They met, simply, to talk about employment practices and housing needs.

Friday, November 19, 1999

They met, simply, to talk about employment practices and housing needs.

Who do they – Austin Medical Center, Quality Pork Processors, other local industry and business – employ and what kind of housing do those employees need?

"Affordable new housing, in the $90-$110,000 range," said Rod Nordeng, director of Human Services at AMC-Mayo. There are 800 people working for the Mayo Healthcare system in Austin and last year alone the AMC hired 235 people here.

"Starter housing, say $50-$60,000 range," said Kelly Wadding, president of QPP. "Another of our basic problems is transitional housing, getting people who have just arrived into housing."

Wadding said that QPP has a number of housing programs, at least for recent arrivals directly recruited by the company: a block of apartments, a utility/damage deposit guarantee program and "four people who scour the area for apartments for QPP employees.

"A lot of other people come here through friends, family and other employees though," Wadding added. "They don’t all know where to go. They are the ones that end up sleeping in cars."

Other faces at the table in the Austin Housing and Redevelopment boardroom on Wednesday were representatives of the city and county HRA staffs, city planning and zoning, the Development Corporation of Austin, the Hormel Foundation and two Austin City Council/HRA Board members.

It was an Austin powers brainstorming session, as well as a room full of resources for Maxfield real estate researcher Brent Wittenberg, who is updating a study done by the Maxfield company for the city in 1993.

Joe Fuhrman, who was at the meeting representing the DCA, is also a real estate broker. Austin HRA director Kermit Mahan turned to him for information on the private housing market.

"Are private developers building the $90-$110,000 homes?" Mahan asked the broker.

"No," was the answer from Fuhrman. "There’s a few spec houses out there, but lots – at least in the Southgate area – are going for $30,000 alone … Plus you have to remember you’re talking medical center staff for those homes. Your average plant worker isn’t going to come in looking at that price range initially."

Fuhrman added that many older homes that would have gone for $50,000 several years ago are now selling for close to $75,000 due to the housing shortage."

"So what we need is land write-down capacity," Mahan said.

Mahan emerged upbeat from the meeting.

"Much of what the city already does is working, but it needs to be expanded to meet the numbers need," Mahan said.

There are several housing programs currently under way at the HRA.

These include spot housing – the agency buys decrepit housing, tears it down, cleans up the lot and turns it over to a private contractor who builds and sells $83,000 homes on the lots – rental housing – phase II of the Austin Courtyard Apartments is due to break ground this spring. There are a number of other housing options available through the HRA, but those two and the Whittier project (privately constructed townhomes on HRA-acquired land with some rent controls in place) were the buzzwords of the meeting.

"You heard what Fuhrman said, trickle down does work," Mahan said. "When seniors move out of their homes into rental housing like the Courtyard, someone moves up into their nicer homes and that opens up homes in the lower end of the market."

Fuhrman also said that the HRA could build acres and acres – in the vicinity of 40 – of the $83,000 spot housing and not have a problem unloading the properties.

"We’ll need to utilize a combination of state and local funds to help in assembling more properties," Mahan said. "Yes, the local funds could come from the city, the HRA or contributions from private sources."

Will Austin, like Rochester, see any private industry contributions toward resolving the housing shortage?

"No one has come forward yet," Mahan said Thursday. "I haven’t heard anything officially."

Mahan said he thought the group would meet again after Wittenberg completed his revision of the housing/employment study, possibly in two to four weeks.