(Editor’s note: This article is part of a series on the Housing Alliance of Pennsylvania’s 2024 Homes Within Reach conference.)
No matter where Rick Siger goes in Pennsylvania, people want to talk to him about housing.
Siger leads Pennsylvania’s Department of Community & Economic Development. Housing is at the top of DCED’s priority list, he told his audience at the Housing Alliance of Pennsylvania’s Homes Within Reach conference, where he was a featured plenary session speaker.
“We know we’ve got to address housing,” he said. “… Housing is a key economic enabler for Pennsylvania, and it’s a moral imperative.”
In September. Gov. Josh Shapiro issued an executive order tasking DCED with developing Pennsylvania’s first ever statewide housing action plan. (The Lancaster County Redevelopment Authority and Homelessness Coalition are undertaking a similar project locally.)
The governor’s order calls for an “all of the above” approach, with six areas of focus:
- Building new housing units
- Preserving existing housing
- Making housing affordable
- Supporting homeless individuals and vulnerable populations
- Ensuring equity in housing outcomes
- Achieving excellence in all housing-related government activities
DCED is starting off by collecting data and conducting a series of roundtables with stakeholders all over Pennsylvania. The goal is to understand housing issues at a regional and local level as well as statewide, Siger said. In one area the main issue might be deteriorating housing stock and blight; in another, a shortage of suitable land for new construction.
Anyone who is interested can complete an online survey on the issue. The survey has already garnered nearly 1,700 responses — that’s “kind of amazing,” Siger said, and testifies to the level of interest there is.
According to DCED statistics, 20% of homeowners and nearly 50% of renters in Pennsylvania are housing cost-burdened, paying more than 30% of their income on their rent or mortgage.
As of 2022, Lancaster County had the largest percentage of cost-burdened homeowners of Pennsylvania’s 67 counties and ranked No. 4 in the percentage of cost-burdened renters. Currently, the median renter household in the county pays 28% of its income toward housing, and the median mortgage-holding household pays 21.2%, according to the U.S. Census.
DCED is cooperating with other state departments in developing the plan — in particular, with the Department of Human Services, which oversees a range of health and income support programs. It is to be completed by September 2025.
“We really want to hear from you,” Siger said. “… We’re in a listening mode.”
Have any themes emerged early on? Siger mentioned two. First, the importance of taking a comprehensive approach to helping homeless individuals and other high-risk populations. It’s not just a matter of providing four walls and a roof, but of ensuring people have the support and services they need to achieve stability.
Second, while developers of affordable housing would certainly welcome more state subsidies, “in a lot of cases, it’s more about the environment where they operate,” Siger said. That is, they say the main barriers to expanding the housing supply are things like restrictive zoning and land planning regulations, lengthy and complex permitting processes and high construction and financing costs.
The plan is not focusing just on officially designated “affordable housing,” but on making housing as such affordable, Siger said — “affordable for all folks and attainable for all folks.”
One of the Shapiro administration’s mantras is “government at the speed of business,” Siger said. It has cut the time to take a typical business license from weeks or months to days — in some cases, a few hours. It’s certainly interested in moving in the same direction on construction (where it’s often involved in issuing environmental reviews and approvals), while being mindful of the need to maintain due oversight and protect public health and welfare, he said.
Siger emphasized that the plan aims to take into account all Pennsylvanians from all walks of life.
“If our plan isn’t working everywhere, it’s not working,” he said.
