This reminds me of the”educator village” off on 10th and Rural. Not long into the project they announced it was going to expand to law enforcement and first responders.
The Boner Center also had a federal savings account program where every $1 put in, you would receive $3 more only to be used for housing or education.
As a first generation college student with no home financial support, I was very interested but they never contacted me back… and I was an employee.
By my senior year of college I was looking at a couple of the houses in the educators village and they were still not affordable for a single person on a new teacher salary. This is also when IPS raised their novice teacher starting salary, the highest amongst all the central Indianapolis schools.
Indianapolis also has the unfortunate situation that many of those single family homes that are available to renters (albeit at unaffordable rents) are owned by out of state/out of country LLC landlords, so even the homes that potentially *could* be affordable to moderate-income homebuyers are scarce. These homes also have the highest rate of health code and municipal code violations (per FHCCI) and tend to evict without any empathy or allowance for negotiation.
Additionally, most/pretty much ALL the “affordable” development done in this city is LIHTC where so-called “subsidized” rents are still in the $12-1400 range. Who is that affordable for? Mid-20’s Salesforce employees? Research from HUD (pre-trump admin of course) also estimates that over half-three quarters of LIHTC residents in the country are actually voucher holders who have nowhere else that will accept their voucher. So they “benefit” from a double subsidy which leaves even less available to those who can’t afford market rate but don’t have vouchers (put “benefit” in parentheses here because it isn’t a double benefit - it’s an impossible situation for those under section 8 who landlords flatly refuse to work with or take advantage of, at least LIHTC developments come with additional regulatory oversight…)
All to say, I’m glad we may be able to zone for more density, I just don’t believe the so called free market will trickle down affordability when there are luxury apartment units sitting vacant currently. We need to demand more from our planning and zoning and force development of truly affordable, income-based development.
I completely agree. The system of housing development is beyond flawed, its broken and corrupt. There's too many hands in the cookie jar and it's the people that needing real affordable housing paying the price every time. HUD is a joke and been a joke, the state itself props up bad developers and slumlords and the City of Indianapolis mostly throws its hands up and acts helpless to use the power it actually has.
This reminds me of the”educator village” off on 10th and Rural. Not long into the project they announced it was going to expand to law enforcement and first responders.
The Boner Center also had a federal savings account program where every $1 put in, you would receive $3 more only to be used for housing or education.
As a first generation college student with no home financial support, I was very interested but they never contacted me back… and I was an employee.
By my senior year of college I was looking at a couple of the houses in the educators village and they were still not affordable for a single person on a new teacher salary. This is also when IPS raised their novice teacher starting salary, the highest amongst all the central Indianapolis schools.
Wow. I truly had no idea—thank you for the education.
Indianapolis also has the unfortunate situation that many of those single family homes that are available to renters (albeit at unaffordable rents) are owned by out of state/out of country LLC landlords, so even the homes that potentially *could* be affordable to moderate-income homebuyers are scarce. These homes also have the highest rate of health code and municipal code violations (per FHCCI) and tend to evict without any empathy or allowance for negotiation.
Additionally, most/pretty much ALL the “affordable” development done in this city is LIHTC where so-called “subsidized” rents are still in the $12-1400 range. Who is that affordable for? Mid-20’s Salesforce employees? Research from HUD (pre-trump admin of course) also estimates that over half-three quarters of LIHTC residents in the country are actually voucher holders who have nowhere else that will accept their voucher. So they “benefit” from a double subsidy which leaves even less available to those who can’t afford market rate but don’t have vouchers (put “benefit” in parentheses here because it isn’t a double benefit - it’s an impossible situation for those under section 8 who landlords flatly refuse to work with or take advantage of, at least LIHTC developments come with additional regulatory oversight…)
All to say, I’m glad we may be able to zone for more density, I just don’t believe the so called free market will trickle down affordability when there are luxury apartment units sitting vacant currently. We need to demand more from our planning and zoning and force development of truly affordable, income-based development.
I completely agree. The system of housing development is beyond flawed, its broken and corrupt. There's too many hands in the cookie jar and it's the people that needing real affordable housing paying the price every time. HUD is a joke and been a joke, the state itself props up bad developers and slumlords and the City of Indianapolis mostly throws its hands up and acts helpless to use the power it actually has.