by Laura Turner

Local officials can revitalize their communities by ensuring that citizens have good places to live, former San Antonio Mayor and NLC Past President Henry Cisneros told delegates in his keynote address to the Opening General Session of the Congress of Cities.

Cisneros, who also served as secretary of Housing and Urban Development during the Clinton Administration, called housing ?the most durable form of economic development.?

Cities are places where people work, learn and recreate, but most importantly, he said, they are places where people live.

?The quality of housing has everything to do with the quality of our neighborhoods and the quality of life in our communities,? said Cisneros.

He noted that city officials focus on economic development. ?We now understand that a home is where a job goes to sleep,? he said.

Local leaders can try to revitalize neighborhood business districts and attract commercial development, but when they build middle class homes, businesses follow, he said. Businesses come to a revived neighborhood because they understand that every one of those rooftops is a disposable income.

Cisneros called cities dynamic places and living organisms that can be recycled.

?Just because a neighborhood was once a factory district, and is obsolete now that the industrial era has passed, doesn?t mean it needs to stay in that condition forever. It can be cleared. The land can be revitalized, and on it can be placed new functions, like homeownership and housing opportunities,? he said.

Moreover, for many Americans, their home represents the sum and total of their net worth. Home ownership is how families can accumulate assets, said Cisneros.

?It?s really important that? local officials understand this massive opportunity that is before us?to re-shape our cities, to enhance their quality, and very importantly, to help the families who live in these places.?

Cisneros and his predecessor as HUD secretary, Jack Kemp, have been working on bi-partisan strategies to address various issues and have developed a framework to talk about housing policy.

The seven-part continuum he and Kemp have devised begins with the most primitive form of housing ? shelters for the homeless.

?Unfortunately in our country today, we have about 800,000 Americans who sleep in the streets on any given night,? he said. ?It would be a city in the top 10 if they were all massed on one place.?

He lauded Los Angeles? mayor and council for their recent efforts to pass a billion dollar bond issue to address homelessness, and offered examples of successful local housing initiatives throughout his address.

?We need concerted efforts to bring homeless people in from the streets to safe, clean and well-managed emergency shelters. We don?t have enough shelter beds in most of our cities,? he said. ?And we need more facilities and more beds at some of the existing sites.?

The next step on the ladder is supportive housing, which, he said, many believe is the long-term answer to homelessness.

Cisneros showed a photograph of a father and his children sleeping in a car because they had no other place to go. ?That just ought not be in the wealthiest country on earth,? he said.

The National Alliance to End Homelessness, on whose board he serves, has created a strategic approach called Housing First, whose concept is to get people into housing and then link them with services.

The third step on the ladder is public housing, or what has traditionally been regarded as public support for housing.

?One of the great stories of the last decade is the progress we?ve made in public housing,? Cisneros said.

Beginning in the mid-1990s projects have been transformed under the HOPE VI program. Older structures have been blown up and replaced with smaller scale, less dense, defensible space.

Cisneros called for reducing concentrations of poverty by creating smaller scale, mixed income developments and for funding HOPE VI.

The next step on the ladder is assisted or subsidized rentals.

Cisneros said cities must preserve existing housing stock and do a better job of utilizing vouchers to create better neighborhoods.

Step five on the ladder is rental housing.

?We know that a family with one full-time worker earning the minimum wage cannot afford the local fair market rent for a two-bedroom apartment anywhere in the United States today,? he declared. ?So we need to increase the production of affordable rentals.?

Five million units were produced in the 1970s, he said. During the 1990s, only 2.2 million units were built.

Cisneros cited the difficulty of assembling land for affordable apartments and issues related to NIMBYism.

The next step on the ladder is first-time homeownership.

At 69 percent, the homeownership rate is the highest it has ever been.

While the homeownership rate for white Americans is about 74 percent, the African American and Hispanic homeownership rates are 48 percent. The country can do better, he said.

Local governments can take leadership by facilitating approvals, focusing on green development, assisting buyers and focusing on home counseling and foreclosure prevention.

At the top of the ladder is the need for move-up homes in cities.

Cisneros called for a new flexible tax credit, similar to the low-income housing tax credit, to stimulate production of affordable owner units.

?Yes, it is possible to focus on any one of these,? he said, ?but cities need to think comprehensively and really put in place the leadership to provide housing across this broad spectrum. There are people in your communities who need housing at every step of the ladder.?

Secondly, he said, cities should focus on smart growth.

?There?s a market for it. Cities across the nation are seeing that empty-nesters want to come back to inner neighborhoods with smaller pieces of property. Young professionals want to live near the stimulation of urban life.?

Constituencies of people want this housing, so local officials can face up to issues like re-zoning, or look at codes to make housing more affordable in central neighborhoods.

Cities have real opportunities to re-populate neighborhoods that have been declining and to revitalize neighborhoods that need recycling, using housing as the economic strategy to do it.

Third, officials have tools they can put to work, like tax policy, tax increment financing and the removal of regulatory barriers. Zoning laws may require certain size lots, while denser, more compact housing is needed.

Surplus public land is another tool. Cisneros said he has seen communities built on lands that had been municipal junkyards. Cities have transformed brownfields and acquired tax-delinquent land.

He mentioned housing trust funds and relationships with the government sponsored enterprises Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac and the federal home loan banks. Employers, including local governments, can offer housing-related employee fringe benefits.

Cisneros encouraged delegates to consider regional strategies to deconcentrate poverty and move people to where jobs and opportunities are.

?This is a relatively newer area for municipal concern. Housing has been farmed out to the non-profits and the housing authorities or to the private sector, but more and more mayors are recognizing this makes sense. This is a way we can revitalize our neighborhoods. This is a way we can restore our economy. This a way in which we can create the lifeblood of our cities by focusing on that basic municipal function, which is providing people with a decent place to live.?