Low Income Housing Coming to a Neighborhood Near You!

Did you know that members of the Fishers City Council are looking to add a 5-10% low income housing requirement to developers of ALL incoming neighborhoods in Fishers? Did you know that there is a national plan to cut funding to suburbs who don’t add low income housing to their municipalities? Did you know that adding low income housing to suburbs like Fishers LOWERS the home values of existing homes? If you didn’t know about any of this…you need to keep reading.

First off, what is considered low income housing? Well, that depends who you ask. There does not seem to be any concrete definition that our local governments use. The City of Indianapolis recently used the following mandate to developers of multi-family dwellings. The median income in Indianapolis is $81,600. Ten percent of future units must be set aside for those making 50% of the median income OR five percent of future units must be set aside for those making 30% of the median income ($24,480). It is not known yet whether Fishers will use these same guidelines, but it can be assumed that the guidelines will be similar to those of our neighbors in Indianapolis. The city is actually telling developers that they HAVE to add low income housing to their new projects. So much for free enterprise.

Secondly, beware…government leaders are very careful not to use the terms “low income housing” or “Section 8” housing. You will see terms like “workforce housing” or “high density housing.” Do not be fooled by the new or different terms. This housing can and will fundamentally change the character of our Fishers community.

There are nine members on the Fishers City Council. There are two Democrats and seven Republicans. If you are thinking that the only people interested in requiring low income housing for Fishers are the Democrats, you would be wrong. We strongly encourage you to reach out to the members on the Fishers City Council to ask them where they stand on this very important issue. At first, we were told that we need “workforce” housing because that there were people working in Fishers who could not afford to live here. They used examples of workers such as teachers and fire fighters. When it was pointed out that teachers and fire fighters make more than enough money to afford a home in Fishers, we were then told that restaurant owners could not hire workers because there is not enough affordable housing in Fishers. We pointed out that people DRIVE to work. They do not walk to work, and there is plenty of affordable housing within a 20 minute drive of any Fishers restaurant. Also, MANY restaurants all over the country are having a difficult time hiring workers due to the fact that people are receiving money from the government due to COVID. In our next newsletter, Fishers One will devote an entire article to the numbers and facts that disprove the concept that Fishers is not an affordable place to live.

The federal government is looking to implement plans that would drastically change all suburbs as we know them…including Fishers. One plan calls for cutting billions of dollars of federal funding to any local government with “ordinances that ban apartment buildings from certain residential areas or set a minimum lot size for a single-family home.” Of course, Fishers has such standards. Most suburbs do. The leaders in D.C. want to change that…increasing high density housing in all of the suburbs is a goal…if the city governments want to continue receiving federal funds. Through our tax dollars, we are supplying the federal government with the funds they need to ruin the suburbs.

If you are wondering what is wrong with adding low income housing, shouldn’t we want to do the altruistic thing by changing our city…here are the facts. The most comprehensive study that we could find regarding the impact of adding low income housing to an area such as Fishers was conducted by two Stanford GSB professors. The two studied affordable housing projects’ impact on the surrounding neighborhoods over a 10-year span, and found that new projects in poorer neighborhoods increased

surrounding home prices and reduced crime, while new projects in nicer areas drove down home prices. One may ask…who is the Fishers City Council and other decision makers looking out for?

We will do a deeper dive into all these topics regarding low income housing in future Fishers One newsletters. We will also be discussing this topic at the Fishers One Town Hall meeting on Monday, July 19th. Stay tuned and stay informed!