Tackling the Housing Issue One Student at a Time
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Affordable housing for everyone from low
income to middle class has been a headliner topic for a few years,
especially as skyrocketing property taxes and insurance rates are
driving critical employees to other communities and out of state.
FAU Assistant Visiting
Professor James Carras is taking the issue beyond the rhetoric and
inspiring urban and regional planning students to tackle this
overwhelming challenge head on.
A professional consultant in the area of housing finance for
the past 25 years, Carras has experience teaching at Tufts
University, Harvard and MIT and holds professional workshops around
the country.
He watched as South
Florida planner and government officials tried to grapple with the
affordable housing crisis that started to hit our community about
three years ago.
Noting that the
community was woefully ill prepare to deal with the crisis and that
no official partnerships existed to deal with it, Carras helped to
form Broward Housing Partnership (BHP).
The nonprofit
organization's mission is to "pioneer new approaches, create new
tools, and influence housing policy to improve the production and
sustainability of affordable housing through its consortium of
member organizations in Broward County."
BHP has grown to operate in three areas: education and
advocacy; development through the Broward Housing Partnership Land
Trust; and financing through the Broward Housing Partnership Trust.
Among the board
members of the organization are Joyanne Stephens, Ph.D., Vice
President-Provost, Broward; and Cyril "Sid" Spiro of Regent's Bank,
who is chair of the organization.
"Collectively, we have advanced the thinking around solutions
to affordable housing," said Carras. "It's no longer an issue for
the low income only. Now, we know it's affecting our workforce
housing also."
He believes that the planners of the future will be better
equipped to deal with this issue and will have a greater appreciate
for the critical role the private sector can play in the solutions.
Many of the students Carras has mentored or taught in his
seminar on housing for both graduates and undergraduates already
are pursing careers in the field.
His course is taught
within the Department of Urban and Regional Planning and requires
students to complete a realistic community project.
They must select a
local community, conduct a needs assessment, look at initiatives
and make a set of recommendations.
Clark Stephens, FAU '07, took Carras' class the fall of 2006
and focused on Coral Springs for his project.
He said the class was
the best one offered in the program and called it a "crash course
in affordable housing."
"I came to understand that this is a regional issue," he said. "People live in one city, but work in another. All of our cities are interconnected."
Dealing with the affordable housing issue is
like a tool box, said Stephens, "There's no silver bullet.
We have to educate the
public about all of the available programs out there and try to
remove the false stigma that affordable housing is bad and causes
property values to decline."
Lisa Wight, FAU '05, met Carras when she was working on her
master's thesis project on Lauderdale Lakes, one of the county's
poorest communities.
She sees the area ripe
for redevelopment that brings in a more balanced mixed of incomes.
A former employee of
the Florida Housing Finance Corporation, she saw firsthand the need
for creative solutions in urban planning.
A graduate of
Florida State University, she came to FAU to earn her master's in
urban and regional planning, with a focus on housing and community
development, and pursue her dream to make a difference in the
housing industry.
An Environmental
Growth Management (EGM) Fellow, she became involved in Broward
Housing Partnership, where she remains active today. She now works
for the Broward County Public School Board in the growth management
department and in the area of affordable housing, an issue that is
greatly impacting the school district's ability to recruit quality
teachers.
"We have to make investments in solutions and find ways to
make the limited funding work," she said.
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