Flood impacts fair housing study

The loss of hundreds of rental units to the 2008 flood will be felt in the city's latest fair housing study, but how?

“We know the flood had an impact,” said James Gilleylen. “What we'll be looking for are, are there any public policy issues or ways to better addressed the problems caused by the flood?”

Gilleylen, president of J-Quad Planning Group of Addison, Texas, was hired by the city to conduct an analysis of impediments to fair housing. He began gathering information for the study, required by the federal government to be conducted every five years, Tuesday in a series of meetings at the African American Museum of Iowa.

About a dozen landlords, developers, and others in the real estate business at the day's first session also cited the economy and a not-in-my-back-yard attitude as factors blocking efforts to build new affordable housing in the city. But flood recovery seems a major complication to virtually every “conventional” factor discussed.

“We probably didn't have enough (affordable single-family housing) to begin with,” said Mari Davis, a rental property owner and manager and organizer of Flood Impacted Landlords (FILL). “There's a lot that's just sitting, because of inaction on the part of the city.”

It's also difficult to deal with trouble-making tenants - often the children of otherwise reliable renters - while living up to fair housing rules, Davis said.

“That landlord is in a position of, what do you do?” she said.

Comments from Tuesday's meetings will be combined with Census demographic information, reports filed by lenders under fair-housing laws, and other data to produce a report in about 90 days, Gilleylen said. The report will identify factors both legal and otherwise that may contribute to fair-housing problems.

Gilleylen said violations of federal housing law, if found, are often more easily remedied than policy issues such as economics, planning and zoning practices, local transit patterns, and other factors.

“In some respects, they are actually the easier ones to address, because they are more cut and dried,” he said.

City residents who wish to comment or otherwise contribute to the study may call the Cedar Rapids Civil Rights Commission at 286-5036, or e-mail the commission at civilrights@cedar-rapids.org.