Reports - Mississippi Renewal

68 | AFFORDABLE HOUSINGadvice on these matters. This recommendationwould require the new statewideCDE to work with local housingauthorities in collaboration with HUD,FEMA, and the Mississippi Home Corporation.Ideally, this program would beput together within six to nine monthsand require around $250,000. FEMAand/or HUD may be able to providesupporting funds.Recommendation 20: Employer-basedhousing assistance. Though employersdo not have legal responsibility to assisttheir employees with affordable housingoptions, in many circumstances itmay be in their best interest to do so.This is especially true for post-KatrinaMississippi, where lack of affordablehousing may severely curtail the availablelabor pool as businesses attempt torebuild. Per this recommendation, theWith such a high proportion of low-income residents inMississippi and on the Gulf Coast, hurricane recovery in theirneighborhoods poses particularly difficult challenges■ More than 42 percent of all working families in Mississippiare low-income—the highest rate in the nation.■ Over a third of the jobs in Mississippi pay below-povertywages.■ Over 90 percent of the homes in Harrison County (Biloxi andGulfport) did not have fl ood insurance.■ About 65 percent of the housing units exposed to the stormsurge and over 57 percent of the units exposed to fl oodingwere occupied by households with incomes below the U.S.median household income level.■ In Hancock and Harrison Counties, almost three quartersof the housing units were occupied by households livingbelow the U.S. median income level.■ The majority (62%) of housing units across the three southernmostcoastal counties was built before 1980, whichmeans they were likely to be more vulnerable to wind andwater damage and will cost more than their insured valueto replace.■ In the three-county area, about one-third of the housingunits exposed to the storm surge were built before 1980; inHancock and Jackson Counties, this estimate increases tomore than 40 percent.■ In a sample of 6,404 housing units on the Biloxi peninsula,94 percent of the households lived below the U.S. medianincome level, and 80 percent of those homes experiencedextensive to catastrophic damage.■ Ninety percent of housing units in the in the Biloxi peninsulaneighborhood were built before 1980. Pre-1980 homes thatwere extensively or catastrophically damaged represented73 percent of all homes in that area.state should (a) help educate businesseson the advantages of providing financialassistance to support affordable housing,and (b) create the appropriate institutionalmechanisms to funnel corporatehousing assistance in the most efficientmanner. In the case of the gambling industry,gaming laws require that gamingoperators make peripheral communityinvestments, and gaming regulationsshould be amended to allow investingin affordable housing as a qualifyingcontribution. Fannie Mae and EnterpriseCorporation of the Delta haveworked for the last several years educatingemployers about such programsand providing tools of implementation.There are several good models availablethrough these two organizations.The state and local governments andprivate corporations should help assessthe opportunities for employers, providenecessary outreach, and assist inthe coordination of this effort. This assistanceprogram should be establishedwithin three to six months. Costs ofthis program will likely be significant,and better quantified once the housingneeds assessment discussed above iscompleted. Other than administrativesupport, most of the costs will be borneby the businesses. In many cases, however,assisting with the development ofaffordable housing will be cheaper thanthe alternatives – suffering labor shortagesor paying to bus workers in fromremote communities on a daily basis.Recommendation 21: Private FinanceInitiative. This initiative is similar tothe Section 8 vouchers program, buthere the government provides an annuitystream to private concerns to helpthem undertake development effortsthat would not otherwise be profitable.For example, a development firm mightconstruct affordable housing and col-