Housing

“The ultimate north star would be a comprehensive strategy for development in Lafayette’s core neighborhoods — strategies for actually making something happen,” Acadiana Housing Alliance co-chair and Lafayette Habitat for Humanity Director Melinda Taylor says. “You can talk forever with this kind of stuff, but you have to start on specific initiatives to get things moving.” 

The coalition launched in June and will reconvene every other month. A second meeting was held in August, organizing the alliance into segmented teams to tackle data collection, policy, neighborhood engagement, prep for a federal grant program and extending activities outside of Lafayette Parish. 

The issue by the numbers: 

• 16.5% of Lafayette Parish residents live in poverty 
• 55 – amount of affordable housing units per 100 low-income households. 
• $52K – median household income in Lafayette Parish 
• $168K – median home value 
• 1,500 – adjudicated properties parishwide, which contribute to blight and economic decline.

On paper, Lafayette’s comprehensive plan targets revitalizing the urban core. In theory, that means putting public resources and policies to work in the city’s aging neighborhoods, including closing gaps in housing. The plan has been slow to stimulate action, Taylor says, in part because of scant resources in LCG’s planning department, the agency in charge of that portion of PlanLafayette. (PlanLafayette is currently undergoing a fifth-year review.) Many neighborhoods in north Lafayette exceed 55% renter-occupied homes in their occupancy mix, demonstrating a tremendous decline in wealth concentration over the years, according to data compiled by the Louisiana Housing Corporation. Affluence and home ownership have scattered outward into surrounding municipalities, taking public resources and attention with them. 

The coalition prioritizes neighborhood collaboration in developing a comprehensive housing strategy. The approach models loosely on the success of Habitat’s work in McComb-Veazey, where the nonprofit and the McComb-Veazey coterie have worked to engage residents in planning and redevelopment activities. Habitat has been the prime mover thus far in pursuing acquisition of adjudicated properties — tax-delinquent properties orphaned by owners, essentially — from consolidated government. Last month Habitat moved to acquire 10 such properties, all vacant lots in McComb-Veazey, to build a small strip of owner-occupied homes. 

Coordination is everything. Disconnected funding sources and well-meaning but “siloed” housing organizations have operated in blind spaces. Meanwhile, siting new affordable housing projects in economically distressed areas has become a matter of controversy, as some nearby residents push back against developments they believe will exacerbate economic distress. 

One goal here is winning a Choice Neighborhoods grant. The federal program could overhaul Lafayette’s public housing stock and provide funding for broad community work around the initiative, Taylor says. Choice Neighborhood grants require substantial upfront planning work to demonstrate community buy-in. Other Louisiana municipalities — Shreveport, Baton Rouge and New Orleans — have successfully applied for the program, drawing down tens of millions of dollars to remake public housing. Lafayette is set to shut down a few dozen units that currently sit in a floodway, making them ineligible for renovation funding from the federal government. Without intervention, says Taylor, who sits on the Lafayette Housing Authority board, much of Lafayette’s public housing will become unlivable. 

Why this matters: Housing affordability isn’t an issue unique to Lafayette, nor is it unique to marginalized households. Many families struggle to make ends meet, a problem that could become more acute and difficult to resolve in Lafayette’s weakened economy and sluggish recovery. Much of the available data on local housing comes from higher altitudes like the U.S. Census Bureau, which makes snapshot estimates in between decennial censuses. The coalition’s data efforts could present a more accurate picture of economic conditions in the parish and the effects of regional development patterns.