington, Oregon, Idaho and Montana, has made
enormous strides in helping non-profits in both rural and urban
communities get the financial and technical assistance they need to
run fiscally sound affordable sweat equity home-ownership projects.
Since its start in 1996, it’s grown from working with three
affiliate organizations to 30 today. Over the past nine years,
Community Frameworks’ SHOP has received more than $11million in
funding from HUD, and supported community organizations in the
development of well over 1,000 owner-occupied homes.
But in early March, we heard the news that these SHOP-funded
programs sponsored by Community Frameworks were turned down flat by
HUD in its annual grant award process. Of course, who in the wide
world of non-profits has not experienced a jaw drop upon hearing
that a worthy initiative has been denied funding—or at least had
funding whittled down or postponed? Nonetheless, we at the
Commission were perplexed. Community Frameworks administers a
phenomenally successful mutual self-help home loan program for
low-income families. So why was the program denied funding this
year? “We don’t know—yet,” says SHOP Director Chris Holden.
The Community Frameworks’ SHOP version is a mutual self-help housing
approach, which works a bit differently from Habitat for Humanity’s
volunteer model, for example. A private sponsor, non-profit, housing
authority or community action agency brings together groups of
between 8 and 12 qualifying families. These families get homebuyer
education, construction training and an affordable loan—the works.
And then they all work on each other’s homes. Nobody moves in until
all the homes are done. You’re basically building an entire
subdivision at once.
 
The photos accompanying this article show recently completed
SHOP-funded homes financed through Community Frameworks’ HomeStart
program, 24 Spokane homes built in three phases of eight homes each.
The Scheel family, Jennifer and Jason, and their children Keith,
Caylee and Ashlee, moved into their new home at the end of January.
Jason works on weekends and Ashlee was born December 10th, so Jason
and Jennifer traded back and forth pitching in the sweat equity
requirements of their SHOP home loan: 17 hours per week on site,
including all day Saturday, five hours on Sundays, and Tuesday
evenings from August through December of last year. Says Jennifer Scheel, the experience and the home they’ve worked to earn are
“awesome. It’s a neat program, obviously you have to do a lot of
work—it’s been totally worth it.”
Chris Holden, who is based in Community Framework’s satellite office
in Bremerton, has headed the SHOP program since 2001. He stresses
that HUD’s relatively vague criteria for qualifying applicants has
historically had both good and bad points. Each grantee has a wide
degree of latitude in how they structure their program and respond
to affiliates’ needs, but whenever there’s a staff turnover at HUD,
rules seem to undergo a new interpretation. And no formal appeals on
HUD’s determinations are allowed. Two years ago, the criteria for
the sweat equity component of the loan grants were made clearer.
“The sweat equity hours are pretty minimal. Most of our affiliates
exceed those hours substantially,” he says.
If there’s a silver lining to the HUD denial, it’s the way this
program and its 30 affiliates have responded to the news. Community
Frameworks holds an annual meeting for its affiliates every year at
the Commission’s offices here in Seattle, and the group met about a
week after the news broke. “At our affiliate meeting, we were
nervous,” Holden describes. “We thought there would be a lot of very
upset people. No one was happy about the situation—but it was
gratifying to see how supportive and enthusiastic all our borrowers
were. They said to us: ‘just tell us what to do. We’ve got to fix
this. You guys have been great.’”
The group brainstormed on ways to address the shortfall. And several
affiliates suggested that they compile a list of what they believe
makes the program so effective. These 30 community organizations
continue to work with Community Frameworks’ SHOP because it:
-
Is locally focused on affiliates and their communities
-
Provides technical assistance and puts borrowers’ needs first
-
Offers highly flexible loan terms: “We provide our SHOP funds to
our groups as 100% forgivable,” says Holden. “Zero interest, 10-year
loans: It’s as close to grant money as you can get.”
-
Works to keep reporting minimal, and does whatever it can to
reduce the burden on borrowers and to maximize the impact of the
funding. The loan grants are revolvable: “We provide a lot of
training on the best way to revolve loans, and the best way to make
use of them.”
In addition, says Holden, “I would say our program is a success
because we’re not just lenders, we’re community developers. We have
a lot of groups who are just beginning to do self-help, and because
we’ve been doing it for so long, we have a lot of expertise on
staff.” Community Frameworks goes the extra mile. If an affiliate
has a problem working through a short-term funding gap or addressing
an environmental review of a site, Chris or another SHOP team member
are there to creatively structure bridge funding or jump in to help
negotiate land-use agreements.
Community Frameworks’ SHOP uses a pipeline-style system for loan
funding, which should help them get through this year’s funding
drought. Each year, when applying for their HUD grant, they ask
affiliates to request the funding they’ll need for an anticipated
three-year pipeline. “In the past, we were fully funded, and that
was great,” says Holden. “People could access their funds any time
over that three-year period. But the last few years it’s been very
competitive. No applicant has gotten more than half of what they
asked for.”
Community Frameworks’ SHOP is fostering a community. Affiliates
share information and resources—and more. Already, since learning of
the HUD denial, two affiliates have stepped up to voluntarily share
unused funding that they don’t anticipate needing until next winter
or spring to help other affiliates. “I’ve never seen that anywhere,”
says Holden. “It’s very gratifying that they feel strongly about the
program—that we’ll be good stewards. They’re taking a hit themselves
to help someone else.” And all of the affiliates told Holden they’re
coming in on Community Frameworks’ 2005 HUD application.
Community Frameworks is allowed a formal debriefing with HUD 30 days
after the award announcement. As this e-newsletter goes to “press,”
Chris Holden is set to meet with HUD to hear why they were denied
funding for 2004. This is an organization with a great track record;
Community Frameworks’ SHOP garnered the highest ratings on the HUD
competition last year and the year before. We’re as flabbergasted by
the decision as they are—and will update you on HUD’s response in
our next issue.
Kurt Creager and the Vancouver
Housing Authority:
New, brave and forward-thinking directions
Kurt Creager, CEO
Vancouver Housing Authority
I first met Kurt Creager in Yakima in the early 1980’s when Kurt
worked for the county planning department and I worked for the
Yakima Housing Authority. We became friends working together and we
have remained friends for the past twenty-some years as our careers
have taken us in new directions. I thought it would be interesting
to talk with Kurt about what he sees ahead for the Vancouver Housing
Authority since he has been on the forefront of new ideas for
housing authorities and recently served as President of the National
Association of Housing and Redevelopment Officials (NAHRO), giving
him an interesting national perspective.
In the 14 years he’s headed the Vancouver Housing Authority, Kurt
Creager has moved this public entity in a number of groundbreaking
directions. He’s brought in private partners in development to make
up for decreasing federal support; he’s created a multi-use,
multi-income model that serves a broad cross-section of residents;
and in the process, he and the VHA are renewing Vancouver’s urban
landscape.
During the 1990s, Clark County was the fastest-growing urban county
in the Pacific Northwest. Kurt and the VHA, which serves all of
Clark County, are meeting the needs of this community. The VHA
itself has been transformed: this encompasses the definition of what
turf a housing authority can take on; the tools and partners brought
into projects; and indeed, the way business itself is conducted.
Vancouver itself has changed. Developments don’t look like
“projects”—they are thriving neighborhoods and neighborhood business
districts, vibrant downtown areas. For-profit developers vie to
participate in these mixed-use ventures. The projects are fiscally
sound, they are widely embraced by their communities, and they
generate enough revenues so that private investors stay happy and
people at the lower end of the income spectrum are served as well.
Kurt’s approach
How has Kurt accomplished this? To my way of thinking, there are a
number of key elements at work. Perhaps the most important, he saw
change coming, and prepared the VHA for the future. Kurt says he
took a page from the for-profit playbook: diversify funding
sources and ventures to hedge risk, adapt to changes in your
marketplace, know and capitalize on your strengths. He also has
relied on his experience working in the affordable housing
community: listen to the needs of your constituencies, be
accountable to your public funding sources. He’s attuned to a
criterion critical to both worlds: develop strong relationships.
And he’s had strong support from the VHA’s board and Vancouver’s
mayor and city manager.
Kurt began to implement his model around 1996. “Our inspiration was
to create a high-quality product without taking on the entire risk
of development, and to affiliate ourselves with high-quality urban
retail developers that understood urban texture and could deliver it
in our marketplace,” he says. “Historically, we’d been a very
suburban market and we were rapidly growing into an urban one.” The
goal, in his words, was “walkable neighborhoods.”
Most of the VHA’s housing projects during Kurt’s tenure have been
mixed income. “That’s been a commitment to our community for over a
decade. We have enormous community acceptance for the things that we
do because of that.” There’s not a lot of hand wringing over the
development of housing for low-income residents: people simply see
attractive neighborhoods. And, Kurt continues, “they know they’re
going to be well maintained and well managed; we’ve been around for
60 years and we’ll be around for 60 more.”
With each new project, Kurt and the VHA have tried new things,
enlarged their skill sets and expanded the scope of their community
renewal aims. Three of the most recent developments, all of which
are mixed use and mixed income, are summarized in the following
paragraphs:
Springbrook: This is a project funded in part with bonds
issued by the Commission. It includes 296 rental apartments serving
low-income families, and an $8 million YMCA. “We got a level of
amenities for our residents that lived in these bond-financed units
that was much higher than the market standard,” says Kurt. A team of
private developers partnered with the VHA on Springbrook; it
involves some 14 different parcels of land, including retail.
Anthem Park: “We took the Springbrook experience one step
further with Anthem Park,” says Kurt. “Anthem Park is mixed
ownership and rental, mixed market rate and subsidized, and mixed
retail and housing—all in one project. The VHA shared development
risk with one private developer.” There are 22 for-sale homes and
two retail establishments, a parking garage with a landscaped lid,
and rental property of 58 workforce housing apartments. He
continues, “Anthem Park has lots of urban texture. It’s a
destination. Clark County has several Starbucks (left), and
Starbucks tells us Anthem Park has the highest-grossing store in the
county.”
Esther Short Commons: Completed last November, the $20.8 million Esther Short Commons
includes 160 mixed-income apartments and 20,000 square feet of
retail space—8,500 of which is a permanent home for the Vancouver
Farmer’s Market. The VHA developed the property with numerous
partners, including a private developer, KemperCoLLC, along with
$750,000 from the Washington State Housing Trust Fund, $10.7 million
in Commission funding and $5.2 million in federal low-income housing
tax credits.
Forward-thinking directions
”Esther Short contributes to the revitalization of downtown
Vancouver. It was developed as workforce housing. The idea here is
that lasting affordable housing helps support a thriving downtown
business area” says Kurt. This is full-circle thinking: more jobs
create more opportunities to secure and afford great housing, which
support local businesses, which in turn generate more jobs. And the
properties also provide rental revenues to support deeply subsidized
housing for low-income residents.
Where are Kurt Creager and the VHA heading now? “As the future goes
on we’ll likely be doing more office and employment centers, with or
without housing, depending on the organizational structure that we
use,” says Kurt. “We’re in the hunt now for real estate to fit that
profile. The thinking behind this is that economic development is
locally the highest political priority, we have a role to play in
expanding the regional economy, and we have some resources and our
track record that we can bring to bear to help that along.”
From my perspective, it’s a commendable track record. If you’d like
to hear more of Kurt’s ideas, he’s interviewed in depth in the March
issue of Affordable Housing Finance in “The Future of Public
Housing.” I for one look forward to seeing what he and the VHA
accomplish next.
Bryan Wahl promotes
a better
Quality of Life through the Washington Association of Realtors
Almost everyone I know began their first home buying experience by
visiting an “open house” in their neighborhood. The first person
they met was the Realtor hosting the open house. A Realtor is often
the first point of contact for a first-time home buyer. That is why
one of the key partners that the Commission works with on a
regular—even daily—basis is the Washington Association of Realtors.
Bryan Wahl, Government Affairs Director
Washington Association
of Realtors
We work with Realtors across the state to help educate first-time
home buyers. Many individual realtors teach our Homebuyer Education
Classes and help introduce their clients to our lending programs.
Since we can’t be everywhere in the state we depend on Realtors,
lenders and other partners to promote and deliver our programs.
That’s why I thought it would be fun to talk with Bryan Wahl, who
serves as the Realtors’ Government Affairs Director in Olympia.
When talking to Bryan, you get a strong sense of how market forces
impact housing in Washington. You also immediately feel the passion
that he brings to his job. “It’s plain and simple,” says Bryan, “we
need to increase housing opportunities across the board.
We don’t have an adequate supply of housing to meet demand. Despite
the slow economy over the past few years, we’ve had tremendous
pressure with high demand for a limited supply of housing. That has
continued to drive the cost of housing upward.”
In response to the difficult housing situation in our state, the
Realtors’ introduced their Quality of Life program several
years ago. In essence, this is an educational program that talks
about the interrelationships of jobs, housing, the environment,
economic growth and planning to avoid bottlenecks in the production
of housing. The bottlenecks are both literal—our region’s
intractable traffic situation, for example —and
figurative—restrictive regulations in communities that haven’t
planned for adequate housing growth.
As Bryan puts it, “Too many communities are not allowing growth to
occur. It’s a matter of adopting the right set of policies at the
local level. In every community we want to help make sure we are
allowing the housing supply to meet demand. Actually, the Growth
Management Act gives communities the proper direction, incentives
and enforcement to do the right thing…which is to make sure that
housing is available at all income levels.”
One of the things I particularly like about the Realtors’ approach
is their focus on the entire continuum of the housing market. Bryan
calls it “the housing ladder.” He explains it in terms of the Growth
Management Act, which directs us to provide housing opportunities
for every economic rung on the ladder. As Bryan puts it, “The house
being vacated may become an affordable option for someone else that
needs a home. By creating a housing opportunity at any level on the
ladder you help provide an opportunity for someone else.” Bryan
feels that economically, that’s an important point. “We simply can’t
afford to address all of our affordable housing needs through new
construction” says Bryan. “However, if we enable the market to work
more efficiently, the natural forces of supply and demand can
relieve some of the pressure on housing prices for low- and
moderate-income homebuyers.”
One of the things I find refreshing about talking with Bryan is his
willingness to look at ideas from a different point of view. Bryan
not only says he wants to create ongoing dialogues with policy
makers, planning directors and the planning commissions in our
communities, he means it. He has spent countless hours with city
council members and members of the state legislature talking about
how to improve our housing market. “We have a lot of policy
recommendations at the state and local level,” says Bryan, “that we
want to introduce and implement.”
If you’d like to learn more about the Washington Association of
Realtors’ Quality of Life program, you can contact Bryan Wahl
at 360-562-6024 or go to their website at
www.warealtor.com.
Good Partners Help Make
Great Things Happen: Including Sam Anderson and the Master Builders
Association of King and Snohomish Counties
One unifying theme that has emerged from this collection of articles
is that if you want to accomplish significant things, it helps to
have great partners. Which brings me to Sam Anderson, Executive
Officer of the Master Builders Association (MBA) of King and
Snohomish Counties. Since he took on that role in 1998, Sam and his
regional MBA have partnered with the Commission on a number of
important mandates. He has also been appointed by the Governor to
serve on the Affordable Housing Advisory Board (AHAB).
Sam Anderson, Executive Officer
Master Builders Association of King and Snohomish Counties
The MBA membership is primarily comprised of for-profit builders who
share many fundamental concerns about keeping housing affordable and
promoting the quality of life for Washington communities—and an
activist philosophy about participating in the legislative dialogue
at all levels. I value Sam’s perspective on issues that impact
housing in our state, and asked him to share his views with our
readers on what he and the MBA consider to be core concerns now and
down the road.
Here’s some of what’s on the MBA’s list:
Critical Area Ordinances. Counties and cities are currently updating
these CAOs in the context of the Growth Management Act. The MBA is
currently working with the Puget Sound Regional Council in its
process of assigning projected population numbers for counties,
parceled out by cities. “There are some cities that do a good
job—they step up to the plate,” says Anderson. Others want to have
it both ways. “Most people don’t want sprawl, but they also don’t
want density in their neighborhood. You can’t reconcile those two
points of view,” Sam says. “That public policy debate is very
important for us.”
Land Availability. “Land availability is the biggest challenge my
builders have right now. We’re all trying to figure out how to build
inside these urban growth boundaries.” Three-quarters of King County
is protected as farmland, forestland, watershed, or some other
designation; in Snohomish County, 90% is protected. This means
protected lands are not accessible for development at density higher
than one house per five acres. “Adequate, buildable land is
essential for new homes,” says Sam.
Big-Picture Thinking. The MBA is involved in efforts led by the
Cascade Land Conservancy to think 100 years down the road in terms
of the projected population growth of the region encompassing King,
Kittitas, Pierce, and Snohomish counties. The goal is to preserve
the attractiveness and quality of life of this region. “Yet at the
same time,” says Sam, “to accommodate growth, and accommodate it
fairly. The Growth Management Act requires you to look 20 years out;
from a practical standpoint, we need to look 100 years out so that
we don’t make decisions today that foreclose things that we need to
do in the future.”
Impact fees. Sam points out that the median lot price in Snohomish
County, for example, is up to about $125,000. That’s right: that’s
just the lot. To his mind the new homebuyer shouldn’t have to absorb
all of the costs of growth, when in fact we’re all the
beneficiaries. The MBA, along with the Commission and a number of
other partners, have been supporting legislation in Olympia to
eliminate impact fees and address that shortfall with an increase in
real estate excise taxes for schools and other public projects.
Though the bill got derailed last month, we’re continuing to work
together on supporting its passage.
Permit reform. The MBA is helping Snohomish County EDC and
Enterprise Seattle fund a model urban centers code. The goal is to
reform the City of Seattle’s approach to building and land
development codes. Anderson poses. “How can we get like Tacoma, that
has a nine-page downtown code vs. Seattle’s 1,500-page downtown
code? How do we bring efficiency?”
Contractor general liability insurance. Simply put, rates are
skyrocketing, and for-profit builders are frequently unable to get
insurance to build housing— particularly condos. “Last year we built
a real coalition around this problem to solve it in the
legislature,” says Anderson. “We made some progress and we’re still
working on it this year. This is a growth management problem, it’s
an environmental problem, and it’s a housing affordability problem.
Without condos, we can’t make the Growth Management Act work; and we
can’t increase the number of first-time homeowners.”
Over the past several years, the MBA and the Commission have
partnered with the Housing Development Consortium and the Seattle
King County Association of Realtors to produce a series of
television ads called Housing our Community. The point has been to
introduce a range of resources to first-time homebuyers. Says Sam,
“The story we have to tell is about the for-profit business and
non-profit organization, lenders and realtors working together to
create housing in the community. This working together—that’s the
story. Long-term, it’s what’s important.” I couldn’t agree more with
Sam’s last thought.
NEWSLETTER ARCHIVE
About Us
The Washington State Housing Finance Commission is a self-supporting
agency that provides below-market financing to buy, build or
preserve affordable housing and nonprofit capital facilities. The
Commission builds partnerships with the private sector to raise
capital needed to further these social and economic objectives at no
cost to the taxpayers of Washington State. For more
information about the Commission and its work, visit
www.wshfc.org or call
206-464-7139 or 1-800-767-HOME (4663) toll free in Washington State.
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