In 2000, Duluth city councilors singled out decent, affordable housing as one of the city's most pressing needs.
Five years later, with the city struggling to keep pace with a goal of building 1,000 new homes by 2010, councilors threw $3 million behind their priority. They voted to divert $600,000 a year over five years from the city's share of Fond-du-Luth Casino revenues. Money that had been traditionally used -- but didn't legally or otherwise have to be used -- to fix streets was earmarked instead to help build homes, some of them affordable to families with low or moderate incomes, and to help fix up the city's aging housing stock. Inside the Council Chambers, more than 100 housing advocates and others hooted and cheered the vote that created a Housing Investment Fund.
And they're still cheering. Thanks to the fund -- and thanks to a federal HOPE VI grant and to other initiatives and funding sources -- Duluth is now, finally, keeping pace with the "Duluth Housing 1000" campaign. More than 600 new housing units had been created through the end of last year. And that despite a first-year tally of just 13 new homes built or under construction.
"We've used the fund so successfully in leveraging other dollars from throughout the state and country," said St. Louis County Commissioner Steve O'Neil, a long-time affordable-housing advocate. "And not only has it created much-needed housing, it's created high-paying construction jobs."
But now, two years into five years of city allocations needed to fully establish the fund, it's suddenly in trouble. Russ Stewart, whose City Council term ends this year and who's not seeking re-election, introduced a resolution Tuesday to end the city's payments to the Housing Investment Fund. The move was a troubling flip-flop: In 2005, Stewart was part of the majority of councilors who voted in favor of the fund.
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"I didn't want to vote for it," he told the News Tribune editorial page staff yesterday. "I caved in to pressure [from housing advocates and others]. Now I'm trying to do right."
The city's share of casino revenues should be used instead to fix streets, Stewart said. The bridge collapse in Minneapolis was a reminder of that. "We're so far behind with street maintenance," he said.
True enough. But in three years, the Housing Investment Fund will be $3 million strong and will be able to better stand on its own. The city money now giving the fund its critical roots could then be reverted to its original purpose -- or to whatever purpose councilors decide then is most pressing.
Until the Housing Investment Fund is mature and fully established, any attempt to do away with it or to weaken it is premature. Stewart's resolution Tuesday was tabled. And that's where it ought to stay.
