APABA-DC Women’s Forum

Affordable Housing:
Why it Matters to the APA Community and the Legal Tools Available

By Saleela Salahuddin,

APABA-DC Women’s Forum Member

The APABA-DC Women’s Forum hosted a panel discussion on “Preserving Affordable Housing: Why it Matters to the APA Community and the Legal Tools Available” on Wednesday, March 14, 2006, at the law offices of Greenberg Traurig, LLP in Washington, D.C. About 20 participants attended the event. The panelists included:

· Lisa Hasegawa, Executive Director of the National Coalition for Asian Pacific American Community Development (National CAPACD);

· Richard C. Eisen, principal at the law firm of Eisen & Rome, P.C., which focuses on housing and real estate and premise liability;

· Christopher J. Anderson, Manager of Single Family Housing Programs in the Montgomery County Department of Housing and Community Affairs; and

· Kyrus L. Freeman, an attorney with the law firm of Holland & Knight, LLP, who serves as the Chair of the Land Use Committee of the D.C. Bar’s Real Estate, Housing and Land Use Section.

Rosy Lor, Co-Chair of the Women’s Forum and moderator of the event, began the discussion with eye-opening statistics regarding the cost of housing in the Washington, D.C. metropolitan area and its dramatic increase over the past five years. Explaining that the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development describes affordable housing as a situation where a person spends no more than 30% of his or her annual income on housing, she noted that HUD estimates some 12 million people in the United States spend more than 50% of their income on housing.[1] The local non-profit So Others Might Eat reports that possibly more than 20% of the population in D.C., some 580,000 people, does not have stable affordable housing.[2]

Ms. Hasegawa observed that there is a lack of data about affordable housing for Asian Americans. Especially among more recent immigrant communities, there is also a “tension between affordability against language ability.” As an illustration, she noted that there are established language resources in the affordable housing arena for Spanish and Chinese immigrant communities, but a lack of similar resources in other languages, such as Cambodian and Urdu. She described situations where Cambodian immigrants have been sent rent increase notices in the mail that were in Chinese because that was the only Asian language material on hand. Examples such as these underscore the need, she said, for more people with much-needed linguistic and cultural skills to get involved with organizations such as National CAPACD (www.nationalcapacd.org), whose mission it is to serve the housing and community development needs of Asian American and Pacific Islander communities nationwide.

Mr. Eisen, who has been practicing affordable housing law in the District for more than 35 years, described the local affordable housing scene as a network of lawyers, architects, developers, and advocacy groups. He said that the role for the lawyer in advocating for tenants is one in which the interests of tenant groups have to be balanced against the interests of the local government, as well as real estate developers. Mr. Eisen said that there are many ways to work as a lawyer in the affordable housing area. He spoke of success stories in dealing with non-profit real estate developers who specialize in rehabilitating vacant, boarded-up buildings and renovating them for affordable housing rentals. Two local non-profits that do this are Manna, Inc. (www.mannadc.org) and East of the River Community Development Corporation (www.ercdc.org).

Mr. Anderson spoke about zoning issues in Montgomery County, Maryland, which in 1974 enacted the country’s first mandatory inclusionary zoning law—also referred to as the Moderately Price Dwelling Unit (MPDU) Program. Inclusionary zoning, Mr. Anderson explained, occurs when a local government grants a developer the permission to build extra housing units in a residentially zoned area so long as those units are designated and priced to be affordable. In addition to creating more affordable housing, this policy has lead to Montgomery County being “ethnically and economically diverse,” especially in communities developed since 1974. Mr. Anderson noted, however, that Montgomery County is quickly getting “built out” because one-third of the county is an agricultural reserve and will never be developed. Furthermore, there is an ever-increasing demand for housing across the board, not just affordable housing. In 2006, for example, there were only 400 affordable housing units produced, but there was a wait list of 1,600 people for those units. He also said there are language barriers to providing affordable housing education to non-English and non-Spanish speakers. He noted that providing housing education to Asian Americans is one area that needs particular attention.

Mr. Freeman noted that in response to the development boom seen in the District over the past few years, combined with the decrease in affordable housing, the D.C. government in May 2006 adopted inclusionary zoning. The inclusionary zoning law would apply to developments of 10 housing units or more. However, this law will only become effective once the zoning commission adopts a map of where the zoning will apply and the mayor adopts a process to determine which families can live where. One of the requirements of the adopted zoning measures will be for developers to offer affordable housing units in the same way that “market rate” units are offered: they need to be distributed throughout a development (not just on the ground floor of a high-rise condominium, for example) and look the same on the interior as other units. Mr. Freeman explained that one potential long-term issue is if developers plead economic hardship in constructing affordable housing units at a particular site and build them on land they own elsewhere (which is allowed under the inclusionary zoning law). This situation would have the potential of contradicting one of the goals of inclusionary zoning, which is to promote economically and culturally diverse communities, if the affordable units built by a developer is concentrated in one area.

The panel discussion succeeded in providing participants with a basic understanding of this important topic faced by the Asian American community and insight on how attorneys can help in the mission to preserve affordable housing.

For the attorney hoping to address affordable housing in the District and surrounding metropolitan areas, Mr. Freeman and the other panelists recommended doing the following:

· Working for a federal or local government agency with an affordable housing focus
· Working for or volunteering with a non-profit real estate developer
· Developing a fair housing/pro bono practice within a private law firm
· Working with a non-profit such as the National Housing Law Project (www.nhlp.org), which
provides legal assistance, advocacy advice, and housing expertise
· Serving on a Board of Directors of an organization with an affordable housing focus and
applying legal and urban planning skills
· Working on committees focused on affordable housing through local bar associations
· Becoming a landlord of affordable housing units

[1] See http://www.hud.gov/offices/cpd/affordablehousing/index.cfm
[2] See http://www.some.org/inv_adv_housing.html.