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The Public Official’s Guide to
Affordable Housing

Question:
Is your community prepared to....

-provide the housing needed for all its citizens?

-get all the financial help available to you for assistance in housing?

You can help your municipality.

Achieve a complete "ladder" of housing types that meets the needs of all your citizens

Partner with neighborhood organizations, funders, MSHDA and others to create successful, scattered-site affordable housing throughout your community

Make public policy that will build a strong community over many years

Avoid regulations and restrictions that discourage affordable housing development

Benefits to the user of this resource:

Learn the critical connection between affordable housing and economic development

Discover the many benefits MSHDA offers to municipalities

Explore the process, the partners and the money involved in affordable housing efforts

Learn how to deal constructively and helpfully with the NIMBY syndrome

Discover the benefits of land banks, regional planning, inter-governmental cooperation

Learn from turnaround municipalities how they have dealt creatively with housing problems, and how they have taken advantage of trends and tools available

Your effectiveness as a leader in local government relies on your ability to communicate effectively with community stakeholders. This resource provides basic information about affordable housing that you can use to gain support for projects that revitalize your community and provide housing for a wide variety of income levels. The end result of this is that the community retains both people and businesses.

This resource demonstrates how to build a team of partners and assemble an array of funding sources necessary to build high quality, low density, mixed income, scattered site, affordable housing. It gives a primer on the process, the partners and the money involved. It provides you with information that will help you meet neighborhood resistance where it occurs. This makes your job as a local public official less onerous.

Here you will find the tools you need to make appropriate policy, interpret that policy to the community, and take steps to get affordable housing projects started. This resource shows you how case study communities deal with developers and how they deal with community attitudes.

Public officials from seven Michigan communities describe how they put together outstanding affordable housing projects. They tell you how they found the partners and the money. They discuss what they learned, and show you the pitfalls to avoid.

Using this CD-Rom will help you learn how to strengthen the connection between affordable housing, community revitalization and economic development. You will be able to guide the creation of sound public policy and provide a "ladder" of housing to meet the needs of persons at all income levels in your community.

Your knowledge will help your municipality plan for meeting the future housing needs of your community's residents. This will provide a workforce that lives in the community where they work. You will discover how this not only retains local businesses but attracts new economic development as well.

There is a growing and substantial difference between "market level" housing and "affordable" housing. This difference can be bridged with the use of multiple and varied funding sources when developing affordable housing. These include federal funds, MSHDA and other state funds, private investors, foundations, and your own municipal funds. This CD shows you how to put together a set of funding partners that provide the money you need to make affordable housing work.

Frequently, both nonprofit and for-profit developers encounter municipal regulations and procedures that are time consuming, and thus very expensive. You will learn how to streamline your municipality's development process without sacrificing either control or quality. You can learn from others whose efforts have been successful how to create "destinations," "cool cities" and "smart" communities.

This resource will help you make well-informed decisions about planning, financing, developing and managing community revitalization and affordable housing projects.

Discover how and why community revitalization and preservation are inter-connected.

Learn how local neighborhood associations and nonprofit developers can be key to the success of affordable housing projects. These groups bring private funding as well as the management and training components so necessary with low-income populations.

See what happens when neighborhoods saddled with poverty, crime and long-term disinvestment come alive with the combined vision and hard work of many partners.

Learn how to deal with neighborhood resistance, commonly referred to as "nimbysim" (Not In My Back Yard-ism). Learn how the stereotypes just aren't true any more, and see what other communities have done to dispel these myths.

Explore the concept of the Land Bank and see how it streamlines the process of taking tax-foreclosed properties and providing clear title so they can be re-developed.

See and hear public officials discuss the importance of regional planning and inter-governmental cooperation. Discover the positive results such efforts can bring.

Discover how "affordable housing" means housing for low-income earners, the elderly and those with disabilities. It also means housing for teachers, police, fire and other city employees. You will understand and be able to share with your colleagues that mixed income and mixed use developments work best, especially in lower-density, scattered site developments.

Case Study Cities:

Ann Arbor and Washtenaw County
The story of a city and a county combining efforts to plan and manage social services and projects of community revitalization, including affordable housing. Learn how they collaborate, use citizen input and streamline their service delivery system.

Flint
The story of Michigan's first "Land Bank," put together under new legislation that allows a county to turn over tax-foreclosed property in record time, thus saving many neighborhoods from severe blight before revitalization efforts can be undertaken. See how 6 blocks of rundown, decayed housing is coming back under a model community development plan that involves significant input from neighborhood residents.

Grand Rapids
Three projects describe a variety of approaches to affordable housing found in that city. Some of the tools used are historic preservation, low income tax credits and MSHDA programs. Once-dilapidated and crime-ridden neighborhoods are coming alive as the city benefits from regional planning and inter-governmental cooperation in the midst of tight budget years. Private funders and faith-based neighborhood organizations and nonprofit developers are also featured.

Jackson
The story of the city that decided to do scattered site affordable housing preservation, rehab and new construction with its own personnel and funds. The city finds funding partners and collaborates with neighborhood groups in the process. See what volunteer labor plus city resources can do to remove blight and start a domino effect of clean-up among neighborhood homeowners.

Kalamazoo
Explore this new suburban location of multi-family and single-family, mixed income affordable housing that will be a model for many years to come. Led by a nonprofit developer, Rosewood challenges the stereotypes and provides the models for future new construction in suburban neighborhoods. This case study also describes how neighborhood resistance was met with compassion, concern and the willingness to change the development plan.

Port Huron
The story of how one wealthy, committed native resident came to the city, brought or sought out multiple partners, and began to rehab and restore buildings in blighted areas. This enabled the city to begin dealing with a decades-old problem of decay and disinvestment on which they had been unable to make progress for many years.

Taylor
One of the turnaround stories that shows what can be done over a decade with modest investment and careful stewardship of funds by a determined and well-informed mayor and city council. Once called "Taylor-tucky" by its critics, Taylor is now a highly successful example to others in their revitalization efforts. The center of this effort is excellent planning, taking a long-range view, and having many partners for both funding and development.

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