Just how much affordable housing is in Fall River? Study spearheaded by Rep. Fiola aims for an answer

Posted Feb. 19, 2016 at 8:56 AM
Updated Feb 19, 2016 at 5:32 PM

FALL RIVER – It’s really three questions in one state Rep. Carole Fiola formalized into a guest opinion piece published nearly six months ago:

What happened to our city? Why has there been such an increase in low-come housing in the city? How did this happen?

Fiola, D-Fall River, after two-plus years representing the 6th Bristol District, tapped conversations on her initial campaign trail in 2013 and a drumbeat of sentiment and unanswered questions that don’t let up.

“The one thing people kept saying is ‘Why does it seem like this community has changed so much?’” Fiola said at the outset of a 90-minute, mostly one-sided conversation with the Herald News Editorial Board.

Fast forward to meetings Fiola organized with city officials, business and civic leaders and the University of Massachusetts Dartmouth Public Policy Center last fall. Along with “community stakeholders” attending a key fall meeting, Chrystal Kornegay, undersecretary for the state Department of Housing and Community Development, presented a regional perspective.

That led, just recently, to an accepted proposal for what Michael Goodman, Public Policy Center executive director, outlined in mid-December based upon the intensive dialogue and submitted questions.

The PPC is a non-partisan, self-sufficient research center reorganized 1½ years ago by combining the university’s policy analysis and urban centers under a revised mission.

Among its ongoing projects include benefits and costs of the state’s housing production and among new ones to explore the region’s health literacy, says the PPC website.

Two professional researchers under Goodman and graduate students working with them are responsible for the projects, the director said.

The aim: a Fall River housing policy

The scope of work Goodman outlined, with outreach to key municipal agencies, would answer “three major research questions”:

— What kind of housing does Fall River have and how has it changed over time?

— What are the relationships between the housing market and population, demographic and economic changes?

— What options are available to address issues and closing any gaps between existing housing and demand?

The prospective research, Goodman said, “recognizes the importance of objective information” that “has been designed to inform the development of a new housing policy” for Fall River.

The agreed-upon cost of $46,750 is for an approximately six-month project that includes three briefings during that time to supply information for each of the three questions.

The completion would include the PPC issuing a written report and making a presentation that summarizes its major findings and policy implications, Goodman wrote.

“We’re just getting started,” Goodman said in a recent phone interview.

The first report would be delivered in late March that would include PPC’s creation of a profile of the city’s housing stock and the subsidized housing inventory. It would analyze the mix of units over time, rehabilitation and subsidized development, and examine housing affordability.

That affordability would include a profile of residents “who are burdened by housing costs, live in crowded housing and rent or own their own housing,” Goodman wrote.

To cover project expenses, Fiola said she had reached out and received financial commitments from five city banks and two local agencies — the Greater Fall River Development Corp. and Fall River Office of Economic Development — with the Fall River Redevelopment Authority funding pending.

Her husband, Ken Fiola Jr., is associated with the latter two organizations as FROED’s executive vice president and through FROED’s contract with the Redevelopment Authority.

Input from 20 ‘stakeholders’

Among at least 20 stakeholders Carole Fiola said she researched out to and who joined this process included the former mayor, members and heads of the City Council, zoning, code enforcement, planning, public housing, the housing court, economic develop agency, Community Development Block Grant program, police, the Chamber of Commerce and real estate representatives.

At the end of a lengthy meeting in October, Fiola asked participants to submit a list of their major concerns and questions to be answered by a study that could lead to developing a city housing plan.

In one critical area, Goodman cited general agreement “that fines and inspections were ineffective at ensuring landlord compliance, particularly from absentee landlords.”

He also wrote that “there was a general belief … Fall River currently has an oversupply of housing.” He said some suggested, “The demand for multifamily homes has declined along side declines in population and the local industries that had traditionally provided residents with solid job opportunities.”

“We don’t promise results,” Goodman said recently. “We treat these questions to guide our scope of research.” His work has focused extensively on the Massachusetts economy and housing market.

“I think it’s clear that the ongoing debate in Fall River has a number of challenges,” he said, “and there are profound levels of economic disadvantages.”

By pulling together the data and conducting a professionally researched analytical report, Goodman said it would hopefully “shed some light on these conditions” to answer, “why things are the way they are.”

Look back at affordable housing

In her meeting with editorial staff, Fiola detailed a complex issue and a wide range of facts and figures.

With post-World War II Watuppa Heights torn down and the absence of any new public housing recently being built in Fall River, those factors seem countered many fold by the acceleration of state and federal grant programs to fill the statewide gaps, Fiola said.

“It’s a tree with tons of branches,” Fiola said, placing a priority on identifying how they interrelate under a comprehensive housing policy.

Certainly dramatic news stories over chronic nuisance properties and negligent landlords that included a staggering 143 police calls to 1270 Pleasant St. apartments, closing of landlord David Colville’s many multi-family units and attempts to remove homeless families at Roy Street from unsafe conditions have impacted outraged reactions Fiola’s been hearing and her incentive to dig deeper.

With the state in a housing crisis, the gentrification of Boston and its suburbs seems to push housing programs for the neediest and poorest southward where rents are softer, she said.

For instance, a state Home BASE program can assist homeless, eligible families with up to $8,000 for a year’s housing help that can include rent, deposits and relocation to a new community, she said.

If similar apartments are $1,000-plus a month in cities like Brockton, hundreds more around Boston but $750 to $800 in Fall River, the math’s easy on where the assistance funds stretch better, said Fiola, who continues to compile a range of information from officials in the field.

“There are so many types of programs in the absence of more public housing. These grant tools help people in dire need to find housing,” she said.

“Because the problem’s so big at the state level,” she continued, “I think all these agencies are responding (with grants) … and more people in need find their way here.”

It’s a cycle with no end in sight in a city economy with many low-level jobs, high unemployment and poor housing stock.

Growing beyond its affordable housing share

The backdrop during still-scattered stages of early data collection, which Fiola acknowledged in her Sept. 1 guest opinion, was the state Department of Housing and Community Development listing just 48 cities and towns — or 14 percent of the 351 — as meeting the state’s “10 percent threshold” of housing stock being affordable for moderate income households in 2014.

State officials back in 1969 created a comprehensive affordable housing law often referred to as Chapter 40B for the section of the general laws.

Fiola said DHCD listed Fall River as having 11.3 percent, or aproximately 4,800 units, meeting the target through public housing run by the Fall River Housing Authority plus Section 8 project-based units. However, she said the city reaches a higher threshold above the 10 percent with emergency shelter grants, Home BASE funds and others that provide affordable housing funds are added in.

Meanwhile, more than 300 Massachusetts communities were below the 10 percent target, Fiola said her research showed.

2-year quest

She said members of the police, inspections and housing departments supply reams of anecdotal horror stories and she’s seen first-hand deplorable apartment conditions that irresponsible landlords have ignored while collecting rents and making profits, at least in part, with state, federal and other grant funds that continue to grow in supply.

She said she’s collected data showing between 2006 and 2014 certain housing grants to Fall River doubled. She said such information can be limited and requires more documentation.

“I just think it’s unfair to work on anecdotal information. It’s a system that got here over a period of time,” she said. “It’s going to be a data driven approach that drives us to where we want to be.”