Corky Poster is an architect, planner and University of Arizona professor who serves on the Tucson Housing Trust Fund Citizens Advisory Committee.

Finance and Accounting
Charles E. Gillman Company
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RANCHO RESORT
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Jorgensen Brooks Group
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Tucson Urban League
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Everready Glass
Sales Reps

On Oct. 10, 2006, the mayor and City Council unanimously established the Tucson Housing Trust Fund to respond to the need for "Good quality housing that is affordable to the average family, a keystone for Tucson's future."

The fund's annual funding goal is $3 million to $5 million. To kick off this effort, the mayor and council identified three sources of funding: the sale of city-owned properties, a fee on the conversion of rental properties to condominiums and unexpended funds from the utility service low-income-assistance program.

To date, these initial sources have not been sufficient to reach the annual funding goal. The fund's Citizens Advisory Committee has been asked to identify additional sources of funds to reach the stated goal. The following was a unanimous recommendation of the committee, a group that includes Realtors, developers, builders, architects, bankers, attorneys and other housing-industry representatives:

This contribution will only apply to those private developers voluntarily seeking partnerships with the city. At the present time, there are only five or six such developers. It was actually The Gadsden Company, one of these partner developers, which voluntarily offered this proposal: 1 percent of all subsequent sales will go to the fund.

The logic of this proposal is clear. The city is engaged in policies to encourage the development of market-rate housing; for example, downtown revitalization, location-efficient development and infill development to enhance neighborhoods.

The city involvement uses taxpayer resources to facilitate private development to make the first sale by the developer more economically feasible. The facilitation is seen as a short-term elimination of a barrier that will create its own momentum of market sustainability in the future.

The assumption is that once the housing market pump is primed, the market will follow with its own market-supported private development.

The buyers of these first houses supported by public resources are likely to benefit from the future rise of the tide that is lifting all boats, and they are poised to derive a substantial equity benefit, at the time of sale, for the initial public investment.

It seems fair that the taxpaying public should share, in a modest way, in the equity derived from the initial public investment. The 1 percent point-of-sale contribution is a way to accomplish this goal and to provide the fund with a sustainable and growing source of money for housing affordability.

The recent flap over this proposal is a tempest in a teapot. The point-of-sale contribution is a sensible and modest way for publicly supported market-rate private development to share its future equity with the taxpayers who helped them get off the ground.