If you have concerns, want to see some tweaks or love it, we want to hear from you, tonight at the Central Library at 6:00! Also, if you like the plan, we’ll talk next steps!
PEOPLE’S AFFORDABLE HOUSING VISION
A vision for the Madison area to expand low income housing opportunities, ensure basic dignity and a path to stable housing for the homeless, provide greater accountability for violations of local housing laws and increase local government resources to support housing programs.
Pursue Innovative Permanent and Transitional Low-Income Housing Options:
Pursue development and prevent further demolition of single room occupancy housing (SROS); expand affordable housing options available through housing cooperatives, co-housing and community land trusts; explore a tenant Interim lease program (a program from NYC) in which tenants move into buildings purchased by the city with the opportunity for tenant management and eventual ownership as a low income housing cooperative.
Expand the Warming House:
The city and county should work together to study how warming house services could be expanded so no families/fewer families are turned away for shelter. More immediately, the city should appropriate $10,000 for the Salvation Army to use to secure alternate shelter for families using the Warming House who have sick children, as a public health measure.
Improve Homeless Services: Develop and enforce shelter standards needed to ensure the humane treatment, safety, security, health and sanitation of shelter residents and to recognize the dignity inherent in each shelter resident. A shelter monitoring committee should oversee these standards and a third-party grievance process should be available to those seeking or receiving services from shelter.
Expand Quality Case Management Services for Homeless and Formerly Homeless Individuals and Families:
More resources must be devoted to expand case management services and ensure case managers are well-trained, culturally competent, possess solid case advocacy skills, have vast knowledge of available resources (including public benefits), and experience working with low-income people and people of color. Case managers should carry a reasonable case load (Child Welfare League of America standard is no more than 17 families at a point in time).
Greater Enforcement of MGO Chapter 32 “Landlord and Tenant”:
The City Attorney’s office should hire a full time person to field tenant complaints of lease violations. Violations would be limited to those violations that do not need outside investigation, but can be determined by a trail of paper work. The City Attorney’s office should be given the authority to either ticket or file long form complaints based on the violations and investigate patterns of abuses if immediate resolution is not reached through discussions with the landlords. Based on the number of complaints, the city should study the feasibility of a housing court. A meaningful landlord registration ordinance should be passed, which would require landlords to provide the city with ownership and contact information and allow the city to collect information about rents, apartments and other data.
City Grant Writer:
Hire a city grant writer to seek federal and foundation funding for not only homelessness and housing issues, but staff support and training for funded agencies, training could be focused on sensitivity training for people providing direct services as well as administrative training and support.
Security Deposit Loan Program:
The Security Deposit Loan Program would be a jointly established program between a local housing organization and a local Bank to provide no-interest loans for rental security deposits. The program would maintain a pool of loan funds and contribute to a households’ self-sufficiency through the establishment of a credit file or to repair bad credit. The loan program, based on one in Iowa City, would have a revolving fund of money, allowing additional loans to be made as payments are received.
Protect Tenants from Irrelevant, Unreliable and Dated Credit History:
Housing providers should be prohibited from denying an application for residential tenancy based solely on the filing of an eviction action which resulted in a dismissal, credit history which is unrelated to a housing obligation or which is more than two (2) years old.
Protect the Use of Service Animals:
We support specifically expanding local equal opportunity ordinances to prohibit discrimination in housing and public accommodations against persons who have animals which a qualified medical professional has recommended as providing a beneficial service or support.
Expand Language Access and Bilingual Information and Services to LEP Populations:
Hire more bilingual staff (Spanish and Hmong) in city departments including Housing Operations, Building Inspection, Municipal Court, etc. An ordinance should be passed which requires the use of leases, termination notices, non-renewal notices and court documents in Spanish and Hmong when that language is the primary language of the tenant.
