Chicago is overflowing with mayors
For those of you who missed our AHF Live: The 2005 Tax Credit Developers’ Summit in Chicago this week, well, you also missed out on a great luncheon Wednesday. Not only did Richard M. Daley, the reigning mayor of the City of Big Shoulders, give an impassioned detailing of his views on how to tie together all of the services and support necessary to make affordable housing work – and you can get a taste of it from our exclusive interview with Hizzoner in the November issue of Affordable Housing Finance – but he was followed by former Milwaukee Mayor John Norquist, the featured luncheon speaker.
Norquist, who now lives in Chicago and heads the Congress for the New Urbanism, gave one of the more well-received housing speeches in recent times. He decried federal housing policy – and local zoning initiatives – that over the past century have destroyed working (albeit often poor) neighborhoods and replaced them with single-use zoning and public housing. The results were isolated housing for the poor (not to mention isolated retail and other sources of services and jobs) and increased public control over the lives of the poor. For those readers who have read his 1998 book, The Wealth of Cities: Revitalizing the Centers of American Life, much of his argument will be familiar.
One you-hadda-be-there moment: Norquist praised traditional Main Street-style retail with one or two floors of housing above it. He said that housing type was affordable housing that used no government subsidy. Too bad, he complained, that mortgage giants Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac refused to fund such housing. Sitting at the table with yours truly was Kim Griffith, Freddie Mac’s director of multifamily affordable housing. Griffith noted to those around him that it was the law that restricted Freddie and Fannie from purchasing such mortgages; change the law and they’d be happy to buy them. (Griffith and Norquist chatted after the speech, when Griffith introduced himself as representing one of those big, bad mortgage giants.)
Watch our upcoming issues of AHF magazine for an interview with Mayor Norquist.
One more note: Right after Mayor Daley's appearance at AHF Live, he flew to Houston to catch Game 4 of the World Series, in which his beloved Chicago White Sox completed their sweep of the Astros.
And if you thought I couldn’t tie that into affordable housing, well, even this Sox-fan editor can manage that feat: it turns out that the long-suffering wives of the World Series players spent some of their time away from the series to promote a Major League Baseball (MLB) initiative to create some replacement housing for the victims of Hurricane Katrina. No FEMA trailers, these: Each home will include autographs from MLB players.
Why didn’t Martha Stewart think of that?
Norquist, who now lives in Chicago and heads the Congress for the New Urbanism, gave one of the more well-received housing speeches in recent times. He decried federal housing policy – and local zoning initiatives – that over the past century have destroyed working (albeit often poor) neighborhoods and replaced them with single-use zoning and public housing. The results were isolated housing for the poor (not to mention isolated retail and other sources of services and jobs) and increased public control over the lives of the poor. For those readers who have read his 1998 book, The Wealth of Cities: Revitalizing the Centers of American Life, much of his argument will be familiar.
One you-hadda-be-there moment: Norquist praised traditional Main Street-style retail with one or two floors of housing above it. He said that housing type was affordable housing that used no government subsidy. Too bad, he complained, that mortgage giants Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac refused to fund such housing. Sitting at the table with yours truly was Kim Griffith, Freddie Mac’s director of multifamily affordable housing. Griffith noted to those around him that it was the law that restricted Freddie and Fannie from purchasing such mortgages; change the law and they’d be happy to buy them. (Griffith and Norquist chatted after the speech, when Griffith introduced himself as representing one of those big, bad mortgage giants.)
Watch our upcoming issues of AHF magazine for an interview with Mayor Norquist.
One more note: Right after Mayor Daley's appearance at AHF Live, he flew to Houston to catch Game 4 of the World Series, in which his beloved Chicago White Sox completed their sweep of the Astros.
And if you thought I couldn’t tie that into affordable housing, well, even this Sox-fan editor can manage that feat: it turns out that the long-suffering wives of the World Series players spent some of their time away from the series to promote a Major League Baseball (MLB) initiative to create some replacement housing for the victims of Hurricane Katrina. No FEMA trailers, these: Each home will include autographs from MLB players.
Why didn’t Martha Stewart think of that?
posted by John Zipperer at 4:08 PM
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