City Council Dead Wood
Before voting to approve the ordinance, Mayor Pro Tem Patrick Cannon, a Democrat, made a substitute motion to remove affordable housing projects from the tree-save requirements. City Attorney Mac McCarley, however, cautioned that doing so could cause legal problems over constitutional issues of discrimination, based on the income level of people who live in subsidized housing.
In that light, Dulin made a substitute motion to remove all multi-family developments from the tree ordinance. Both substitute motions failed. Cannon, however, still voted to approve the new ordinance.
“I’m going to trust that the needs of what we’re trying to do to create housing for those that need it will be met accordingly by this referral to the HAND committee,” Cannon said.
The committee discussion on affordable housing as it relates to tree-save issues could have some interesting outcomes, none of them boding well for taxpayers.
“When you get into the lower income strata, rent rates are fixed based on income. So project cost-increases really effect that gap, or that subsidy, that’s required for this type of housing,” Pat Mumford, director of the city’s housing and neighborhood development department, told councilmembers.
“So the discussion at the committee can be not just housing trust fund projects, but other subsidized projects, be they tax credits or other federal programs; how could the city, through various sources of funding, support increasing that subsidy gap in support of affordable housing projects that might have negative impact associated, financially, regarding this particular ordinance,” Mumford said. “It’s more of a discussion about opportunities for sources of funding, to bridge the subsidy gap, to continue to support the policy objective of affordable housing.”
So-called “opportunities for sources of funding” translates, of course, as money from the taxpayers’ pockets – in this case, how to fill a larger subsidy gap in affordable housing costs that might be created by the new tree ordinance.
Speaking of increased costs, Cooksey made a substitute motion, which failed, to remove the tree-replanting requirement triggered by façade renovations to existing structures.
“I just don’t see the connection between making the front of one’s property look better for the neighborhood and planting trees,” he said. “If it’s greater than 10 percent façade improvement, which is generally trying to make the place look better, why does that also, on the business owner, trigger the additional burden of planting trees?”
City staffers that had worked on the ordinance said the façade trigger was already in place, but only as a guideline; the new ordinance would make it a formal requirement.
Councilmember Edwin Peacock, a Republican who voted to approve the ordinance and who chairs the Environment Committee that made the ordinance recommendation to council, said façade renovation issues were addressed by nearly five years of committee and stakeholder meetings. Cooksey, he said, was trying to overturn in one night a consensus that took years in the making to reach.
Cooksey said he appreciated the work that the Environment Committee and stakeholders had put into the process, but said, “If our job is simply to rubberstamp what a stakeholder group and committee did, then my vote doesn’t mean anything.”
“The reason for my attempt to remove this (façade requirement),” he said, “is to get closer to an ordinance that I can vote for.”
Peacock said his committee and stakeholders had worked hard to strike a balance between economic concerns, conservation, and affordable housing issues.
“We want to provide people who come to this city an enormous opportunity to live here, to work here, to play here under a roof and have trees as well,” Peacock said. “It’s not an either/or. We have reflection from the debate last time that somehow indicated that if you’re in affordable housing, that somehow you don’t deserve trees. And that’s simply not right. We deserve both and that’s what we’re trying to do, to strike a balance.”
Mayor Anthony Foxx, a Democrat who has been a vocal supporter of a stronger tree ordinance, said he understood concerns that the tougher regulations could have an effect on the cost of affordable housing and other development. Foxx said he has heard similar concerns about other regulations, such as the city’s post-construction control ordinance and urban street design guidelines, which critics argue add to the cost of building affordable housing.
“The thing that has troubled me about that conversation, as I’ve looked at a lot of the analysis that has been done externally, a lot of it has focused on sort of worst-case scenarios, an application of each of those requirements to the greatest extreme,” Foxx said.
“I’ve gone back to our staff and said ‘Tell me, are we applying these rules to the most extreme extent?’” Foxx said. “And invariably, the answers have come back no.”
Foxx conceded, however, that there have been examples where city staff “would probably admit they went a little far,” in enforcing regulations that otherwise might have lent some flexibility.
Foxx suggested having somebody act as an advocate specifically for affordable housing as development applications are considered under the new tree ordinance.
“You have to have some projects cycle through the system to understand what the impact is on affordable housing,” he said. “I’m just saying that we might want to go forward with the action, but allow some time to pass so the study can be meaningful.”
Screw-up Alert: Reference to the Charlotte Housing Authority in the original article, as one of the organizations expressing concern over the tree ordinance and its possible impact on affordable housing, has been changed. The name should have read Affordable Charlotte Cabinet; apologies for the confusion.
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