More than local

Can Fayetteville solve public housing clash?

Is tonight’s special Fayetteville City Council meeting really about the mayor’s signature on a document, or a more fundamental disagreement over how public housing is provided for low-income individuals and families?

Mayor Lioneld Jordan took the rare step, at least in terms of his nearly decade-old administration, of calling a special meeting of the City Council. Doing so on the matter of public housing is certainly unprecedented. The Fayetteville Housing Authority operates public housing units at Hill- crest Towers near the library, Morgan Manor near Walker Park, Lewis Plaza near Ramay Junior High and Willow Heights.

In March 2017, however, the Housing Authority Board agreed to sell Willow Heights, built in the 1970s on about 5 acres overlooking downtown, for $1.25 million to a developer. It would cease to be public housing. The authority’s plan would, over time, move about 100 Willow Heights tenants to its Morgan Manor property once Morgan Manor is expanded by 58 units.

The Housing Authority Board is a public body responsible for administering federal Department of Housing and Urban Development funding for public housing and rental assistance. Despite the board’s public nature, most of the time local attendance demonstrates a sad reality: Public housing isn’t usually high on the list of concerns for most Fayetteville residents, business owners and politicians.

Word spread about the Willow Heights plans, however. And it has sparked resistance. Critics, including one the City Council appointed last year to the authority’s board, have called for the Housing Authority to fix, rather than sell, Willow Heights. They’ve also complained that moving those tenants to Morgan Manor would concentrate poverty.

Housing Authority officials, unused to the bright public spotlight, have seemed frustrated latecomers have complicated their years of thankless work. One board member suggested most Housing Authority boards in Arkansas don’t allow public comment. He may be right, but that’s hardly a convincing argument as to why Fayetteville’s should devote time and energy to rejecting it.

So, yes, tensions exist, to a degree because this Housing Authority Board — and such boards across the country — is trying to make public housing work within a federal funding system that the president and Congress have woefully underfunded for decades. That’s not a just a Trump thing. It goes back years. The nation’s leaders have put public housing on a slow starvation diet.

Headed into tonight’s 5:30 p.m. meeting at City Hall, it’s worthwhile to realize the goal for all the local folks is the same — improved public housing for those in need. The disagreement arises as to the path toward that goal.

Jordan said he called tonight’s meeting largely because he felt the Housing Authority Board hasn’t appeared welcoming to concerns from the public, including tenants, at recent meetings. Every year, the mayor signs off on the Housing Authority’s annual and fiveyear funding plans for submission to the Department of Housing and Urban Development. This year, however, Jordan and the City Council have delayed that to create an opportunity for comments from residents, the public, the Housing Authority board and the City Council.

“I may not agree with everybody, but they’ve got a right to speak their mind in a public meeting,” Jordan said Monday. “We’ve got to have this dialogue.”

Jordan acknowledged Monday he’ll sign off on the Housing Authority plans and won’t put federal maintenance funding for public housing in jeopardy. So what’s the point of all this? Jordan and the City Council will play the role of sounding board, potentially to provide some feedback to Housing and Urban Development about the future of public housing in Fayetteville.

Let’s be realistic, though: Unless someone whips out a checkbook tonight and offers to cover millions of dollars in overdue maintenance and rehabilitation, the Housing Authority’s problems won’t be solved. The $281,425 in annual federal funding for maintenance sought for each of the next five years is inadequate to maintain, much less rehabilitate, places like Willow Heights and Lewis Plaza that are slowly falling apart.

The Housing Authority has had to reduce the number of units available at Lewis, for example, because conditions in six units became too poor for them to be rented.

The federal government has more or less ensured that traditional public housing will eventually disappear. That’s where the Fayetteville Housing Authority’s grand plan, developed over the last several years, comes into play: Sell off crumbling assets and use a funding mechanism developed under the Obama administration. It’s called the Rental Assistance Demonstration, or RAD, program. It provides public housing authorities a way to access private funding for public housing, often through the use of tax credits.

Critics nationally call it the privatization of public housing. Our bet is, if all things were even, the Fayetteville Housing Authority would be just fine restoring Willow Heights and its other properties to acceptable conditions. The federal government has made that an almost impossible task within the Housing Authority funding framework.

RAD program concerns are really at the heart of Fayetteville’s debate about the local facilities, but is the local City Council and mayor in a position to solve such issues that extend into the federal bureaucracy? With public housing on a forced starvation diet, is local government going to try to come to the rescue? Can it afford to?

Be prepared for a lot of talk tonight, a lot of concerns. But a lack of money is what ails the Fayetteville Housing Authority properties and stands as a barrier to just fixing them all up.

We’ll be astonished if anyone solves that tonight. But ideas have to start someplace, and it’s clear a little more conversation among all the parties can help if everyone opens themselves up to the discussion.