The Importance of Vouchers: Lee Blons’ Testimony to Met Council CDC
by Lee Blons, CEO / President, Beacon Interfaith Housing Collaborative
On Monday, June 7, I delivered the following remarks to the Community Development Committee (CDC) of the Metropolitan (Met) Council. As of June 9, we have not gotten them to take action yet. I do want to thank Judy Johnson on the Met Council and Scott County Administrator Lezlie Vermillion for their support. The CDC received 85 written comments related to the issues outlined below – we are PROUD that 83 of those came from the collaborative!
The Met Council has been a key leader in the dramatic change in the attitude around affordable housing in local communities. You are now faced with a different problem to solve. City Councils are no longer resisting affordable housing but clamoring for the resources to create affordable housing in their communities.
Housing cannot be developed at 30 percent AMI (Area Median Income) without rent subsidy. It is just a fact. You control almost all the federal rent subsidy available outside of Minneapolis and St Paul. Are you willing to put your own resources behind reaching the goals of your 2040 Plan?
Your partners in affordable housing need you.
We have spent close to five years building up support for deeply affordable and supportive housing in conservative Scott County. The City of Shakopee has approved land use for Prairie Pointe despite some neighborhood opposition, and Scott County has approved its first ever capital investment of housing. Prairie Pointe is an innovative supportive housing development that will include serving families in the child protection system in collaboration with Scott and Carver counties. We’ve been awarded a national grant to work collaboratively on a service design to change the racial disparities in the removal of children from Black, Indigenous and families of color.
The City of Shakopee has agreed to the Met Council goal to produce 548 new homes affordable at 30 percent AMI by 2030 – an average of about 55 homes a year. What do you say to Shakopee about meeting their goals when they asked for resources that you have but you declined to make this project viable? As you know, this plays into the criticism of the Met Council that you are creating mandates but with no resources.
Meeting your 2040 plan requires systems change within housing finance. When you distribute your capital funding later this year, we challenge you to distribute your capital funding to match your own 2040 goals! Without project-based vouchers (PBVs) available to developers, we can predict that almost all your capital funding will focus on housing at 50 percent AMI or higher – despite your lofty 2040 goals that call for hundreds of new homes at 30 percent AMI in suburban communities.
Let me explain how this plays out: Beacon will be applying for capital funding from Minnesota Housing for two family supportive housing developments this year – one in Shakopee and one in north Minneapolis. Both are desperately needed. But we can predict today, that with MPHA vouchers already awarded for our Minneapolis project, it will be funded. But without PBVs from you, the one in Shakopee will not.
And adding insult to injury is that your own capital funding will most likely follow the same path. Our Minneapolis project will be much more likely to get capital funding from you than our Shakopee one because it will have rent subsidy and the Shakopee project won’t.
Let’s be clear: the barrier to creating deeply affordable and supportive housing in Shakopee in Scott County will not be neighborhood opposition, will not the city council, will not be the county and will not be the state. It will be the lack of funding from the Met Council.
The world is changing around you. What an irony if the burden shifts from the Met Council convincing cities to embrace deeply affordable to having cities trying to get the Met council to embrace deeply affordable development?
We ask you to step into your new leadership role with your resources. We are here to be one of your key vehicles to make that happen. We realize resources are limited but we can partner to make the systems change happen. Ensuring fair and accessible housing to overcome racial discrimination in Scott County is huge. Partnering to overcome racial disparities in the child welfare system through Prairie Pointe with Scott County is revolutionary! Please don’t put the brakes on this important project.
