The Johnson County Affordable Housing Coalition hosted a roundtable discussion on affordable housing to inform community members and elected officials on issues and policy opportunities on Wednesday.
Extra chairs had to be brought into the meeting room in the Iowa City Public Library where the discussion was hosted. Several elected officials and candidates were in attendance, including Iowa City Democratic 1st District Congressional Candidate Christina Bohannan.
The topics discussed covered a wide range, with attendees bringing up the issues of predatory landlords, exorbitant rent prices in mobile home parks, luxury housing, and homelessness.
After discussing which affordable housing issues were “keeping them up at night,” attendees shifted focus to potential solutions.
Learn more:
One solution posited was more inclusive zoning laws. State Sen. Janice Weiner, D-Iowa City, said policies automatically allowing multi-family units to be built on a residential lot could help increase housing stock.
Bohannan said this solution may not be “one size fits all,” especially for smaller towns. A better solution for a small town could be to revamp old, unused homes instead of spending more to create a new housing unit from scratch, she said.
Another issue discussed was Section 8 housing vouchers. Iowa City’s waitlist for public housing units, which accept housing vouchers for residency, has grown so long that the Iowa City Housing Authority recently decided to close its public housing application.
Several attendees said they or people they know have applied for such vouchers and have waited years to receive them. Once having the voucher, though, the issue of acquiring housing was not always solved.
RELATED: Johnson County Affordable Housing Coalition expands efforts
Mandi Remington, a candidate for the Johnson County Board of Supervisors, said some recipients do not have housing options where they can use a voucher because of the state’s recent law that allows landlords to turn down tenants on the basis of using a voucher.
Other attendees attested to their own experiences with affordable housing, with several community members getting emotional when discussing their dire need for more affordable rent rates.
Affordable housing stock is correlated to other topics like education and the economy, attendees said. Mitch Lingo, a member of the Iowa City Community School District School Board, said when families can afford to live in a school district, their children will be able to attend school there.
Bohannan and several others said the same about increasing an area’s workforce and bolstering its economy. The more affordable an area is, the more desirable it is to live and work there, Bohannan said.
“Those are real bottlenecks for our businesses in being able to get workforce to come because there’s just not that housing there at an affordable level,” Bohannan said.
In all of the potential solutions to creating more affordable housing, Rod Sullivan, the chair of the Johnson County Board of Supervisors, said the state and federal government need to help fund the programs and initiatives that tackle this issue.
“A lot of this we can do, and we can make a dent,” Sullivan said. “But we really need the state and federal governments to step up here and in a big way.”