Winter Blood Drive

Mark your calendar… January 25 Blood Drive.

Purdue University Fort Wayne Communication Department along with PFW’s Health and Wellness and Allen County’s Chapter of the American Red Cross will hold a blood donation drive on campus of January 25.

You do not need to be a student, staff, or faculty member to donate. Please take a few minutes and set aside time to donate blood. Click on the link to donate. https://www.redcrossblood.org/give.html/drive-results…

Each blood donor potentially impacts 3 lives. 

Every 2 seconds, someone needs blood.

Your donation will help seriously ill or injured patients here in Allen County.

Turning Red With Q&A

For some people, they consider that the talk of menstruation is considered as a taboo subject. Due to this belief, others don’t feel as if they are allowed to talk about it and so questions begin to arise without many answers.

On December 7th from 5:30 pm to 8 pm, the Department of Communication, the Women’s Center, and Helmke Library will be showing the popular Disney movie, Turning Red.

If you don’t know what the movie is about, Turning Red follows the story of a thirteen-year-old girl who is torn between continuing her role as her mother’s dutiful daughter and dealing with the changes of adolescence. If the challenges were not enough for her, whenever she gets overly excited she transforms into a giant red panda.

The movie was chosen to start the conversation around menstruation in order to celebrate Dignified Menstruation Day which is December 8th.

They will also be accepting menstruation product donations to go back to the local community. The movie will be played in Walb G21 and popcorn will be provided.

State Legislative Candidates Propose Solutions to Indiana’s Housing Crisis

By Teresa Nabangala

The 2022 midterm election campaign ends in less than two weeks, as voters choose their candidates on Nov. 8. Constituents are looking for solutions to the affordable housing crisis in Indiana, a problem that is affecting the entire nation.

Across the state, housing affordability has become a crisis as both home sales and rental costs have risen to record levels. What can be done to alleviate the crisis? We reached out to candidates running for state senate in Allen County to learn more about their proposals.

Sen. Travis Holdman (R-District 19) is running for reelection with a campaign focused on community development. Earlier this year, Holdman included provisions on Indiana Bill SB 382 for a state tax credit that would benefit projects addressing the housing needs of workers. 

The bill will take effect next January and it will provide up to $30 million annually over five years in affordable and workforce housing state tax credits, for a total of up to $150 million. Eligible taxpayers must apply to the Indiana Housing and Community Development Authority with qualifying construction projects to receive the state tax credit.

Democrat Zach Heimach, who is seeking to replace retiring Sen. Dennis Kruse in District 14, worries about the difficulties young professionals currently face to afford housing.

A survey conducted last year by Pew Research shows that 70% of Americans believe that young people now have a more difficult time buying a home than their parents’ generation did.

Incomes have decrease from 2021 to 2022, making it unaffordable for residents to rent or buy homes for their own comfort. The graph below, with data collected from the Center for Housing and Policy at the Federal Reserve Bank of Atlanta, indicates how affordable it is to own a house in different regions of the state of Indiana. Index values of 100 or above indicate that homeownership is affordable for a median income household.

Heimach said that, even though affordable housing may not be the core issue for the majority of the senate candidates, it is a very serious issue. He believes government should prevent major corporations from buying real estate to make a profit, in order to provide more affordable housing.

“We have to go to the people experiencing this, listen to the people who are well diverse people in to order to keep it affordable,” Heimach said. “If we don’t know the answer, we just must find the answers.”

State Sen. Liz Brown (R-District 15), who is unopposed for re-election, and Republican candidate Tyler Johnson, who is running against Heimach for the District 14 seat, did not provide information on their plans to provide affordable housing in their districts. 

Legislative Candidates Propose Solutions to Indiana’s Affordable Housing Crisis

By Eli Jones and Gavin Greer

With the 2022 Midterm Elections coming up in November, voters are looking into candidates to learn about their proposals to improve the quality of life in their communities. This story looks at the affordable housing policies of the candidates running for State Representative in Allen County.

Democrat Kyle R. Miller, who is competing with Republican Davyd Jones to fill the position of State Rep. David Abbott (R-District 82), believes loan and rent assistances should be available to a larger segment of the population. He proposes increasing the income threshold to qualify for Indiana’s down payment assistance program.

Miller also suggests that banks should help fund development in downtown areas, and that the government should partner with financial and lending institutions for incentives to build in overlooked areas such as southeast Fort Wayne.

“One of the things we would want to watch out for is making sure that there is not a short-term solution to a long-term problem. It’s great to get someone into an apartment or a condo, affordable housing, but if that benefit is only good for three or four months, that’s only going to help very little,” Miller said. 

Miller suggests that lenders should weigh more than just credit history when approving mortgages, but rather also look at other things such as bill and rent history.

“I think that the biggest issue that we are going to have is trying to figure out how to implement some of these things and solve some of the ‘why’s’ as to why we are having these issues,” he said. “It’s going to take little things, rather than just solving it in one bill or one fell swoop.” 

Davyd Jones’ campaign website did not include his position on affordable housing, and he could not be reached for comment.

‘Housing should be for people, not companies’

Abby Norden, an Independent candidate running against incumbent State Rep. Martin Carbaugh (R-District 81), blames market conditions for the lack of affordable housing in her district.

“We have outside companies, or individual investors coming into our city and buying up as many properties as possible,” Norden said. “Housing should be for people, not for companies, and if we continue to let a select few own the housing market, we will continue to see price gouging in the housing and rental markets.” 

Norden believes that a way to help alleviate this problem in the area would be by improving residents’ salaries and regulating rent increases. 

“I will work with the communities who need housing the most to help them meet their needs while simultaneously working with legislatures to raise the minimum wage and cap rental prices at affordable rates,” Norden said on her plans to combat the shortages.

Carbaugh’s campaign did not send any information on his housing proposals upon request. In the past, he has opposed legislation related to affordable housing. Earlier this year, Carbaugh refused to hear House Bill 1326, which would have addressed discrimination in home appraisals and lending. Due to his refusal, the bill died after missing the House’s deadline. 

In 2018, he authored House Bill 1319, which if passed would have created a loan program with three-to-12-month loans of $605 to $1,500 with annual percentage rates up to 222%. This 222% APR is just about triple of what Indiana law classified as criminal loansharking. If the bill had passed, it could have made paying back housing loans difficult for many Indiana homebuyers.

Housing Task Force

House Minority Leader Phil GiaQuinta (D-District 80) currently does not have a public statement on affordable housing on his campaign website, and his press team did not give any information in response to our inquiry. 

However, he is a member of the Housing Task Force that was created through House Bill 1306 earlier this year. As a member of this force, GiaQuinta and other representatives are working to learn the best strategies in combating shortages in affordable housing. 

Another goal of this task force is to end discrimination against homeowners who are having their homes appraised. To see how to best design plans in Allen County and Indiana as a whole, the task force is looking at plans from other states.

Incumbents Christopher Judy (R-District 83), Bob Morris (R-District 84) and Dave Heine (R-District 85), who are all running unopposed, do not have any positions listed on their campaign websites to address housing affordability. Their press teams didn’t respond to messages. 

Indiana’s U.S. Senate and Congressional Candidates Propose Plans to Tackle Affordable Housing Crisis

By Emily Coverstone, Sydney Hamblin and Megan Isenbarger

The family poverty rate in the state of Indiana is at a ten-year low, but similar to the rest of the United States, Indiana is facing a severe shortage of affordable housing for Hoosiers.

The state is facing a shortage of 135,033 affordable and available rental homes, according to a report produced by Prosperity Indiana and the National Low Income Housing Coalition.

Only a handful of candidates running for U.S. Senator and U.S. Representative positions during the 2022 election are planning on taking a stand when it comes to affordable housing. 

U.S. Sen. Todd Young (R-Indiana) and U.S. Rep. André D. Carson (D-District 7) are two incumbents running for re-election who have chosen to focus on housing affordability during their campaigns, after observing how the housing crisis has affected the nation.

Drivers of housing costs

Young believes the housing affordability crisis is happening due to discriminatory local zoning and land use policies that drive up housing costs in communities across America.

Young has already begun taking steps to ensure that Hoosiers can find affordable housing. He helped introduce the Task Force on the Impact of Affordable Housing Act which aims to better understand and respond to America’s housing affordability crisis by evaluating and quantifying the impact of housing costs on other government programs to create innovative solutions to aid cost-burdened families.

According to The Polis Center at Indiana University-Purdue University Indianapolis, cost-burdened families spend more than 30% of household income on housing related expenses. Households spending more than 50% are considered to be severely cost-burdened.

The National Low Income Housing Coalition found that 72% of Hoosiers are considered severely cost-burdened, which is the highest rate in the Midwest and 13th highest in the nation.

Young hopes to fix the state’s current regulations to allow Hoosiers to find affordable housing in areas where they work and where children can get quality education.

According to the American Economic Association, cities and neighborhoods with the strongest labor markets and best schools are not building enough housing, even though they have the highest demand, which has contributed to worsening affordability to live in those areas.

“These policies exacerbate the housing affordability crisis and stifle the ability of Americans to move to areas of opportunity,” Young said on his campaign website.

Young’s Democratic opponent, Hammond Mayor Tom McDermott, Jr., did not include a position on affordable housing on his campaign website, and his campaign staff could not be reached for comment. 

James Sceniak, a Libertarian who is also seeking Young’s seat in the Senate, also decided not to focus on affordable housing as one of the top issues in his election bid.  

“I wanted to focus on what I believe is most affecting Hoosier life, and although affordable housing is one of them, polls are showing there are more concerns like inflation and even how we’re taking care of our veterans right now,” Sceniak said in a phone interview. 

Instead of focusing on affordable housing, Sceniak decided to make his top priorities medical freedom, VetCare, fiscal sanity, criminal justice reform, gun rights, and abortion. 

Demand for affordable housing continues to grow

In the race for the District 3 Congressional seat currently held by Rep. Jim Banks, neither Banks, Democratic challenger Gary Snyder, nor Independent candidate Nathan Gotsch, outlined any housing policy priorities on their websites. 

However, incumbent Rep. André Carson, a Democrat who represents Indiana’s 7th Congressional district, says he is committed to doing everything in his power to keep Hoosiers in their homes and help hardworking, American families avoid losing their homes through default or foreclosures.

Carson says Hoosiers deserve to live in homes that meet their basic needs, but affordable housing for working families has become harder to find and is expected to become more difficult as the demand for affordable housing continues to grow.

The number of active housing listings in the U.S. was at its lowest in at least five years in January 2022, with 408,922 active listings on the market, a 60% drop from about 1 million listings in February 2020, according to the Federal Reserve Bank of St. Louis.

The Federal Reserve Bank of St. Louis also found that around the same time, the national median sale price for a single-family home jumped 25% from $327,100 in the fourth quarter of 2019 to $408,100 in the fourth quarter of 2021. The greatest increases were in the West, Midwest and Northeast. 

Potential solutions to the crisis

Carson supports programs that provide housing assistance to Hoosiers in need as well as public-private partnerships and community development projects that expand affordable housing for more families.

Indianapolis Mayor Joe Hogsett announced in September that the city had signed an agreement with JPC Affordable Housing Foundation and Berkley Commons LLC to resolve the city’s lawsuit with the two entities concerning two apartment complexes that were causing issues for tenants.

“This settlement will keep tenants safely and stably housed, while forcing a sale to a responsible owner with the resources and commitment to operate these properties,” Hogsett said in a Tweet.

Carson praised Hosgett for the city’s actions in a Tweet on social media saying, “Safe, affordable housing is a human right.”

“I am grateful to the City, State, & @citizensenergy for using the tools at their disposal to save these residents from a public health crisis… We must do more to protect tenants from predatory landlords. Without the ability to withhold rent and demand accountability, Hoosiers are left vulnerable.”

Carson’s Republican rival, Angela Grabovsky did not list any housing policy priorities in her campaign material; a website for Libertarian candidate Gavin Maple could not be found. 

Focus on earning potential, financial incentives to build, and ‘crowdfunding”

Housing prices tend to rise with inflation, according to HomeGuides. A home’s value will begin to increase along with the inflation rate. With the increasing numbers of home values, this means that when selling a house, it’ll be at a much higher price and won’t be as affordable as it would’ve been before inflation. 

On Zillow, the average cost of a house in 2022 is $212,953. That amount is considered a large and fast-growing increase since 2019, when the same house would have been sold for around $150,000.

Many Americans are experiencing their own frustrations with affordable housing. According to Pew Research, 49% of Americans say affordable housing is a major problem in their local community, an increase of 10% from early 2018.

Some politicians are hopeful that by implementing new rules, regulations and protocols, they will be able to provide relief to those who are being affected by the housing crisis.

“There are a lot of things we can do to make housing more affordable,” Sceniak said.  

According to The Polis Center at IUPUI, “solutions to make housing more affordable can include ideas that are oriented toward the promotion of affordable housing development along with increasing the earning potential of low- and moderate-income families.”

There are solutions to the housing crisis that the state of Indiana, and the other states, can consider if they want affordable housing to become more prominent. One solution that is typically tossed around is to use creative finance to allow more people qualify for a mortgage and buy a home, as well as provide more affordable rental housing. 

Many companies have developed approaches called “crowdfunding” to help buyers in the housing market and to also seek investors, according to the Stanford Social Innovation Review. Crowdfunding in real estate is where people come together online and pool their money to purchase property as a group.

Crowdfunding is considered to be a great way to begin the investment journey in real estate without needing to spend an excessive amount of money. 

Another possible solution is to incentivize new construction of affordable homes. 

Financial incentives are required to stimulate both the supply and demand sides. Developers and builders can be encouraged to build new homes that are within reach for future or first-time buyers. According to the World Economic Forum, the way the incentives work is they buy down the capital costs overall when it comes to new housing or renovation projects.

Some of the candidates have taken action in addressing the housing crisis on a local level. Along with the Task Force on the Impact of Affordable Housing Act, Young introduced and secured passage of the Housing Choice Voucher Mobility Demonstration Act. Found on Young’s website, the act “enables the Department of Housing and Urban Development (HUD) and public housing authorities to begin developing new models for incentivizing greater choice and improved mobility in HUD’s Housing Choice Voucher Program”. 

Overall, there is a major affordable housing crisis in Indiana. Some Hoosier candidates have made this crisis one of their top priorities in order to make a positive impact on their state, while others have not. Whoever is elected will define whether the state will be able to make strides toward more affordable housing in the future. 

The general election is Nov. 8. Visit https://indianavoters.in.gov/ for information on polling locations and to check registration status.