Waynesboro: Leaders make no-brainer move to support affordable housing

The #1 need in Waynesboro: affordable housing. Credit to Waynesboro City Council for voting Monday night to fill a funding gap from the Trump administration to get a $36 million affordable-housing project moving forward.

One City Council member, before voting in favor of a resolution that will have the city kick in $500,000 toward the project, asked a good question – why will it cost $375,000 per unit to get 96 multifamily units built on Alston Court?

The answer: it takes public-private partnerships to get affordable-housing projects off the ground.

Residential developers have no problem finding private funding sources when they want to build housing for upper-income earners.

When your market is households at or below 80 percent of median household income – which in Waynesboro is $59,994 – it’s a matter of return on investment.

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People with household incomes below $50,000 a year – which is that 80 percent or below threshold – obviously can’t afford $375,000 home situations.

That’s why companies like Enterprise Community Development, which is the developer in the Alston Court project, seek funding through a combination of local, state and federal sources, in addition to the private sector.

Like it or not, it’s how these things get done.

One person who doesn’t like how things get done, and spoke out against the funding resolution at Monday’s City Council meeting, Waynesboro resident Mary McDermott, cast the issue as being zero sum between money for affordable housing and money for local K-12 funding.

“I am totally shocked that we are making a half-a-million-dollar donation to a private housing developer,” McDermott said, which, donation, seriously?

I like referring to local and state funding for economic development projects as corporate welfare, but is it corporate welfare when it’s funding for a private developer to build housing for a population that isn’t otherwise being served by the market?

“Our schools need improvement. They need funding,” McDermott said – right and right.

“You need to invest more in them, not less, or we are going to fall behind other localities in economic development, because we don’t have the people they need to fill their jobs, and our schools are not good enough for them to feel comfortable sending their children there,” McDermott said.

Here we get to the heart of the issue.

So, we need to direct our dollars toward K-12 education not so much because it helps local kids get a leg up, but because it can help us lure more upper-income families to want to move here.

Got it.

I think we can walk and chew gum at the same time, but that’s just me.

We had a chance here to leverage $500,000 to get 96 low-income families into affordable housing.

This one was a no-brainer.