Tell the Board of Housing: Low-income people shouldn’t be displaced for the sake of affordable housing
Displacement and relocation are complicated issues, and policies have to balance the needs of low-income residents with an owner’s property rights and the community’s need for economic development. However, when private developers get public money for the purpose of housing people with low incomes, protecting existing tenants should be a basic requirement.
The saga of the Skyview Trailer Park in Missoula illustrates the issue. In 2018, owners of the Skyview Trailer Park in Missoula evicted residents of 34 mobile homes. Many of the residents faced homelessness, and their older mobile homes would cost thousands of dollars to relocate-if they could find another mobile home park to accept them at all. A segment on “Last Week Tonight with John Oliver” serves as a great explainer on this issue (and even mentions NeighborWorks Montana’s manufactured housing program!).
The situation at the Skyview Trailer Park spurred community members to action. There were articles in local media, including a cover story in the Missoula Independent. Housing agencies provided intakes on-site. Grassroots organizers even raised over $9,000 through an online GoFundMe campaign.
A Missoula Independent issue featuring a cover story entitled “Faces of Skyview.”
Yet the property’s owners were conspicuously absent from these efforts. They did not contribute to the GoFundMe, or offer any assistance whatsoever. The trailer park’s buyer did not even offer qualifying displaced residents or neighbors slots on a waiting list at the new development-a gesture of good faith that would cost next to nothing.
In fact, the buyer of the Skyview Trailer Park did less for displaced residents than other developers have done in similar situations. For instance, in 2014 a mobile home park on 3rd Street was razed to be redeveloped as a private business, and the developer told the Missoulian that residents could call for financial help.
The sad irony of this situation is that as the Skyview Trailer Park’s buyer overlooked the needs of residents facing homelessness, they were applying for Low-Income Housing Tax Credits (LIHTC). In the name of affordable housing, the federal government was potentially going to spend millions subsidizing a project that evicted dozens. How could this happen?
Unfortunately, LIHTC is the rare affordable housing program that is not subject to the federal Uniform Relocation Act (URA). The URA is a federal law that requires developers to protect displaced residents by requiring reimbursement for moving expenses and payments for higher rent or other costs at another home. As long as the buyer did not seek other forms of federal financing like HOME funds or Community Development Block Grants (CDBG), they could thread the needle and not have to relocate Skyview Trailer Park residents.
Preserving naturally occurring affordable housing like mobile homes, and helping residents relocate when that is not possible, requires solutions at many levels. “A Place to Call Home,” Missoula’s 2019 housing plan, recommends that city-financed projects follow a policy similar to the URA.
Right now, one of the best opportunities to prevent another situation like the evictions at the Skyview Trailer Park is by providing input to the Montana Board of Housing (MBOH). MBOH awards tax credits in a competitive process, and they could use the application process to incentivize projects that don’t displace people, or at least provide for their relocation.
Currently the Board of Housing is accepting public comments on the state’s Qualified Application Plan (QAP), the document that outlines priorities for the tax credits. In its current form, the draft QAP has little to say about relocation. The only instance of the word “relocation” is in item 15 on a list of 32 application requirements:
For Applications proposing Rehabilitation or replacement of existing units, include a preliminary relocation plan addressing the logistics of moving tenants out of their residences and providing temporary housing during the Rehabilitation, the probable length time tenants will be out of their units, and/or replacement and returning tenants to their residences upon completion of the Rehabilitation or replacement;
The QAP can and should include a more robust requirement for people who are displaced by new developments.
Please email MBOH a comment, asking them to require relocation assistance, or at least tip the scales toward projects that either don’t displace people or take responsibility for those that lose their homes. Public comment can be emailed to Kellie Guariglia at Montana Housing’s Multifamily Program.
Ultimately, the Skyview Trailer Park project was not funded for reasons unrelated to relocation (reporter Derek Brouwer has a great Twitter thread on the subject). Homeword, a local affordable housing nonprofit, put together a new affordable housing project at the site, which is now an empty lot. No doubt that’s a positive development. But as Missoula grows, our community has fewer greenfield spaces and more conflicts about land use will arise. Nonetheless, we should be able to find common ground when it comes to making the best use of public financing of affordable housing, and not let good intentions be undermined by leaving people behind.
Originally published at http://jordanjlyons.wordpress.com on September 29, 2020.
