Live blog: Ability Housing Springfield meeting

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Burney up:  room is deathly quiet



Providing chronology   First step zoning verification form.  Planning  gave them an okay at the time   

Next was town hall meeting. (Oh remember that well).   

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Burney:

Dept received request from Jack and Joanne's lawyer. 

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Burney:

Is homeless supportive housing appropriate for the zoning or is it illegal user the overlay.

Supportive housing is not defined so the planning contact ability housing

Fair housing never came into play.

Not typical landlord relationship

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Ability rebuttal: 

Lack of notice. Not required sure but city should have given opportunity to AH

City council put the planning dept in this. Brings up case law 

Saying they need to consider fair housing act. Should have from
The beginning   

The directors interpretion is clearly erroneous   

From our perspective it is futile to apply for a certicate of use.

Landlord relationship question. Disagrees. All of those uses --  brings meals on wheels as example

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Ability Housing:

"Target occupants. That's what it is all about "

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Teal rebuttal:  not typical landlord relationship.

Burney:  their grant application clearly points out that they are not typical landlords.

The services that the residents need clearly indicate this is not a typical landlord application

"If you are a landlord you are only concerned that your tenants just pay the rent"

Back to notification. The application itself speaks for what ability housing was going to do

The clientelle has no bearing on this "

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Break is over 

It's planning commission time

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Question asking time.

Commissioner (the young lawyer at the end)  Likes what ability housing does but ...  This isn't going to be about them

"Are we holding up their building process ?"  He asks.

He is clearly supportive of Ability Housing and their mission

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Burney : "If they were just renting to an average person ..."

He seriously said this out loud.

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Will continue as jaxunicorn   Battery dying

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Okay that didn't work out well. Kim's phone is too touchy for me to operate.

Battery feels better now.

Apparently questions still being asked

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Seems too tough to call at this point

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Commissioner Dietrich asking about services. She says this is the crux of the matter.

"Which cart does the fruit fit into ?"

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The meeting went on for a bit longer but in the end, after all the questions, I guessed 3 for granting the appeal, 1 firmly for upholding the interpretation and 3 that seemed they could go either way pretty easily.  That left the Chairman who had yet to say his peace.  When he did, I knew how the vote would go.  The Chairman was firmly in the Burney camp and said so. What was ultimately voted on was the idea that if the Planning Director used the information given to him (and only that information) to come up with an interpretation that could be considered reasonable then the interpretation needed to be upheld.  The final vote was 6 to deny the appeal and 2 to grant it.  I did read one wrong apparently or he just felt he had to go with the Chairman and vote it was a possible interpretation. 

What also seems to have come out of tonight's decision, the term "Permanent Supportive Housing" being now defined as an illegal use, at least in Springfield under the overlay.  Perhaps even in other areas, depending upon who is asking.

On the surface it may appear that the Community won.  They certainly got what they were hoping for here.  Except that perhaps they did not win anything at all.  It was made very clear in the opening statements that this was Ability Housing checking off another box before they pursued the other legal remedies available to them.

I have been assured by Ability Housing that this is not over and while I hate the idea that this is going to end with a bad lawsuit due to the discrimination against the disabled, I keep reminding myself that this is Jacksonville after all and fear and prejudice is often the order of the day. Many here require getting hit with the proverbial sledgehammer before they figure out what at least most of the rest of the country has already.  That the disabled, all disable, have the right to live where they chose and that they have the right to reasonable accommodations to be able to live there.  The residents of Springfield do not have the right to make that choice for them nor, frankly, does the city. And yet, they just did for at least 12 of them.

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Planning Commission supports ruling that blocks Springfield homeless apartments

After months of neighborhood controversy, Jacksonville's Planning Commission endorsed a ruling by the city's planning director Thursday that blocks development of an apartment building for homeless people in Springfield.

"I do not find any sign of a 'clearly erroneous' [ruling]," Vice Chairman Chris Hagan told commissioners, referencing the standard the board would have had to meet to reverse Planning Director Calvin Burney's finding that the 12-unit project on Cottage Avenue conflicts with neighborhood zoning rules.

The decision represents the last step in a city review of plans by nonprofit Ability Housing of Northeast Florida. But it could move the dispute over the project into court instead.

Ability Housing attorney Tim Franklin told the commission Ability had come to the board to try to resolve the dispute administratively, but could still sue.

He noted the federal government had sued New Orleans for violating the Fair Housing Act by blocking a similar, 20-unit project, and that city ended up agreeing to fund 350 units of homeless housing to settle the case.

The nonprofit's executive director, Shannon Nazworth, said a committee from the organization's board of directors would weigh its options carefully before deciding whether to sue over the project. The project had been promoted as a way to house veterans who had mental illnesses or other disabilities that are protected from discrimination under fair housing laws.

"We feel very firmly that we owe it to those 12 veterans," Nazworth said, but added that "we're not going to just dig in our heels and fight for the sake of fighting.

"We know we're right in what we're trying to do. We just have to be sure it's the right thing for everyone involved," she said. "Going through a lawsuit is a big deal and we don't jump into that lightly."

Springfield has a history as a magnet for group homes, rooming houses and facilities for the poor and disabled, and many residents objected that the new project would bring in people who were homeless because of drug abuse, psychiatric problems and other issues that could make them problem neighbors.

An area property owner had his lawyer request Burney's guidance on whether the project would meet zoning requirements.

In May, Burney concluded the "supportive housing" that homeless advocates wanted wasn't mentioned directly in city ordinance, but was "akin to" rooming houses and other uses that haven't been allowed to move into Springfield since around 2000.

Burney said he hadn't considered fair housing laws in reaching his conclusions.

"The target group didn't matter to me. It could have been any target group. ... I didn't delve into the fair housing laws," he said.

Instead, Burney said he assessed whether Ability Housing's plan was consistent with norms for multifamily housing, which was how the nonprofit described its intended use of the building to the city.

He decided that agreements the nonprofit had reached for helping residents line up assistance with job training, mental health services, individualized case management and other services was "a cut above" anything available through a conventional landlord. What it was closest too, he said, was the kind of oversight found in group homes and similar "special uses" that zoning rules for Springfield don't allow.

Although they were not allowed to speak during the meeting, dozens of Springfield residents waited several hours in a city-owned office building for the commission's decision, some sitting on the floor with their backs to the back and side walls of a big training room where every seat was taken.

Commissioner Lisa King said the neighborhood's history of concentrated rooming houses, and the harmful effect their numbers had, made it the wrong place to set up homeless apartments.

"I'm sympathetic to what Ability is trying to do. ... But I'm also sympathetic to the residents," King said.

"There are many sections of this city where a facility could be located. ... It's just that Springfield has done more than its share."

Steve Patterson: (904) 359-4263

http://members.jacksonville.com/news/metro/2014-09-04/story/planning-commission-supports-ruling-blocks-springfield-homeless