Billings Gazette, Dec. 10, on Montana’s affordable housing crisis:
As of last week, 5,722 families were on Billings Housing Authority waiting lists for affordable housing. Some families wait years to get one of 1,100 Section 8 vouchers. Wait lists for public housing also are longer than the list of rental units.
Where do people live when they can’t afford rent?
Some live in substandard housing (e.g. holes in the floor, mold in the walls), in vehicles, in shelters, couch surf (even with children) or move from one relative’s place to another, said Teddi Shorten of Billings Housing Authority. “They move a lot.”
According the Montana Budget and Policy Center based in Helena, 93 percent of the Montana households using federal housing assistance include children, elderly or disabled adults. In a report issued earlier this year, the policy center said that 29,000 low-income Montana households (the majority of whom live below the poverty level) spend more than half of their income on rent. That leaves precious little for all other necessities.
Statewide, there are twice as many applicants for rental housing vouchers as there are rental housing vouchers.
Everything in life is harder when people don’t have a safe, decent place to live. Children do better in school when the family has stable housing. Workers get to work on time and they don’t have to change jobs with frequent moves. If there’s no affordable place to live where the jobs are, there won’t be enough workers.
Legislative action
The Montana Legislature’s Local Government Interim Committee recognized the affordable housing crisis and endorsed three bills intended to increase the supply of housing units.
Sen. Margie MacDonald, D-Billings, has introduced Senate Bill 18 to establish state Workforce Housing Tax Credits.
Montana already allocates federal tax credits that help fill the gap between what it costs to build housing and what the developer can collect in rent from people with low to moderate income. Last month, the Montana Board of Housing awarded $30.6 million in federal tax credits to affordable housing projects in Havre, Helena, Ronan, Whitefish and Billings where St. John’s Lutheran Ministries plans to construct 54 apartments for seniors.
Unfortunately, 12 other projects didn’t get tax credits because the program is so limited.
MacDonald’s Senate Bill 18 proposes to make up to $8.5 million in state tax credits available annually starting in January 2022. That would allow developers (usually nonprofit organizations) to tap into another federal program that provides a less generous tax credit, but which still makes projects financially feasible when paired with state tax credits, according to Sheila Rice, a member of the state Board of Housing.
The proposed Montana Workforce Housing Tax Credit could double the amount of affordable housing built in our state every year it is in place, Rice told The Gazette.
That claim is based on the experience of 14 other states that already have seen success with their own state housing tax credits. Colorado, for example, reported that in 2016 its state housing tax credit generated 1,299 housing units, 3,289 jobs and more than $525 million in economic impact.
Housing tax credits work like this: The state Board of Housing awards them to eligible projects on a competitive basis. The nonprofit developer then sells the tax credits to investors to generate cash to help finance low-income housing projects that otherwise would be financially unfeasible.
In addition to MacDonald’s bill, Sen. Carlie Boland, D-Great Falls, has introduced Senate Bill 15 that would add “infrastructure costs of affordable housing projects” to the list of projects that can be financed with funds from the Treasure State Endowment and the Big Sky Economic Development Program.
Rep. Dave Fern, D-Whitefish, has introduced House Bill 16, which would direct the Montana Board of Investments to allow the Montana Board of Housing to use $15 million from the coal tax trust fund “to make loans for the development and preservation of homes and apartments for low- and moderate-income” Montanans.
These three committee bills are good steps toward easing the affordable housing crisis. We call on lawmakers to support them when they get to Helena.
Editorial: https://bit.ly/2UGJgzc
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Bozeman Daily Chronicle, Dec. 9, on a controversial proposed rule change in the Montana House:
Early in the state legislative session to convene in January, House members are slated to consider changing their rules to allow a simple majority of representatives to bring a bill tabled in committee to the House floor for debate and a vote.
This rule change is long overdue and members of both parties should welcome and support it.
Under current House rules, if a bill is tabled in committee, it takes a supermajority of 60 of the House’s 100 members to resurrect the measure and bring it to the floor for debate and a vote. Mustering 60 votes to do anything in the Montana House can be a heavy lift. So bills tabled in committee are essentially dead.
The supermajority rule gives committee chairs and the speaker of the House near tyrannical power over legislation. The speaker can choose to assign legislation he or she does not favor to committees chaired by representatives known to oppose the legislation. Or the speaker can choose not to assign legislation to any committee. Both acts effectively kill measures even though a majority of members of the House may favor them.
This system clearly invites abuse of power. And there are many examples of where that has happened.
The Republican-majority interim rules committee took up the proposed rule change recently and voted to table it along party lines. But the chairman of the committee said the House will take up the proposal on Jan. 8, the second day of the session.
During debate in the rules committee, the committee chairman, Rep. Derek Skees Kalispell questioned why the Republicans would want to give up the power that supermajority rule gives them. But Republicans hold a 58-42 majority in the House and would clearly maintain power over legislation that reaches the floor. The rule change would simply create an opportunity for a bipartisan group of legislators to bring bills to the floor with a simple majority.
And that’s an opportunity our elected representatives should have.
In the Senate, a simple majority is all that’s required to move tabled bills out of committee. The rule has worked well there and the House should adopt the same rule when it convenes in January.
Editorial: https://bit.ly/2Esl1jr
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Helena Independent Record, Dec. 9, on the Legislature needing to find a way to prevent Montana residents from losing health care:
Montana voters have made it abundantly clear that Initiative 185 was the wrong way to fund the state’s Medicaid expansion program.
But that doesn’t necessarily mean they want to let Medicaid expansion expire. And now it’s up to the Legislature to find a better way to prevent 94,000 Montanans from losing their health care.
Gov. Steve Bullock and a bipartisan group of state lawmakers worked across party lines three years ago to bring Medicaid expansion to Montana. However, they included a sunset date of July 2019 so they could evaluate the success of the program and determine whether to continue, modify or terminate it.
Last fall, I-185 sought to make the program permanent and partially fund it through an increase in the state’s tax on tobacco products. But as we opined before the elections, the initiative was seriously flawed.
Though I-185 was billed as a way to fund Medicaid expansion, the overwhelming majority of the revenue it generated would have been used for other purposes. The initiative went so far as to limit the percentage of revenue that could be used on Medicaid expansion, leaving questions about whether it would even be able to fund the full cost of the program it sought to make permanent.
We believe those fatal flaws are what ended up sinking the initiative on election day. But we also believe most Montanans would continue to support Medicaid expansion if legislators can find a reasonable way to pay for it.
Medicaid expansion is currently available to Montanans who make less than 138 percent of the poverty level. According to St. Peter’s Health CEO Wade Johnson, the program keeps those people out of the emergency room and gets them into a primary care setting where health issues can be identified and managed before they become serious.
And while there’s no disputing the positive impact it has had on the nearly one in 10 Montanans and roughly 7,000 Helena-area residents enrolled, the benefits of the program extend much further.
According to the Kaiser Family Foundation, a review of 202 studies suggests that Medicaid expansion not only presents an opportunity for gains in coverage and improves access to care, but it also has a positive economic benefit on states and providers where it is available.
The amount of revenue Medicaid expansion brings into Montana far exceeds the amount the state spends on it, as the federal government is responsible for 90 percent of the costs. Much of that revenue ends up with medical providers like St. Peter’s Health and Shodair Children’s Hospital, each of which stands to lose millions of dollars if Medicaid expansion ends.
“We will have to find ways to reduce our costs, likely scaling back programs, services or staff” if the program expires, Johnson said.
Studies have also shown that states that have implemented Medicaid expansion have experienced a decrease in uncompensated care, which helps keep medical costs down for everyone.
In addition, Montana has seen an increase in employment among those eligible for Medicaid expansion, even as other states have seen a decline. This seems to suggest that the program is helping Montanans get back into the workforce and onto a path to self-reliance, which is a good first step toward ending the cycle of poverty.
Montana is one of 37 states looking out for their own by refusing to deny health insurance to citizens with no other options.
Let’s not become the first to take that away from them.
Editorial: https://bit.ly/2EsjFVR
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