Breaking the Fourth Wall: Week of September 9

Today we continue the weekly "Breaking the Fourth Wall" series that directs the blog's spotlight toward a particularly innovative or promising affordable housing project, luminary, or organization. 

Image Credit: Wikimedia Commons 

Santa Clara County, Calif., the largely affluent home of Silicon Valley and its associated titans of industry, is easily one of the most expensive real markets in the country with rents and prices of even modest homes far outstripping state and national norms. The county's increasingly affluence, fed by the attractive salaries of area technology companies, has made affordable housing options scant. The county's high cost of living has displaced many longtime Santa Clara residents have and prevented middle-income and first-time homebuyers from being able to add some socioeconomic diversity to the region.

In order to address the threat of economic stratification in Santa Clara County, Housing Trust Silicon Valley (formerly the Housing Trust of Santa Clara County) was founded in the 1998 under the auspices of Santa Clara County Board of Supervisors. The Housing Trust, "aimed at making Silicon Valley a more affordable place to live", makes a variety of loans and grants and has been remarkably successful in achieving its objectives of increasing the region's supply of affordable housing, assisting first-time homebuyers, and stabilizing local neighborhoods: the trust fund has invested more than $75 million in Silicon Valley community projects and has leveraged $1.88 billion to create nearly 10,000 housing opportunities. The success seems to stem from the fact that Housing Trust Silicon Valley is no ordinary local trust fund- it is a public-private partnership that channels local business wealth into creative solutions rather than apathy.

The innovation in Housing Trust Silicon Valley's model can be seen in two ways, both of which are vital to the proliferation of a trust: the source of funding and the way in which the funding is allocated. While the majority of U.S. affordable housing trust funds at the county level are funded through real estate transfer taxes (RETTs), impact fees paid by developers, and document recording fees, the Trust has targeted the deep pockets of Silicon Valley's corporations since its inception. Building upon the region's reputation as an incubator of ideas and companies' efforts to maintain good corporate citizenship and improve community relations, neighbors like Intel, Hewlett-Packard, and Applied Materials have routinely donated hundreds of thousands of dollars to the Trust's fundraising campaigns and more high-profile donors join the ranks every year. Secondly, the Trust is different from most peers in that is allocates resources to a wide variety of both low and middle-income residents who would otherwise be priced out of Santa Clara County. In addition to a neighborhood stabilization initiative, homelessness prevention project, and programs designed to aid low-income renters and victims of the foreclosure crisis, the Trust also provides special loans to first-time homebuyers of modest means who would likely not receive such help from other housing trust funds. The Trust's ability to delve into the well-resourced private sector and comprehensive view of affordability contribute to its increasingly far-flung exemplary reputation.

While some might argue that the Trust is uniquely situated in a backyard containing an embarrassment of corporate riches to which local housing trust funds do not have access, the increase of start-ups, fluid venture capital activity, and emergence of industries in once-overlooked cities and regions demonstrates that the time for other affordable housing trusts to follow the Santa Clara model is ripe. Corporate and high-tech America extends far beyond Silicon Valley and, in addition to replication in tech-savvy, progressive locales like Seattle, Cambridge, and Austin, housing trust funds in the sites of the "next economy"- think Pittsburgh, Chattanooga, Milwaukee, and San Antonio, among others- may do well by looking westward.

Curtain Call: A Bold Plan for Boston's Housing Future

Image Credit: Boston Housing Authority 

Boston's long-time Mayor Thomas M. Menino, though preparing to step down after more than two decades at the helm of the city later this fall, recently released his office's ambitious strategy to increase the number of affordable housing units in the city by 2020. The plan, entitled Housing Boston 2020, is the result of a collaboration among developers, offices within the Menino administration, various non-profits housing advocates, and the Boston Redevelopment Authority, seeks to update zoning; change the permitting requirements for units size; work with unions to reduce costs of affordable housing development; formulate affordable development pipelines; and expand housing options for low and middle-income Bostonians. By the end of 2013, the plan aims to establish a Middle Income Housing Initiative and Boston Buyers' Advantage Program to help buyers of modest means remain competitive in the city's expensive real estate market.

The overall plan calls for more than 5,000 of the planned new housing to be affordable units with deed restrictions and also provides for a new system of cataloguing city-owned vacant land for the possibility of more affordable development. The venture's advisory committee has also called for the generation of local resources to offset federal cuts to affordable housing.

The issue of affordable housing- and affordable city living generally- has been a constant theme in this year's Boston mayoral election. Just yesterday, City Councilor and candidate Mike Ross (D8) spoke about the need for a "smart" and comprehensive affordable housing policy in a radio interview. Amidst the rhetoric of the final weeks of the campaign, Mayor Menino's final act may set the backdrop for the housing policies of the next mayor of a city that many love to call home and many more cannot afford.