No Picture on the Puzzle Box

Two interesting housing ideas came through my email in the last few days. The first is from Victoria where housing advocate Diane Carr teamed up with SOS Designs to create a proposal called the Independent Settlement Project. The project would house 190 people -- or about 20% of Victoria's estimated homeless population -- at a cost about 90% less than what is now being spent on those people through social and policing services.

Other good things to recommend the project: it incorporates green building design elements that lower the maintenance costs of suites and it uses existing public land in the form of an elementary school that has been closed down. The neighbouring park space and playground would also be preserved.

The Victoria School Board has so far said that it would rather sell the land and convert it into money. The only problem there is that money comes and goes but land is finite. Selling it now may bring in some money, but having to buy it back at some point in thefuture will cost alot more money. There is also only tax payer who doesn't care who owns the land, they just care that it's not getting used. To paraphrase a part of the proposal "the issue is like a jig-saw puzzle, and it feels like we’re all pushing different pieces around on the table, trying to see what fits...And guess what? There’s no picture on the outside of the puzzle-box to help us get started."

The other email was a report on the progress of ARCH, the Association of Reinvestment Consortia for Housing. Started 16 years ago to link investors together to use the Low Income Housing Tax Credit (LIHTC), the program has shown some remarkable successes.