|
Affordable housing gets county assistance
By SUZETTE PORTER
| Article published on Thursday, Jan. 25, 2007 |
|
 |
CLEARWATER – Affordable housing got a major leg up when the Board of County Commissioners unanimously approved on Jan. 9 the county's three-year Housing Trust Fund Local Assistance Plan.
Carrol Roark, principal planner with the Planning Division of Pinellas County Community Development, said the plan approved by the commissioners was the county's piece of an overall plan for the new Housing Trust Fund.
Each municipality and the county was required to write a plan for approval and all chose to write a three-year plan, using anticipated funding for the second and third years, Roark said.
The long-term plan calls for $30 million in funding to the trust over three years.
“All of us chose to write a three year plan, even though we aren’t guaranteed that we will receive funding for years two and three,” she said.
Roark said the $10 million allocated in the county’s 2007 budget for the first year would be split five ways with $2 million going to the Housing Finance Authority, which will administer the fund; a little more than $2 million going to the city of St. Petersburg; $602,256 to the city of Largo; $944,456 to the city of Clearwater; and a little more than $4 million will go to Pinellas County.
All the plans have been sent to an outside agency for review to ensure they meet all the requirements of the Housing Trust Fund ordinance and the approved rules and regulations. Roark said after the plans receive final approval, each municipality and the county would put out a Notice of Funding Availability and begin receiving applications for projects.
Guidelines target funds to households with incomes that are extremely low, very low, low and moderate through partnerships with nonprofit and for-profit organizations to provide community housing.
Strategies include:
- Production of additional affordable single family and multifamily housing;
- Preservation of the existing affordable single and multifamily housing stock;
- Promotion of home ownership; and
- Provision of housing services.
All funds will benefit households at or below 120 percent of Area Median Income, with 15 percent going to special needs populations or households below 30 percent of the AMI.
The plan provides average and maximum costs per unit for eligible housing under the trust fund program, maximum funds per strategy, maximum purchase prices and sets aside administrative expenses of 10 percent over the three-year period.
Roark said other important things to consider about the fund include that the money going out from the fund must be leveraged two to one.
“For example, if a nonprofit agency wants to build affordable housing, it will need to have a portion of the cost funded by another source,” she said. “If a homebuyer is assisted, they would have a first mortgage from a private lender and a small mortgage from the fund.”
Roark said 80 percent of the money that is put into projects must be in the form of loans that will eventually be returned to the fund.
“This is not intended to be a give away program, but is intended to establish an ongoing source of funding for affordable housing,” she said.
The fund also has requirements about long-term affordability of projects that are done and equity-sharing provisions that would prohibit an assisted homebuyer from purchasing a home and “flipping” it for profit, Roark said.
“The overall goal of the Housing Trust Fund is to over time establish a sound and growing inventory of housing that will remain affordable not only for current citizens of Pinellas County, but for their children, grandchildren and beyond.”
|
Article published on Thursday, Jan. 25, 2007
Copyright © Tampa Bay Newspapers: All rights reserved. |
