The State College Planning Commission has recommended that the Borough Council abandon a zoning proposal that’s meant to encourage more affordable housing.
Instead, planning commissioners said Wednesday, the council should try a more regional approach in tackling the affordable-housing issue. The borough-specific zoning proposal would require six-unit and larger residential developments to incorporate a pre-set portion of ‘inclusionary housing.’
That inclusionary category, spelled out specifically in the ordinance (PDF download), would include homes priced within reasonable reach of lower- to mid-income families.
In lieu of building those inclusionary homes, developers could pay a special, borough-calculated fee or contribute a borough-specified amount of separate property to affordable housing.
But ‘I don’t see this working,’ commissioner Michael Roeckel said of the borough proposal. At their mid-week meeting, he and other commission members heard from local developers Rich Kalin and Heidi Nicholas.
Kalin especially aired strong concerns about the zoning concept, saying that it would add another major hurdle to redevelopment in a borough that’s over-regulated already.
‘In a word, what’s going to happen is nothing’ if the proposal wins approval, Kalin said.
He said nothing the borough can do to encourage affordable housing would compare to the federal government’s substantial affordable-housing tax credits, already available to developers.
The borough, Kalin noted, is trying desperately to grow its tax base. An affordable-housing mandate would prove ‘counterintuitive’ in that growth push and effectively quash new residential development, he said.
Nicholas, who helped develop the Palmerton at East Beaver Avenue and South Atherton Street, said the affordable-housing proposal would have stopped that student-apartment project.
‘It would have driven the economics so negative that we wouldn’t have done it,’ Nicholas said.
She and Kalin were more upbeat about the affordable-housing approaches taken in some surrounding townships, where zoning encourages — but doesn’t mandate — inclusionary housing. Land in those areas is more abundant than it is in the nearly built-out borough, and that makes it easier to incorporate diverse residential units into new projects, developers have said.
In State College, the drive for more inclusionary housing goes back several years, to earlier discussions about the West End neighborhood. Planners had considered a West End-specific push for more affordable housing there, but some borough leaders suggested that the idea be weighed as a borough-wide option. The council referred the conversation to the Planning Commission.
Borough Planning Director Carl Hess said the overall concept is rooted in the notion that the community needs a diverse base of permanent residents across income brackets. And without intervention in market trends, which heavily favor new student housing, it’s a challenge for the borough to attract new residential development for non-students, Hess said.
‘There’s a very real need in this borough for people who have low-paying jobs to be able to live here,’ said Planning Commission member Anita Genger. She lamented that some local workers can’t afford to commute from outlying areas but can’t afford the rent rates in State College, either.
Those circumstances lead some workers to occupy cramped quarters in the Centre Region, with as many as four people living in two-bedroom apartments, Genger said. Hess cited a Centre County assessment showing that the county needs 2,000 additional affordable-housing units to meet demand.
But borough rhetoric surrounding the affordable-housing issue has become too far removed from the issue’s origins several years ago, Planning Commission member Ron Madrid said. At that point, he said, the focus was on housing for firefighters, teachers, police officers and other working-class people who couldn’t afford to live in State College.
‘Unfortunately, it has degenerated into, ‘We can no longer specify who we want; come one, come all,” Madrid said. He said the goals of the proposed ordinance have become too undefined, too lacking in specifics.
Further, he said: ‘If you work in the borough, you don’t have to go very far outside the borough to find an affordable place to live.’ Madrid also questioned whether the government is best suited to help those in need of affordable housing.
Hess suggested that the borough might pursue restrictions that would render students ineligible for any affordable housing created under the proposed ordinance.
Still, the planning commissioners roundly decided to drop the proposal from further consideration, at least at their table. They briefly discussed whether it may be more effective to commit additional resources to public transportation — to ease commuting costs for the working class.
In any case, several commissioners said, the Borough Council would do well to drop the zoning proposal and seek a more broad, more regional stance on the affordable-housing matter. Members Genger, Madrid, Roeckel and Ann Bolser were unified in that position.
Their colleague Cindy Carpenter dissented, saying she favored both a borough approach and a regional approach. Chairman Evan Myers and member Charles Gable were absent.
Borough Council is expected to address the subject within several weeks.
