This November, residents of Baltimore will be asked to vote on whether to establish a new trust fund that would provide affordable housing for some of the city’s lowest-income residents.
The Affordable Housing Trust Fund proposal recently gained 18,100 signatures of preliminary support, well in excess of the 10,000 required to put the measure on the election ballot. The fund would provide ongoing support for the planning and development of affordable housing spaces, as well as education programs to help low-income residents on a path to eventual home ownership. Some 59% of homeowners, for example, say they wish they understood the terms of their mortgage better.
Affordable housing has been a hot-button issue in Baltimore for some time, where the crisis is not so much about the number of livable spaces — as it is in other cities like San Francisco or Boston — as it is about the affordability gap between residential income and the price of rent.
“A lot of renters are really struggling, and a lot of people are living in substandard conditions or living on the street,” said Todd Cherkis, an organizer for anti-poverty group United Workers, who helped organize the signature collection for the fund. “We have to make sure this is a priority.”
The public vote will only decide on the creation of the trust fund, and not about how the money for that fund will be sourced. Odette Ramos, director of the Community Development Network of Maryland, said that they will consider a number of private and public funding sources, including a potential tax on short-term vacation home rental properties, similar to the current hotel tax.
Spending will be focused on renters who earn less than 30% or less of the area median income ($26,000 for a family of four) or homeowners who earn 50% or less of the median ($43,350 for a family of four).
Bottom line, Ramos said, housing assistance measures are well overdue in the city.
“There is a housing crisis in Baltimore,” said Ramos. “Doing nothing is not an option.”