Johnson County municipalities come together to talk housing diversity

Local elected officials have decided to create a multijurisdictional task force to address socio-economic disparities and affordable housing placement throughout the county.

Officials representing the Iowa City Community School District, Iowa City, Coralville, North Liberty, University Heights, Hills, and Johnson County met Monday to again discuss the school district's Oct. 13 letter that asked local officials to address zoning and housing discrepancies in relation to students.

Representatives from each municipality shared efforts already being made as well as potential changes to their respective affordable housing policies.

The final decision was one of continued discussion within all communities, with overall guidance coming from the school district.

"I'd like to see us continue to move this conversation forward," said Brian Kirschling, vice president of the ICCSD School Board, acknowledging that such changes will involve considerable input from all involved.

"I don't beleive the purpose of the letter was to ask various municipalities to solve, in one fell swoop, the issues that we face. We have to look at all phases of it," Kirschling said.

The school district's original letter asked that each municipality adopt comparable policies on inclusionary zoning, reinvest in areas in the community dealing with socio-economic isolation, place restrictions on rental units and rental density.

Inclusionary zoning entails offering bonus densities in exchange for including a percentage of affordable housing options in new construction. However, Iowa City Mayor Matt Hayek said while zoning changes have the potential to have an impact on new development, existing neighborhoods in need of change would see little to no effect.

"I can't underscore enough that we feel that the zoning issues are long-term approaches there are not answers for the problems we face now, it's important for us that the district address the current needs as quickly as possible," he said. "I don't want that to be a distraction from the issue."

Outside of zoning near the several new schools in the area, elected officials indicated reinvesting in existing neighborhoods as one way to begin to address disparities near the county's older schools, where there is little to no room for new development.

While rural Johnson County's affordable housing offerings are limited, mostly including trailer courts, Johnson County Supervisor Rod Sullivan expressed an interest in partnering with local communities for affordable housing options where the city has room and the county has flexibility with its borrowing capacity.

"It's something we would be williing to consider," Sullivan said. "We're looking for partners here, invite us to the table and we'll see where we can help."

Monday's meeting is the first joint meeting on the matter since the school district chose to rescind their diversity policy earlier this month, which sought to balance poverty levels in Iowa City schools by using data from a federal meal program to measure poverty, was deemed non-compliant with federal law late last year by the U.S. Department of Agriculture.

School board members say they might pursue a new policy that will use a combination of metrics to measure diversity, rather than only using the number of students in each school who qualify for free and reduced-price lunch, a common measure of poverty in schools.