A proposed zoning amendment to use money from the Affordable Housing Trust to help finance new city-backed rent vouchers is encountering roadblocks on two fronts. The city’s legal chief says Cambridge must get permission from the state Legislature if it wants to have the trust pay for vouchers. And trust members, who heard the legal opinion at their Thursday meeting, also gave a cool reception to the idea.
“One of my main concerns is somehow there will be less money for the construction and preservation of affordable housing on the capital side” if the trust takes on a rent voucher program, member Susan Schlesinger said. Unlike rent vouchers, new housing that is affordable to low- and moderate-income residents “does not go away,” she said.
“We should have vouchers; the trust should not fund them,” member Teresa Cardosi said.
Acting city solicitor Megan Bayer wrote in an opinion for the trust and for the Planning Board that the special act of the Legislature in 1991 that established the Affordable Housing Trust said its purpose was to help build and preserve affordable housing to benefit low- and moderate-income households – and that “creation and preservation of affordable housing does not include funding a local rent subsidy program.”
The city would have to file a home rule petition to the Legislature to amend the special act if it wants the trust to finance rent vouchers, Bayer’s opinion said.
That could pose a formidable obstacle, trust member Elaine DeRosa said. “If it’s going to take a home rule petition, we’re never going to get there,” DeRosa said.
The zoning petition was filed March 20 by members of the Cambridge Housing Justice Coalition, including unsuccessful City Council candidate Dan Totten, an advocate for homeless individuals, and Lee Farris, head of the Cambridge Residents Alliance. Besides having the trust fund local rent vouchers, the petition asks that the trust pay for individual housing units and supportive services for the homeless, enlarge the trust to 13 members from nine, require that at least six members have experienced “housing instability” or lived in affordable housing and pay a stipend to members.
The council’s Housing Committee holds a hearing on city-funded rent vouchers Tuesday; the zoning petition comes before the Planning Board on May 7. Bayer’s opinion said a home rule petition would be required to increase the number of trust members as well as to have the trust contribute to vouchers.
Bayer mentioned one workaround to a home rule petition for vouchers: having the council sign onto a statewide affordable housing trust law, bringing the Cambridge agency under that law. It would allow the trust to use some of its funds to support local rent vouchers but might change the way the Cambridge trust operates, her opinion said.
The city itself could finance rent assistance by giving money to a nonprofit partner or the Cambridge Housing Authority, Bayer’s opinion said. CHA now administers federal rent assistance vouchers and has been hired by Somerville to run a local voucher program for that city.
“There’s a lot of alignment in terms of this [zoning] petition that the city is already doing,” said City Manager Yi-An Huang, chair of the trust. He cited the city’s homeless shelters and support for homeless people; the petition seeks to have the trust pay for “noncongregate housing” – in other words, not shelters – and services for homeless individuals. Bayer said the trust can fund the housing portion but not the services.
Huang didn’t rule out having the city pay for vouchers, telling Schlesinger that he believed city funds could support “project-based” rent vouchers, aid that’s attached to a particular housing unit, not to the tenant living there.
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The affordable housing trust should continue to focus on building permanent affordable housing. Vouchers should be funded from other sources including the annual participatory budget funding pool.
Why would a change to funding mechanisms be a zoning petition? Zoning is supposed to be about regulating land uses.