'American Dream' Author Details Housing Struggle
JEREMY MAREADY The Ledger
Jason DeParle found the struggle against poverty embodied in the life of Angela Jobe. Jobe's story was depicted by The New York Times senior staff writer's book, "American Dream."
She was a 25-year-old black woman from Chicago, who moved to Milwaukee in the mid-1990s looking for a better life, DeParle said.
Jobe had grown up on the border of gangland Chicago, her father a drunk and she a high school dropout.
This was the focus of DeParle's keynote address at this week's Florida Housing Coalition 19th Annual Statewide Affordable Housing Conference at ChampionsGate.
"The month Bill Clinton announced that he was running for president, she stepped off a Greyhound bus in Milwaukee to start a new life," DeParle read from an excerpt from his book. "She was 25 years old and arrived from Chicago towing two large duffel bags and three young kids. Angie had a pretty milk-chocolate face and a fireplug build -- her 4-foot 11-inch frame carried 150 pounds -- and the combination could make her look tender or tough, depending on her mood. She had never seen Milwaukee before and pronounced herself unimpressed. `Why they got all these old-ass houses!' she groused. `Where the brick at?' Irreverence was Angie's religion. She arrived in Milwaukee as she moved through the world, a short, stout fountain of exclamation points, half of them capping sentences that would peel paint from the bus station walls.
"Lots of women came to Milwaukee looking for welfare checks," he continued.
She had known the welfare system for the last 12 years of her life. But in the new city, she found a job as a nurse's aide, a job she came to love with the exception of the pay.
At $7.50 per hour, it wasn't much. But it was enough to get her off federal assistance.
While it barely provided more than what welfare afforded, it didn't allow for any expenses. Child care and food took the majority of her profits, and food
soon became a valued commodity in the household.
During the luncheon, DeParle commanded the attention of nearly 700 community and affordable-housing leaders from around the state.
Jobe's story was one that was familiar to many -- finding ways to give people a chance to help themselves.
The three-day conference covered a variety of topics, including a roundtable discussion on property insurance, housing advocacy strategies, developing programs for extremely low-income and special-needs families, foreclosure prevention, community land trusts, impact fees and legislative issues.
The Florida Housing Coalition is a nonprofit, statewide organization that brings together housing advocates and resources to provide affordable homes. The Coalition provides information, training and technical assistance on affordable housing and related issues.
"It was just a great conference," said Jeff Bagwell, executive director of the Keystone Challenge Fund in Lakeland and vice chair of the FHC board of directors. "A lot of people are saying they will be back next year."
Bagwell's program was one of the featured success stories of the conference. The program, which began in 1991, provides down-payment assistance to low- to moderate-income families.
Before homebuyers receive financial assistance from Keystone, they must attend education classes. Last year, the program accommodated 760 people, and more than 1,000 are expected this year, he said.
The conference also touched on two other hot-button issues in Polk County -- community land trusts and impact fees.
Community land trusts are fairly new to Florida and are now being considered an option by the Lakeland Downtown Development Authority as a way to bring more workforce housing to its proposed 449-unit development east of Massachusetts Avenue -- an area bordered by the Intown Bypass and East Bay Street.
Jamie Ross, affordable housing director for the public interest law firm 1,000 Friends of Florida, recently gave a presentation to LDDA members about the program. Ross also presented at this week's conference.
For a community to participate in the land trust program, property would need to be donated to a nonprofit organization created specifically for the trust. Home purchases and resales would be managed by the organization, which would have its own local board of directors.
The land would be owned and controlled by the nonprofit agency and leased to the homeowner for a nominal fee, typically $25-to-$35 a month, Ross has said. The agreement would be based on a 99-year lease that would last the life of the home and limit the appreciation of the property value in the home price.
While land trusts are designed to cut down on the cost of a home, impact fees take more out of the wallet.
While Polk's impact fees, at roughly $13,000, might seem steep to homeowners, you might think yourself lucky you don't live in Fremont or Gilmore, Calif.
In Fremont, residents pay a $19,000 impact fee for parks, said Gregory Burge, assistant professor of economics at Oklahoma State University. Burge recently participated in an impact fee study with the DeVoe L. Moore Center at Florida State University.
It's even more expensive in Gilmore, whose residents pay a $70,000 impact fee for a typical home. In that fee, $2,000 is for libraries and $20,000 is deposited into a general government category, he said.
But "impact fees in Florida are relatively high when compared to most of the country," Burge said. "And they are rapidly on the rise."
In his presentation, Burge said that one of the perils of impact fees is that they reduce the supply of new homes and drive up prices "especially for starter homes."
But Burge and his research colleagues argued that the proper use of impact fees, which are often considered as growth paying for itself, can actually benefit housing and attract affordable housing if local governments are willing to cooperate.
"The key to impact fees is a community gets to charge a developer," said Lloyd Boggio, president of Carlisle Development Group LLC in Miami. "But everyone knows the guy who buys the house ultimately pays the impact fee.
"A county that wants affordable housing will adjust impact fees to get affordable housing," he continued. "The key to affordable housing and impact fees is that it's one of the ways, maybe one of the most direct ways, you can say (to those of us who build affordable housing): Do you want us here, or do you not want us here?"
But while this week's conference is already over, the push for affordable housing in Polk County continues.
A 15-member steering committee has been formed for the Workforce Housing Alliance to develop ideas to bring in more affordable housing participation from the private business sector. The committee met for the first time last month and will be meeting with other groups around the county.
The committee is focused on offering incentives to builders to encourage affordable housing segments in new communities.
Some of the possible incentives for builders could include:
• Offering impact fee waivers.
• Using the county's accrued interest from impact fees, totaling about $2.9 million, for a down payment assistance program.
• Decreasing the time it takes for builders to receive approval of building permits.
• Increasing density in new home developments.
"The county and city are the only ones that have been contributing to affordable housing," said Jeff Bagwell, who is co-chairing the committee. "We want to look at different options."
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