Nicole Adair, who earned a Master of Urban Planning degree from Texas A&M University’s College of Architecture in August 2008, looks at neighborhoods across Texas and sees a storm brewing.
She sees home prices rising out of reach for Hispanics and low- and moderate-income Texans, as well as the state government’s reluctance to allow price controls for housing.
“We don’t necessarily have an affordable housing problem in Texas that some of the other states do, where prices are really high, but we might in the next 30 years,” she said. “People have a right to live in housing that is not substandard, that is good for them, but you’re getting a larger affordability gap. There are a lot of people whose incomes just aren’t getting higher.”
Adair will have a chance to learn much more about the process of policymaking when she heads to Washington D.C. this fall as a 2008-09 Graduate & Young Professional Policy Fellow in Housing with the Congressional Hispanic Caucus Institute.
She’s very excited about the opportunity.
“I’ve never been to D.C. and I’ve never lived for an extended time outside Texas,” she said. “I have absolutely no expectation to have any free time,” she said.
The fellowship begins with a weeklong orientation preparing them for their activities, which are many.
After their orientation, Adair and other institute fellows will research and interview for possible placements, choosing an office that best matches their respective interests.
“The range of placements includes congressional offices, federal agencies, Washington-based media, corporate federal affairs offices, national advocacy organizations, and government-related institutions,” states the institute’s website.
Once placed, fellows hit the ground running. They must work a minimum of 35 hours at their placement site, organize and lead policy roundtables and/or write a policy brief, participate in community service, attend weekly leadership development sessions, participate in all institute-sponsored activities, and complete a midyear and final written evaluation of the program.
“It’s is an outstanding opportunity for Nicole,” said Shannon Van Zandt, assistant professor of urban planning at Texas A&M. “The fellowship will give her exposure to policymaking at the highest level, focused on her area of interest in housing, serving a population she cares deeply about. It will allow her to return to her family and state after her fellowship, broadening her horizons and increasing her capacity to serve her local community and state.”
Nicole’s career path began when she volunteered with Habitat for Humanity through her church. During her undergraduate years at the University of Texas at San Antonio, she was in the American Institute of Architecture Students, which worked with a local Habitat chapter.
“I’ve always been really interested in housing and the sweat equity concept,” said Nicole. Habitat came up with the term “sweat equity” to describe the labor that a Habitat homeowner performs building a home alongside Habitat volunteers.
“I saw the hands-on experience, getting involved on a grass-roots level, helping people out and seeing how it can change lives,” she said.
After graduating with a Bachelor of Science degree in Architecture from UTSA, she went to work as a construction manager for a general contractor.
“I wasn’t finding anything right off the bat that I was interested in,” she said. “A lot of people were looking for CAD designers, but I was looking forward to being back on a job site, so I went to work for Bartlett Cocke in San Antonio.”
There, she learned about how public policy, or the lack of it, can shape the industry.
“I was thinking about the buildings we made and how much waste was produced,” she said. “It wasn’t very lean, and they weren’t thinking about how to build smarter, or thinking about materials, design, that kind of thing.”
Then she saw what the underlying problem was.
“I realized it’s not the general contractor’s fault because there really weren’t policies in place that say you’ve got to be thinking about how much trash you collect, and where to put that trash, and how to be environmentally friendly,” she said.
“It got me thinking about the policy process, how to get involved in it, and that’s what brought me to A&M.” she said.
After her Washington D.C. fellowship is complete in May 2009, she plans to return home with her new knowledge and find a way to impact housing policy.
“I want to find out the policies that exist now, how they’re not meeting the needs of certain Latino communities in Texas, and try to find where the best position for me is to bridge that gap,” she said. “I could possibly go to Austin, work at the state capitol and work on reforming some of these ideas.”
Her name won’t be found on a ballot, however.
“I have absolutely no desire to get into public office. I don’t know if I’m geared that way,” she said.
She’s also interested in improving in the conditions in colonias: the impoverished, unincorporated and relatively undeveloped villages near population centers along the Texas side of the Texas-Mexico border.
Nicole believes a concept known as inclusionary housing can help make quality housing affordable for Hispanics and lower- to moderate-income families.
“The idea of inclusionary housing is to allow for or control some kind of set aside, where 10-15 percent of a development’s units are going to be for affordable housing,” she said. What’s considered affordable is determined by income requirements set by the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development.
“What’s great about this is that you’re not trying to take away from the developers’ profits in any way and the biggest thing to work on is that understanding, to get developers to try something new in Texas,” she said.
Developers are given incentives to embrace the idea.
“Density bonuses are a huge thing,” said Nicole. For example, a municipality may allow a developer to build 40 units on a particular parcel of land, but with inclusionary housing a city can allow for a developer to build 50, if 5 units are set aside as low or moderate income units. “You’re selling your five for an affordable price but we’re going to give you an extra 10,” said Nicole of the approach.
The inclusionary housing concept also calls for participating builders to have their projects fast-tracked through the often time-consuming process of permitting or other city procedures.
“Whether it be rezoning, permitting, anything like that they put you to the front of the line,” she said, adding that tax credits can also be used to sweeten the deal for developers.
Other states, such as California, Maryland, New Jersey and Massachusetts, have laws that mandate inclusionary housing, as do many other municipalities in the nation, such as Burlington, Vt., Tallahassee, Fla. and Santa Fe, N.M.
So, it was a disappointment for Nicole and affordable housing advocates to see the state of Texas enact a bill that prevents cities from setting the price of a home, which, for now, eliminates the possibility of mandated inclusionary housing in Texas.
“I think it’s just a fear of not knowing how to address something new,” she said. “Developers put a fear into legislators’ eyes, saying, ‘you’re going to cause developers to resist this idea, they’re not going to build, and we’re going to have a housing shortage.’”
After her time in D.C., Nicole will have plenty of work to do as a champion of good housing for low- to moderate-income families. According to Van Zandt, there’s no better person to push the state to mandate affordable housing for its citizens.
She describes Nicole as having an “unparalleled ability to coordinate a variety of activities and people, to interact with … officials and stakeholders, and, frankly, to just get the job done.”
“If you don’t provide affordable housing, where are these people going to live?” Nicole asks. “Who’s going to do it?”
- August 27, 2008 -
