THE NEXT NEW COLUMBIA: As downtown living fancies up, what happens to lower-income options?

A strong, vibrant downtown is good for everyone – isn’t it?

As Columbia’s business and entertainment core attracts more upscale living options and high-wage earners who don’t mind paying a premium to live there, people looking for affordable housing options risk being pushed further to the periphery – away from jobs and resources that are helpful to everyone, not just the people who pay top dollar for homes, local affordable housing advocates say.

Columbia has to make sure that the benefits of a healthy downtown extend as far as possible, said Grant Duffield, a board member of Columbia’s Affordable Housing Resources.

“It just marginalizes people even more when they can’t be part of the urban core,” said Brian Huskey, director of the Midlands Housing Trust Fund, which advocates for and works to create affordable housing opportunities in and around Columbia.

Not everyone who works downtown, at the university or in health care, for instance, is taking home a president’s or surgeon’s salary, Huskey said.

But even as the cost of living downtown rises, there are ways to integrate income levels in new developments, he said.

“Downtown revitalization, ... and ... housing that’s available to the lowest-paid workers, don’t have to be mutually exclusive,” Huskey said. “They can happen side by side.”

Nine years ago, a local developer, Brian Boyer, sent that very message when he built 10 townhouses in the Arsenal Hill neighborhood, near the Vista core, to be sold to median-income residents for $96,000.

One possible way to work toward similar integration in the near future, Huskey offered, could be inclusionary zoning, a progressive step some cities, including Chapel Hill, N.C., have taken.

The zoning would require developers of new properties to include a certain proportion of units that are affordable to people who earn, for instance, 80 percent or less of the area’s median income, Huskey said. Incentives could encourage developers, Huskey said, and an opt-out fee could go toward creating affordable housing elsewhere.

But for any of that to take hold, developers and the community will have to embrace it, he said.

This story was originally published March 14, 2015 at 7:19 PM with the headline "THE NEXT NEW COLUMBIA: As downtown living fancies up, what happens to lower-income options? ."