ustxtxb_obs_1985_05_31_50_00018-00000_000.pdf

1117 West 5th Street Austin, Texas 78703 REALTOR Representing all types of properties in Austin and Central Texas Interesting & unusual property a specialty. 477-3651 co and Associates E ANDERSON & COMPANY COFFEE TEA SPICES TWO JEFFERSON SQUARE AUSTIN, TEXAS 7S131 512 453-1533 Send me your list. Name Street City Zip Life Insurance and Annuities Martin Elfant, CLU 4223 Richmond, Suite 213, Houston, TX 77027 Sc ytife COMPUTER CAMPAIGN CONSULTANTS Prepare NOW for your Spring Campaign Consultation / Training / Programming -4 Call or Write for details: intellectronics, inc./dale napier 403 NASA Road 1 East, Suite 116 Houston 77598 are targeted to existing low and moderate-income homeowners for repairs, rather than for home purchases. This summer the City of Dallas Housing Finance Corporation floated $78 million in mortgage bonds to assist low and moderate-income buyers with belowmarket interest-rate financing. It’s an open question, however, whether lowincome buyers will really benefit. BED & BREAKFAST CORPUS CHRISTI Take a break from the sameness of motel accom modations. Over 20 listings, many within walking distance of the water. Friendly, hospitable hosts. Breakfasts continental to Texas-size. Rates from $20. Sand Dollar Hospitality, 3605 Mendenhall, Cor Program income guidelines permit families making as much as $40,000 annually to participate, and home prices as high as $120,000 are eligible for funding. There is evidence from similar programs that suggests the bulk of the financing will go to families at the upper-levels of moderate income. The Dallas County ,Housing Financing Corporation, for example, reported in March of last year on 1,192 mortgage loans it had made to first-time low and moderate-income buyers a total of $29,039,354 in below-market interestrate mortgages. Only 73 loans, or 6 percent, went to families earning less than $12,000 per year; loans to these families amounted to less than $600,000, only 2 percent of the total loaned. In contrast, 312 loans went to families earning more than $30,000 per year one out of every four loans. Loans to these middle-income families amounted to $10.6 million, eighteen times the amount loaned to low-income borrowers. A similar tilt toward moderate and middle-income households can be seen in the state and city multi-family housing bond programs, through which developers receive below-market financing to build basically market-rent apartments. The only concession required by the developers for this public assistance is that 20 percent of the units financed must be rented to households earning less than 80 percent of the area’s median income. Vacant and abandoned properties and municipally-owned lots can be a tremen dous resource for low-income housing. The City of Philadelphia’s Nuisance Abatement Program allows interested applicants to legally enter and occupy abandoned homes, which the owners have refused to repair. In exchange for repairing the building’s code violations, the city government attempts to obtain legal title to the property and transfer ownership to the homesteader who repaired it \(though the resident has no City of Austin has transferred cityowned lots to non-profit neighborhood development corporations for a minimal fee to build low and moderate-income housing, for example, in the westside Clarksville area, an old black community threatened today by gentrification. Other approaches to preserving and increasing the supply of low-income housing include: Changes in state property tax law to provide exemptions for non-profit sponsors of low-income housing. Changes in state and local belowmarket housirig finance programs, to ensure that taxpayer-subsidized bond proceeds produce housing targeted to low-income renters and purchasers. Linkage of all public assistance to landlords and developers with rent control and rent stabilization requirements. A “sweat rent” program for public housing tenants, through which tenants would receive rent credits for maintenance and other work performed in their apartment complexes. Ordinances prohibiting exclusion of families with children from rental housing. A “tenant rights” approach to housing code enforcement, which would focus on compliance with health-andsafety related violations in rental property \(with “repair-and-deduct-fromwould end the “inspector-initiated” code harassment of poor and elderly homeowners so prevalent in Dallas since the mid-1970s. These and other locally-based initiatives must be joined to a national campaign to create an effective, humane, community-based urban policy for American cities. The construction, acquisition, renovation, weatherization, maintenance, and management of decent affordable housing for and by lowincome people will not only relieve widespread suffering caused by our current miserable conditions this work can also provide the basis for longrange social and economic self-determination among presently disenfranchised Americans. 18 MAY 31, 1985