How to measure and identify community affordable housing needs A Home for Everyone Conference, July 2017 Kurt Paulsen, PhD, AICP UW-Madison, Dept. of Urban and Regional Planning

Key points As part of a strategy (involving stakeholders, communicating with elected officials) use key data points to: Express need Show changes or show comparisons Tell a story (connect the data to real people’s lives and stories) Motivate and mobilize for action The idea of the “gap” – difference between what people make and what housing costs; or households who are “cost-burdened.” “…provide an adequate housing supply that meets existing and forecasted housing demand … and provide a range of housing choices that meet the needs of persons of all income levels and of all age groups and persons with special needs, … and promote the availability of land for the development or redevelopment of low–income and moderate– income housing …” (Wis. Stat. § 66.1001(2)(b))

Housing Demand Drivers of housing demand: households and income How many? Structure (seniors? 1 person households? With kids?) These are easily accessible: https://factfinder.census.gov (enter community name under “Community Facts”)

Housing Demand: income “Persons of all income levels…” Use HUD’s “Area Median Income” (or AMI, also called CMI). More complicated to get and talk about, better than Census. There’s actually an app/mobile interface: https://m.huduser.gov/fmril/

Key findings: community balance Madison has less than 48 percent of county population but houses 73 percent of extremely-low-income renter households.

Key findings: future scenarios Range of scenarios to remedy existing gaps + provide for future needs through 2040. Affordable “need”  650 to 1200 per year

Housing Demand: income Another way to think about income is to look at the wages people ACTUALLY earn in your community. This is a little more complicated, but serves us well in Dane County to think about “Workforce Housing.” https://www.bls.gov/oes/current/oessrcma.htm (click on your metropolitan area)

Maximum affordable house, by occupation Median sales price (Dane County): $221,000

Who is Dane County’s Workforce?

Who is Dane County’s Workforce?

Housing Prices/Costs Goal here is to help people understand the relationship between actual incomes and housing costs.

Document Housing Need Multiple sources, present all together DPI: Homeless school children by school district data: https://dpi.wi.gov/homeless/data Housing Vacancy/Rental Vacancy data Data from local housing providers, homeless service providers (CofC), non-profits. Data on voucher/PH wait lists from local PHA.

Document Housing Need (con’t) Use HUD data on cost-burdened owners/renters by income category (https://www.huduser.gov/portal/datasets/cp.html) Key data point is number (and percentages) of ELI and VLI renter households severely cost-burdened. Also shows data on cost-burdened homeowners These are people who ALREADY LIVE IN YOUR COMMUNITY Use Urban Institute’s “Mapping America’s Rental Housing Crisis”: http://apps.urban.org/features/rental-housing-crisis-map/