Problems and Recommended Corrective Actions for the Metro Housing Supply Report Being Considered at Wed. MPAC Meeting.

I recently posted [HERE] an alert of an upcoming Wednesday April 11 MPAC meeting that included a long delayed Metro report on the supply of Affordable Housing in the Portland Metro area. (This report and reports on the progress toward voluntary affordable housing goals have been suspended since 2007).

I very much appreciate the willingness of Metro staff to share the report and also send me a copy of the underlying database and I also do appreciate the progress that this report represents; I expect that Metro staff will create a web page that will include the database soon, and when I receive it I will update this post. 

In the attached PDF file HERE, I have provided my listing of 8 problems and 12 suggested corrective actions that I found in reviewing the report. (A cheat sheet in the last page [page 8] of this file [Appendix 3] lists those problems and suggestive corrective actions in a table format.

The changes needed include:

1. Reporting the income groupings of affordable units in cities, counties, and centers. [Income groupings are in the database but omitted from the report].
2. Reporting those cities and the 18 regional and town centers which have NO affordable units. [Cities and Centers with NO affordable units are not shown in the report].
3. Reporting the share of all units in Centers that are affordable at different income ranges. My analysis indicates that (excluding the Portland Central City) only 3% of all dwelling units in regional and town centers are affordable to those with incomes below 50% MFI. 
4. Correcting an inadvertent error in the median income Functional Plan definition used to calculate affordable rents. 
5. Creation of a single Excel worksheet with all 2011 data and data elements from the "unit details" table and the "main table"  table in the housing supply database.

I will be sending my comments to MPAC and Metro staff on Monday and as I indicate in my comments "If appropriate, I would welcome the opportunity to further discuss these problems with MPAC members and Metro staff".

I also look forward to the presentation from the housing authority directors from Clackamas, Multnomah, and Washington County at the MPAC meeting, and a discussion about why MPAC and Metro should provide greater focus on affordable housing. 

Originally created and posted on the Oregon Housing Blog.