So the city wants your input, well really not YOUR input;
People of low and moderate income, people who are homeless, racial and ethnic minorities, people of limited English proficiency, people with disabilities, and entities that provide services to these populations are specifically encouraged to attend.
Yet, they don’t want these people showing up to public input at the regular council meetings? What gives?
We don’t have an affordable housing issue in Sioux Falls, we have a wage issue.
I have often said our affordable housing program needs an entirely different approach. Instead of tearing down houses (that we could fix up for much less) and building new structures (that we take a hit on when we sell them) we could be using the money to re-fab older homes and apartments. The city gets about $2.1 million in Federal funds a year. You could fix up between 60-80 homes for that money instead of just building 20 homes at a loss. You could also set up financing, etc. which could triple that number easily.
Mayor TenHaken needs to clean house in community development and affordable housing and take a new approach that is committed to providing more core neighborhood cleanup than just a couple houses here and there and setup a program that focuses on entire neighborhoods instead looking for poor people to fill their quota.