Does Knoxville have enough affordable housing?
by Joe Tarr
She sold her first home back in 1988, when she went to college for an engineering degree. A few years later, she was forced into retirement when she got lead poisoning at work.
Now on disability, Fisher feared she'd be paying rent for the rest of her life. But one day, she saw an ad for an affordable housing program on the back of a bus. "I thought, 'Well, I'm going to call that number,'" she says.
She went through the program, paid off a few bills, and qualified for down payment assistance. Last April, she closed on her second home, off Sullivan and Western, near Cumberland Estates. "Nobody wanted this house but it had a lot of potential," she says. "I could see that. It's woody, but I'm in a neighborhood. The stores are a mile away. You're going to laugh—there's a graveyard behind my house. It's very peaceful. They don't bother me back there."
She's fixed it up some and is painting the "hideous aqua" neutral beige. "My neighbors are all excited that it's not going to be aqua forever," she says.
"Affordable housing" is a term that could mean lots of different things, but it's something that everyone wants and needs. "The term comes really loaded," says Corky Neal, executive director of the Knox Housing Partnership. "Typically, it means cheap housing for poor people. But, everybody, unless they live out on the street, has affordable housing."
Owning a house can be a watershed in a family's life. It can lead to stability, reduce your income taxes by thousands of dollars and build wealth. Home ownership can help turn neighborhoods around.
In Knoxville, there's no shortage of cheap housing. But, that doesn't mean that everyone here is living in ideal conditions.
Some have to sacrifice a lot to find a place to live. Others can only afford housing that isn't all that desirable. Some overextend themselves and, with the help of predatory loan sharks, their dream house quickly becomes a nightmare when they're foreclosed on. Others can only find housing in rundown, unsafe neighborhoods.
But, whether people rent or own, solid housing is something everyone should have, Neal says.
"Housing is an inalienable right," Neal says. "We all deserve decent housing. Just because you're poor shouldn't preclude you from safe, decent housing."
For housing to be considered affordable, mortgage lenders and financial planners say it's not supposed to exceed 30 percent of a person's monthly income. Others go as high as 45 percent, but include the cost of utilities in the formula.
In Knox County, which had a per capita income in 2000 of $28,281, the average person should be able to spend $700 a month for housing. In this city, that will afford some decent digs.
But, of course, a lot of people fall below the average. According to the 2000 Census, 13 percent of the metropolitan area's 670,000 residents lived in poverty—including 16 percent of children, 9 percent of families, and 8 percent of senior citizens. Poverty levels also vary depending on the size of the family. For a single person under 65, the poverty level is $9,214 or less in annual income. For a family of five, it's $20,812 or less a year.
"When you're on [Social Security Income] and your monthly income is $800, that doesn't afford a lot of housing," says Calvin Taylor, head of Community Action Coalition's Homeward Bound program.
It tries to help people who don't qualify for government aid or are in a crisis situation. It also has emergency grant programs that help people through a temporary crisis. But if the crisis is long term (i.e., excessive rent or utilities) the people at CAC work to change their situation.
Every morning, the CAC office on Western Avenue is filled with people in a jam. One woman, who didn't want her name used, was released last year from prison after 18 months for a drug charge and then some time in a halfway house. She and her six children are living with her aunt, but her aunt is moving to a new place and they can't stay there.
As a recent felon (defined as having a conviction less than four years old), she doesn't qualify for public housing or a housing voucher. Now working at a fast food restaurant, the woman says she doesn't care too much where she lives. "I'd take anything right now, it don't matter to me. But without the drug activity would be good," she says.
The CAC staff worker is helping her through the appeals process at KCDC. But, unless they waive the requirement, she'll likely end up in a shelter.
Another woman says she just left an abusive relationship. She qualified for a housing voucher, but there was a mix up and the paper work didn't go through.
When the Fifth Ave. Motel was condemned last year, giving residents just a week to find new homes, CAC stepped in to help. Taylor says CAC worked with residents in 27 apartments, helping 23 relocate. The other four families either moved out of town or were placed in temporary accommodations.
Taylor says Knoxville badly needs new low-income housing units. "There is no initiative of any significant amount that I'm aware of," he says. "We probably need at least 1,000 affordable low-income based units, widely dispersed in the county and city. Is that going to happen? Not any time in the future that I can see it."
Not everyone agrees that Knoxville is in such dire need of affordable housing.
Jenny Kitts of the East Tennessee Foundation says there's plenty of cheap housing in Knoxville. With the foundation, she helps fund a number of affordable housing programs, including Habitat for Humanity and various community investment projects. She and her husband also own several rental properties.
What's needed are better social service programs to help people with specific problems such as finances, drug abuse, and mental illness, Kitts says.
"A lot of those folks at the Fifth Avenue Motel have fallen out of the system in someway," Kitts says. "It'd be foolish for me to say they've chosen to be homeless. But because they refuse to follow rules or get drunk or abuse drugs or are mentally ill, they end up in places like the Fifth Avenue Motel. Those people need help with mental illness and drug rehabilitation, not affordable housing. That's really what they need."
Although many people have credit problems and need help getting into a home, Kitts says that Knoxville doesn't lack inexpensive housing stock.
Kitts points out that from July to September last year, there were 2,133 houses priced between $20,000 and $90,000 on the market in Knoxville, of which only 734 sold. There were also 325 condos in that range for sale, only 143 of which sold.
"There are enough providers in Knoxville to afford anyone the opportunity, if they want, to be a homeowner," says Kelle Shultz, executive director of Habitat for Humanity. "What I think the issue is is we've become a credit card society."
According to one non-profit group, Americans owe a total of $65 billion in credit card debt, an average $4,000 per consumer. That amount of debt is often enough to keep a person from being approved by a mortgage bank to buy a house.
"There's lots of affordable housing stock," agrees Neal, of the Knox Housing Partnership. "Knoxville has pretty cheap housing market. The issue is credit. They can't get mortgages because they've got huge debt loads.... Nobody wants to deal with this problem."
Kitts says city needs to give more attention to its traditional neighborhoods, like Old North, Parkridge, and Morningside. You can get a lot more house for the price in these neighborhoods.
But Taylor says it's not that simple. While there's plenty of cheap housing to be found in Knoxville, it's often substandard. He says while someone might be able to cover rent with government aid, problems such as poor insulation and construction quickly sink them. Taylor has copies of several of his clients' utility bills from two winters ago. It was unusually cold and some months they racked up bills exceeding $800.
"How can you afford that? You can't," he says. One client he's working with is a woman who gets $898 a month in disability income. Her rent is $450 a month but her winter utility bill is $300—leaving only $148 left for food, transportation, and other expenses for her and her teenage son.
"If there was enough affordable housing in Knoxville, then why are we spending $3 million a year [through various programs] on utility assistance?" he asks.
If Taylor had the chance to build the 1,000 units of affordable housing he dreams about, he says he'd build energy efficient duplexes and triplexes, primarily for families, scattered throughout the county. He's likes the apartment complexes built with low-income tax credits—places like Sutherland Square, Rocky Top Apartments, and Hillside Place—which are energy efficient and often have amenities like pools and tennis courts.
While Taylor says the various home ownership programs in the city are great, they don't help that many people. "Once you get down to the nitty gritty details, very few people are buying through those programs," he says. "It's the cream of the crop."
Of course, not everyone wants to or is able to own their own home, which is why there's a demand for decent, cheap rental housing.
Probably the biggest program that helps low-income people get rental housing is the federal "housing choice vouchers" (formerly called section 8 vouchers). People who make less than the federal poverty income levels qualify for a housing subsidy, which they use in the private market to find rental property. The subsidy is paid to the landlord, not the resident.
Many landlords like the program, because it's guaranteed income. However, others shy away from it, possibly prejudiced against the poor and minorities or worried about added building requirements and red tape necessitated by the government program. KCDC has to inspect any property before it can be used for a housing voucher. "We don't go by city code, but we're close," Debbie Sumner, head of the Knoxville Community and Development Corporation's housing choice voucher program. They check to see that there's fire extinguishers, smoke alarms, adequate room and windows, and that it's in decent condition, she says.
But Taylor says the inspections are inadequate because they don't take into account energy efficiency and utility bills, which are often what end up crippling the poor.
"If they would take into account utility bill history and require landlords to make corrections that would significantly reduce this problem," he says. "All they do is make sure the windows aren't broken and there's no hole in the wall. If [a house] has got very thin single pane windows, hallow core doors, no insulation, it doesn't matter."
One of the goals of the housing choice voucher program is to keep poverty from being concentrated in one area. But, often the options of those seeking housing are limited to certain areas. Nationally, critics argue that the housing choice voucher program and the private market conspire to create new ghettos. Or, that they end up turning a healthy mixed income neighborhood into one that is predominately poor.
KCDC distributes the majority of the city's housing choice vouchers. As of this month, there were 2,344 vouchers being used, with another 182 trying to be filled.
Sumner says there are housing choice vouchers being used in every section of Knoxville. However, she admits that landlords in some areas won't accept them. A couple of neighborhoods near downtown have the most of the vouchers. Census tracts 5, 6, 19, and 20 in East Knoxville have a combined 465; tracts 29 and 41 in North Knoxville have 336; South Knoxville's tract 8 has 115; and the center city area has 65.
In West Knoxville, the heaviest concentration of vouchers are in 26, along Sutherland Avenue and Kingston Pike, where there are 180.
Too many poor people in a neighborhood burdens it with an unfair share of social problems such as unemployment, crime, and drug use. But housing choice vouchers are often locked out of affluent neighborhoods. Many middle and upper income residents have been known to fight to keep "affordable housing" out of their neighborhoods, fearing what the influx might happen to their property values. Some subdivisions also have deed restrictions, requiring minimum lot sizes or house sizes that effectively keep the poor from moving there.
Neal understands because he's watched how neighborhoods can suddenly plunge in value.
"People have the equity stripped out of their houses because the neighborhood goes down. And I think that's fundamentally wrong," he says. "[Property assessors] cause property values to tumble because of the way they value property. There's a lot of blame to go around. Racism is part of it. Realtors that steer people to certain neighborhoods because of status...Developers are greatly to blame for building neighborhoods limited by income diversity."
Housing advocates favor mixed income neighborhoods because the poor aren't left to fend for themselves with few resources. In diverse, mixed-income neighborhoods, the rich and middle-class have a harder time ignoring the poor and they have a vested interest in making sure they get a helping hand, they say.
So finding a way to create these mixed income neighborhoods is task that many housing advocates are trying to pull off.
"What I would like to see is the developers who build $100,000 homes come and build next to a Habitat for Humanity home," says Kitts.
Meanwhile, the federal government is in the process of tweaking the housing choice voucher program, allowing recipients to use the subsidy toward a mortgage payment. Many affordable housing advocates believe that this change will help many families buy that might otherwise rent.
Next month, Anita Fortson will do something she's been dreaming about her whole life—move into a new house.
Now living in Regency Apartments, her home is being built on Ivy Avenue in Burlington. The task of getting a nice place of her own wasn't easy. She declared a bankruptcy several years ago and couldn't find anyone who would approve a loan for her.
But with the help of the Knox Housing Partnership, she was finally able to secure one.
"I have two daughters and a grandson. We've lived in the projects and various apartment complexes," Fortson says. "This will be our first house. It'll be something that is ours. I want a place where when my kids grow up, they can come back to. And I want to know I'm putting money toward something that will be mine."
Bad credit or no money for a down payment are what keep most people from buying a home. Many programs set up to help them.
Knox Housing Partnership is one of them. Formed because of a series of protests about affordable housing in the late '80s, the partnership offers financial planning help to people through the process of getting a loan and owning a house: everything from how credit reports are determined to how to make simple repairs. Their mission is to "enhance communities through quality housing and build wealth," Neal says.
"Sixty percent of first time homeowners [KHP works with] are single moms," Neal says. "Buying a house is one of the few ways a woman can generate wealth. I started two small businesses because I was able to borrow against my house. It's an asset you can use for other opportunities."
As part of that mission, KHP develops affordable housing. In the past five years, KHP has built about 100 new homes and renovated 250, which are then sold at a loss to people who meet low-income guidelines.
The partnership also owns 120 rental units, many of them for senior citizens, and is looking to build another 20 units. Its operating budget is $820,000 and it has assets of about $4 million.
KHP group works mostly in the poorest of neighborhoods, where it tries to spark revitalization. The group loses money on all the projects it does. "In everyone you do, you lose money," Neal says. "That's because we're there before the market is and we're trying to turn the market. Once the market's there, we're off somewhere else."
Habitat for Humanity is most famous housing program in the country. Aside from featuring Jimmy Carter in their ads, the program relies on community volunteers and corporate donations, not government money.
In Knoxville, Habitat has been particularly successful. Several churches regularly help Habitat build houses here; Central Baptist Church of Bearden, for example, is now building its fifth Habitat house. Habitat builds about 30 houses a year in Knox County (the group hopes to increase that to 40 a year, Shultz says). Of the 215 houses they've built or renovated since 1985, they've only had to foreclose on two, she says. The houses cost less than $50,000 to build and their replacement value is around $65,000 to $80,000.
The average Habitat family makes about $16,000 a year and pays a zero percent, 20-year mortgage. To qualify, a person also has to complete 500 hours of "sweat equity"—working on other Habitat projects and taking classes on financing, home maintenance and being a good neighbor, Shultz says.
Habitat has tried a lot of different approaches here—renovating old homes in traditional neighborhoods, stand alone new construction, and building a 50-home development off of Rutledge Pike.
Taylor says home ownership programs are great, but believes that they benefit only a few people. However, he's impressed with Habitat for Humanity.
"Probably the best program out there is Habitat for Humanity," Taylor says. "In terms of flexibility and working with people, no other program compares."
However, despite its good intentions, Habitat's homes have been criticized for looking "affordable."
Neal says that's a problem with a lot of affordable homes, including the ones his own organization has built.
"The issues most people have with Habitat have to do with their physical aesthetic and the appearance of their houses. To the extent that they're basic housing, I think they're great," Neal says.
They could look better, he admits. "That's a problem I've got with the houses we've built—they're butt ugly. They look cheap. It's not cheap. The houses we build are expensive to build. But we spend very little on landscaping or exterior appearance. But they're good houses. I want to change the street appeal. I think it's important that our stuff looks real good."
One affordable project that doesn't look at all cheap is Hope VI in Mechanicsville. On the site of the old College Homes housing project, KCDC is building a neighborhood that looks like it was built 100 years ago. The houses are Victorian, Craftsman, and Colonial in style, with large front porches and big windows. They're also energy efficient, with values ranging from $80,000 to $119,000.
Mechanicsville is designed for walking, with large sidewalks, trees, and bright attractive street lamps.
"Even though most of the houses are for low-income families, we wanted to create a neighborhood attractive enough that anyone would want to live there," says Hope VI coordinator Becky Wade.
About half built, the development will eventually include 255 houses, 117 of which will be rental. So far, 25 homes have been sold, all to low-income residents who can qualify for down payment assistance and low-interest loans, Wade says.
One of those residents is Jackie Blair. Blair moved into the old College Homes development when she was 2 years old and lived there most of her life. She moved out shortly before the buildings were razed in 1998 and was so upset about the process then that she wasn't sure she wanted to come back.
But Blair moved back in November, this time as a homeowner. She worked with KCDC workers for a year, quitting her two part-time jobs for a full-time one at Children's Hospital and paying off some bills. With five children, she loves having her own place.
"This is mine," she says. "I don't have to report changes I make to anyone. If I get a better job, I don't have to pay more [rent money]. I can tell the kids to get out of my yard."
Because of the process of getting people verified, selling homes in Mechanicsville takes a little longer than selling homes in most neighborhoods. "A lot of families who would like to buy a house here have credit issues," Wade says. "It's not that they'll never be able to buy a house, but right now they can't."
Lewis Holmes, the realtor marketing Hope VI, says he refers a lot of clients to places they can get help. "If you cannot qualify for one of our homes today, we can refer you to an agency to help you get your credit in order," he says. "Within 12 to 18 months, we could possibly get you ready for home ownership. We're thinking long-term."
To create more of a mixed-use neighborhood, KCDC is also trying to sell 15 houses in Mechanicsville on the open market to people who do not qualify as low-income buyers. A contract for one of those homes has been signed, Wade says. Attracting market rate buyers—i.e., those who don't need financial assistance—is important to making the neighborhood a success, Wade says. "It signals that the community is safe, desirable and worth investing in. Which I think it is."
As with almost any housing program, there are critics and fans of Hope VI's approach. Homeward Bound's Calvin Taylor says projects like Mechanicsville don't really help the poor. "The Hope VI project, in my opinion, is overpriced," he says. "It's for the working class, not the low-income."
But Wade says there is a great deal of diversity here. "It's for low-income families, but within that range there are different levels," she says.
For many housing advocates, the solution to creating decent affordable housing is obvious—to attract investment in city's traditional, core neighborhoods.
Built before zoning ordinances and mass-produced suburban subdivisions, these neighborhoods have great housing stock that can be renovated fairly inexpensively. And, they offer a variety of homes that could satisfy a variety of incomes and needs.
"Knox Housing Partnership wants to get more into development in certain areas, mainly poor urban neighborhoods," Neal says. "The idea being we create some sort of magnet that will spin out... It won't be just low income, although we probably won't be able to hit the top end of the income brackets.
"We also want to build on assets. If you look at some of the inner city neighborhoods, you've got some great housing stock and an ability to get to downtown and the job market quickly."
Those neighborhoods also have great parks, the potential for magnet and charter schools, and strong neighborhood groups, he adds.
A number of Knoxville's older neighborhoods are starting to make a comeback, as more people discover their value and invest there.
Matt and Shannon Foster moved into a renovated bungalow on Jefferson Avenue in East Knoxville's Parkridge three years ago.
"Why did we move here? Because we could afford it," Shannon says, sitting on the couch in her living room as her 13-month daughter plays on the floor in front of her. "And we like older houses."
The house cost $47,000 and had all new plumbing, wiring, and refinished floors. Their mortgage is $430 a month. Since they've lived there, they've concluded that the negative hype about East Knoxville is just that.
They've never had any burglaries and know most of their neighbors. There's a group home for mentally ill right next door, but they say that they've never had any trouble with them. They've come to appreciate that there are people at the home round the clock.
There is some crime—prostitutes and drugs—in spots of the neighborhood. But, as Shannon points out, there was just a big drug bust at West Town Mall, where she's a manager at the Gap. As they see more people investing here, the neighborhood diversifies and becomes stronger.
"The perception of the east side blinds people to the prices here," Matt says. "It sets them up to not give the neighborhood a chance."
"It's a neighborhood," Shannon says. "You get the church ladies coming by and you get the kids selling things. We know half the block."
The Fosters like the neighborhood so much that they're bought a larger home a few doors down. They're renovating it—new wiring, plumbing, drywall, and refinished floors—and hoping to move there in a couple of months. It has several large cedar closets and the largest bathroom Shannon has ever owned, along with a great big front porch.
They bought the house for $25,000 and spending about $50,000 on renovations. Their new mortgage will be about $540 a month, and they plan to rent the old one out. "It's kind of hard to beat that for affordability," Matt says.
January 23, 2003 * Vol. 13, No. 4
© 2003 Metro Pulse
| 
