Collaborating to create affordable housing

By Barb Arland-Fye
For The Catholic Messenger

(This is the second part in a series.)

Dusk shadowed a small group of unhoused individuals huddled against the bitter cold in a ragged, makeshift camp under the railroad bridge across from St. Anthony Parish in downtown Davenport. Inside the parish hall that night in January, a meeting on homelessness was about to begin. St. Anthony Parish offers a generous ministry of hot meals, food and clothing pantries, life-skills classes and friendship to people who live on the margins, who struggle to make ends meet. The parish does not have housing available, however.

While nonprofit housing agencies work hard to provide housing and related services to people in need, access to safe, decent and affordable housing remains a significant challenge throughout the Diocese of Davenport and the nation. The National Low Income Housing Coalition (NLIHC) reports that Iowa has a shortage of 58,674 “rental homes affordable and available for extremely low-income renters,” who represent 25% of renter households.

Leslie Kilgannon, who leads the Quad Cities Housing Council (QCHC), says the affordable housing crisis “didn’t appear overnight and we won’t solve it overnight.” Now, in collaboration with five other housing organizations, QCHC aims to demonstrate the way forward to affordable housing for all with its Silos to Solutions project to create 25 new or rehabilitated rental and homeownership units over the next three years.

Making this Silos to Solutions project possible are two major grants to QCHC. The Quad Cities Community Foundation (QCCF) recently awarded its three-year, $300,000 Transformation Grant to QCHC through the foundation’s Quad Cities Community Impact Fund. In addition, the Regional Development Authority (RDA) has granted $600,000 (over a three-year period) to QCHC for the Silos to Solutions project.

Collaborating with QCHC to bring the housing initiative to fruition are Humility Homes and Services, Inc., Vera French Housing Corporation, Ecumeni­cal Housing Development Group, Habitat for Humanity of the Quad Cities and Rejuvenate Housing. Each organization will develop units within the project area — spanning Marquette to Harrison and Locust to 4th Street — using land and properties they already own, the foundation said in a news release announcing its grant.

Working with neighbors

“We want to integrate (rental and home ownership units) into the neighborhood. All of our agencies work in the neighborhoods already,” Kilgannon said.

Ten of the 25 units will include permanent supportive housing for families and individuals facing the greatest housing barriers. Humility Homes and Services (HHSI) will provide ongoing services to help the prospective families and individuals remain housed. The Congregation of the Humility of Mary founded the organization now called Humility Homes and Services.

Receiving the funding was like a “sigh of relief,” said Ashley Velez Hagler, CEO of HHSI. “The Quad Cities area has had an affordable housing crisis for quite some time that keeps growing. The non-profit world and other advocates have known this and have been raising the alarm for years on this, including offering multiple solutions,” Velez Hagler said. The grant providers have been great partners in helping the QCHC develop a plan, she added.

The project “dovetails perfectly with our mission and values as we are focusing our efforts in the Central Community Circle Neighborhood where our emergency shelter is, the Sisters of Humility live and we own many units of affordable housing. This is a neighborhood we feel connected to and a neighborhood with a lot of pride and we want to help those whom we serve,” Velez Hagler said. “We are happy to be a part of this project as we will be using funding from (it) to continue and create permanent supportive housing, which is one of the programs we have devoted the majority of our time and resources to over the last several years.”

Specifically, HHSI will work on capital improvements to its properties and continue its work in providing permanent, supportive housing, Velez Hagler said. The HHSI website defines permanent, supportive housing as “an intervention that combines stable housing and the appropriate voluntary supportive services needed for participants to safely remain in their homes.”

“The roof over the head is the first step,” said John Cooper, pastoral associate and business manager for St. Anthony Parish in Davenport. Supportive services are essential, he believes, in helping people with multiple barriers remain housed. On the morning after the meeting at his parish on homelessness, Cooper had his hands full making arrangements to transport the people camping under the railroad bridge to emergency shelters at area hotels.

Affordable housing remains elusive even for people with fewer barriers but lack the necessary income in today’s economy. “Families are now the fastest-growing group entering homelessness for the first time in the region,” Kilgannon said. “Rising rents, limited supply and high mortgage rates have pushed thousands to the brink. The challenge calls for big ideas and collaborative solutions.” The support of local governments is crucial, she said.

Serving as a model

The Silos to Solutions signature project aims to serve as a model on how to create more affordable housing and responds to a 2020 QCHC report that showed a gap of 6,645 affordable units for Quad-City households identified as extremely low income. The project’s three main goals:

• Build units of affordable, decent, safe housing.
• Push back on the narrative that affordable housing is a “negative” in neighborhoods. “We believe that housing that is safe, decent and affordable is an asset to any neighborhood,” Kilgannon said.
• Provide inspiration for other projects. “We’re trying to inspire people by showing what affordable housing looks like,” Kilgannon said.

In a recent study that QCHC commissioned, Impact Con­sulting stated that numerous opportunities exist “for QCHC and its allies to partner with stakeholders at the local and state level … to not only produce stable housing services for those lacking these necessities but also broader benefits that can lift every community in the region.”

Kilgannon says, “We can do big things. We can do great things. We can ensure neighborhoods are safe and that people’s housing needs are met.”

Quick take on QCHC

The Quad Cities Housing Council (QCHC) promotes the coordination and building the capacity of housing development throughout the Quad Cities. QCHC focuses funders’ resources, coordinating funding requests, marketing housing agencies to larger foundations and maximizing housing dollars coming into the area. QCHC serves as the resource development arm of the Quad Cities Housing Cluster. As the local Housing Trust Fund, QCHC can serve bi-state entities.

​The Quad Cities Housing Cluster is a consortium of bi-state not-for-profit and for-profit housing service providers and developers, lenders, funders, local governments and members of the housing industry. Cluster members work collaboratively to address the overall housing needs and opportunities of the Quad Cities’ communities.

Source: Quad Cities Housing Council