Affordable Housing Task Force Part 4
Comments OffIn this fourth installment of Urban Jacksonville’s dissection of the city’s task force on Affordable and Workforce Housing I will break down another of the task force’s recommendations:
Update the City’s Comprehensive Plan
This recommendation leads off with:
The City must update the Housing Element of its “Comprehensive Plan – Evaluation and Appraisal Report†with current data on the supply and need for affordable housing.
Every seven years, State law requires the City of Jacksonville to review and evaluate its Comprehensive Plan, or EAR, Evaluation and Appraisal Report. Lucky for us the newest revision of the plan has a deadline of October 2007, that’s just around the corner!
The task force states that the current plan is significantly out of date, about six years and 8 months by my counting. Check out this passage from the housing element of the EAR:
The EAR for the 2010 Comprehensive Plan comprises the 1990-1995 period. The EAR summarizes the condition of the element at the time of adoption of the 2010 Comprehensive Plan (1990) and the conditions at the time of preparation of the EAR (1995)
Wow, so our City’s decision’s on housing are based on data from 1990-1995. After skimming the housing element of the EAR (it’s 29 pages, no way am I reading the entire thing), it reads just like the current affordable and workforce housing task force report released two months ago. Sure some things have changed, but the song remains the same. It will be interesting to see how much of the most recent task force study will be regurgitated and propped up as the new EAR housing element document.
The current task force feels an updated plan would provide better guidance to a wide range of city government employees in: Planning & Development, Housing & Neighborhoods and the Jacksonville Economic Development Commission. This updated plan would inform them on how to make decisions when it came to reviewing and commenting on new residential development proposals.
A notable conclusion to this third of thirty eight recommendations is the suggestion that Housing & Neighborhoods should work with the Planning Department to complete the housing element of the updated Comprehensive Plan.
So what’s in this EAR plan besides the previously mentioned housing element? It consists of historic preservation, transportation, recreation and open space, conservation and coastal management, capital improvements, future land use, infrastructure and intergovernmental coordination.
The City does solicit public input for this study. It is using findings from the Blueprint for Prosperity as a major source of input. You can fill out this survey to make your voice heard. If you provide your email address you will be added to the email notice list for upcoming meetings. Also for further information regarding public input into the EAR, contact Kenneth Logsdon, (904) 630-1606.
