Thursday night the Community Development Committee will present their 5-year sustainable and inclusive growth plan for affordable housing in Charleston.
The plan consists of 37 different tools they plan to use to address the lack of affordable housing based on data from the last few years. It encompasses all the City of Charleston is looking to do, to make sure residents have access to affordable housing.
The median price of a home in 2018 was more than $377,000. And although the City of Charleston has assisted nearly 20,000 people through their community development programs over the last 3 years, affordable housing remains one of Charleston’s toughest issues to crack.
One of the main topics at the meeting will be the different zoning strategies they are looking to implement.
One being inclusionary zoning, which is engaging the private sector and nonprofit communities to include affordable housing in everything they construct. They are now working closely with state legislators on a new approach to get a program fully approved.
Another topic is how the city plans to institute mixed-use workforce housing, allowing developers to opt-in and agree to provide a certain percentage of affordable housing or space to build affordable housing.
“Housing provides stability that nothing else can provide,” Geona Shaw Johnson, Director of the Housing and Community Development Department said. “So when you look at, and I’ve heard people say, when you look at people who attend school and when they have a stable home, it leads to improved performance in school. It leads to improved behavior.”
Another one of the larger topics in Thursday’s presentation is funding. The city uses bond, state and federal dollars toward affordable housing programs. The Federal money comes from a low-income housing tax credit, which can provide $6-10 million towards an affordable housing development. On the state level, the state finance agency has administered 35,000 affordable apartments across the state, more than 2,000 are in Charleston. The city also approved a $20 million bond fund in 2017.
Officials with the city also say those who make 60% and below the area median income qualify for the low-income tax credit program. And they define “affordable” housing as a household spending 30% or less of their combined income on housing. If residents are spending more, they call it “house burdened.”
“We attempt to cover a diverse and wide array of persons in the income ranges,” Johnson said. “And literally there’s a need at every point of that income range. And so we work with local developers both for-profit and nonprofit to help us meet that goal.”
Source: Live 5
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