Fairfax: federal block grants fund affordable housing projects

May 12--Two affordable housing developers are expected to receive close to $1 million in federal funding for projects in Fairfax as a result of action taken by the Marin County Board of Supervisors on Tuesday.

Resources for Community Development, a Berkeley-based nonprofit, will get more than $527,000 to help build Victory Village, a 54-unit affordable senior housing project in Fairfax. Also, Ecumenical Association For Housing, based in San Rafael, will get more than $378,000 to help rehabilitate Piper Court Apartments in Fairfax, which houses 27 low-income families.

The money will come from two federal block grant programs: the Community Development Block Grant and the HOME Investment Partnerships.

Supervisors must submit a yearly list of proposed projects to receive these grant monies. Victory Village and Piper Court are just two of the projects that supervisors approved Tuesday for inclusion on the fiscal 2017 project list.

The county expects to receive about $1.3 in CDBG funds and more than $581,000 in HOME funds in 2017.

"You may have heard that the Trump administration had previously proposed that the CDBG program be cut by 50 percent," said Leelee Thomas, a principal planner with the county's Community Development Agency. "But the budget that was recently signed kept the program flat, so that was good news for us."

The CDBG program was created by President Gerald Ford in 1974; it was seen by many conservatives at the time as an improvement over urban renewal and other previous federal attempts to house and provide services to the poor because it used a "bottom-up" approach.

Thomas said Victory Village has received previous allocations from these two block grant programs. At this point, the project has been designated to receive more than $847,000 in block grant money, said Alicia Klein, a senior project manager at Resources for Community Development.

The Fairfax Town Council approved Victory Village on a first vote earlier this month and is slated to take a final vote on June 7. After that, Resources for Community Development will apply for low-income tax credits worth $19 million to help pay for the $29 million project.

Affordable housing developers have to compete for the tax credits. Klein said the more public and philanthropic money a developer secures the better are its chances of getting tax credits.

Ecumenical Association For Housing also will be seeking low-income tax credits worth $4 million for its rehabilitation project at Piper Court, said Ethan Daniels, a project manager at EAH.

In 2016, Marin County gave EAH a $675,000 loan to help it purchase the Piper Court apartments. At the time, the apartments were being rented at affordable rates; but since there was no binding agreement requiring them to remain affordable the fear was that the rents would soon rise.

The Marin Community Foundation also assisted in the project, giving EAH a $500,000 grant and a $1.5 million mortgage loan.

An agreement now specifies that the Piper Court units must be rented to individuals earning no more than 60 percent of the area median income. That means a four-person household may earn no more than $78,960 annually, Daniels said.

On Tuesday, Dave Coury, a Corte Madera affordable housing advocate, criticized county supervisors for not focusing its block grant projects on addressing fair housing goals. In 2011, Marin County entered into a voluntary compliance agreement with the federal Department of Housing and Urban Development after the department ruled the county had failed to meet its fair housing obligations. The agreement requires the county to do more to foster housing for minority populations.

But Anna Haight, a spokeswoman for Senior Access, which provides services to seniors with memory loss and their caregivers, lamented the fact that her organization had sought $31,000 in block grant funds in this round and had been allocated only $8,000.

Supervisor Judy Arnold said she has headed the CDBG priority setting committee for 10 years and, "Every year the amount of money goes down, and we have to try to make do. We have to make hard choices."

___

(c)2017 The Marin Independent Journal (Novato, Calif.)

Visit The Marin Independent Journal (Novato, Calif.) at www.marinij.com

Distributed by Tribune Content Agency, LLC.