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May 17, 2007
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May 17, 2007 |
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Editorial Time to go forward on housing Jason and Margaret Morgan are the sort of people that Yellow Springs needs more of. They are young and creative — both artists, Jason paints murals and portraits for a living, while Margaret works as a stay-at-home mom. They are the caring parents of two school-age children. They value community, diversity and small-town life, and want badly to live in Yellow Springs. Oh, but there’s one more thing — the Morgans can’t afford to live here. That is, they couldn’t live here without Home, Inc. Due to the efforts of Home, Inc. the Morgans are paying a reasonable rent on a small home in Yellow Springs, and soon they will move into their own newly-built house in Thistle Creek. They can’t say enough good things about the efforts of this group. There are many, many more like the Morgans. We all know people who work in town — teachers, college professors, store clerks, among others — who want to live in town but simply can’t afford to. And in a page 1 article in this week’s News, Home, Inc. Executive Director Marianne MacQueen says that the organization has 30 people — both families and singles — on its waiting list for an affordable Yellow Springs home. Home, Inc. stopped advertising a year ago because it had far more applicants than homes. Home, Inc. has the people who want to move here. And the organization has the money, from state and federal grants, to build up to six affordable homes a year in the village. What they don’t have is the land. And they’ve looked hard for land. A multi-year effort to find owners of scattered lots found few interested parties. A recent Home, Inc. project to build four small affordable units on Xenia Avenue met with resistance from neighbors, so the group revised the plan to build only two. That plan got nixed by the Board of Zoning Appeals. There are no good and bad guys here. Owners of spare lots in town may have excellent reasons not to sell to Home, Inc. The neighbors of the Xenia Avenue project undoubtedly had valid concerns. But whatever the reasons, we need to find a way to move forward. Perhaps the best thing to emerge from this winter’s Fogg farm annexation debate was some apparent areas of consensus around local needs. Many villagers spoke of their concern that Yellow Springs has become older, richer and smaller in the past 30 years, and how this trend has narrowed the tax base, shrunk local schools and undermined the village’s unique and creative character. To address this concern, villagers seemed, for the first time in several years — certainly since the divisive Glass Farm controversy — to find consensus around the need for affordable housing. This change in perception seems huge. And yet, as the “Other Voices” column by MacQueen and Nancy Schwerner of Home, Inc, makes clear, the obstacles to affordable housing remain daunting. The good people at Home, Inc. have worked hard the past several years to provide 12 affordable homes, but there’s much more to be done. For starters, villagers need to encourage Village Council to take the bold step of building affordable housing on the Village-owned Glass farm; it’s simply the most straightforward and doable way to address this important village need. To thrive and grow, Yellow Springs needs more young families like the Morgans. To attract those families, it needs affordable housing. And to get affordable housing, it will take creativity, courage and persistence. Thankfully, Yellow Springs has all three.
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