To Reach A Good Outcome, A Regional Housing Plan Has To Be Wide-Open From The Beginning

The Public Policy Forum noted in a detailed 2002 study that the region's segregation was an economic drag, and that SEWRPC - - the Southeastern Wisconsin Regional Planning Commission - - could write a housing plan to help the region overcome segregation's negative brake on the economy.

Too bad no one listened, as SEWRPC last completed a housing study in 1975 - - and that took seven years from its proposal by the City of Milwaukee to publication.

Rumor has it SEWRPC is circulating a proposed work plan that calls for a housing study to be launched perhaps this year and completed by 2010-2011.

So much has changed in the housing picture in just the last year, given the subprime mortgage market meltdown, falling home prices, disappearing homeowners' equity and epidemic foreclosures.

And as SEWRPC began this spring to flesh out a potential housing study work plan, spiking gas prices threw into doubt many of the basic assumptions in SEWRPC's master, uberland use plan that has been in place while suburbia marched west towards Jefferson County and away from Milwaukee.

What's taking place now in the housing market and alongside it have come on top of other varied cultural and economic shifts since the last SEWRPC housing study - - like gentrification, Kenosha's appeal to Chicagoans, and revivals where the conventional wisdom said they couldn't happen: Milwaukee's downtown, third and fifth wards, and in the Menomonee Valley.

And there have been declines of some older suburbs, like West Allis and West Milwaukee, which had major factory tax base losses in recession that took hold in the late '70's.

More freeway lanes are being built, but driving is down, and so is Milwaukee County bus ridership. Certainly all these conditions affect the housing market, renters and homeowners.

And watershed planning is taking hold in the SEWRPC region - - another new wrinkle and opportunity that will influence economic development and every housing-related activity, too.

Writing a plan that recognizes and weaves all these factors together - - and my list is hardly definitive - - and that confronts the segregation that the Public Policy Forum study, and countless others have pointed out, will require the crafting and execution of one heckuva complicated and important plan.

SEWRPC has its own way of doing things: Work plans are drafted internally; existing plans and studies guide the crafting of new initiatives.

Advisory committees are then established which guide staff and consultants towards a finished product that must be approved by a full commission vote.

So while SEWRPC has ample data, and no doubt some planners on staff who can get a lot more, will the agency let them look at case studies and examples far-and-wide to get the best product available?

And while those internal processes are important, so is the outside game.

This plan has got to be rooted in what people think and want, not just what technical experts think and want.

Everyday experience makes everyday people expert, and nothing is more basic that housing.

SEWRPC has asked its newly-formed Environmental Justice Task Force to suggest possible appointments to a housing study advisory committee, and this is a positive thing, but I'd suggest SEWRPC go several steps further.

To ensure that this study is a genuine, no-bolds-barred examination of the region's housing history, problems and potential solutions, and the connections between housing, transportation, land-use, economic development and other large planning areas, SEWRPC should:

1. Post the draft work plan on its website. Then publicize that it is there and distribute it far and wide - - including to groups, elected officials and to regional planning agencies in Wisconsin, and nationally - - and take comments and suggestions from the public.

SEWRPC and its Environmental Justice Task Force should together review those comments.

2. Public meetings to take additional comments on the proposed work plan should be held, much like charettes and other open and welcoming participatory sessions have been held in Milwaukee, and elsewhere, in advance of the beginning of plan writing and advisory committee work.

This would define the creation of the work plan, which is also sometimes called the scope of work, as a key component - - perhaps as the most important step - - in the development and writing of the overall plan itself.

That is because it would define the public's participation as central from the beginning.

In that fashion, SEWRPC could demonstrate that it is determined to make up for a nearly 40-year silence of major work on the region's housing issues with a bold and comprehensive approach from the beginning.

Yes - - this might add a few months to the study's beginning, but it also might produce a quicker final product - - because so much of the focus would have been clear intentionally from the outset, making buy-in and acceptance by taxpayers, businesses and government at the end much easier.

And after four decades, what's another month or two?