In 2002, then Alds. Todd Jarrell and Tom Powell worked very hard to pass an Affordable Housing Trust Fund. I’ll admit, I was the skeptic in the bunch . . . and I was wrong. We ended up passing an Affordable Housing Trust Fund and at the end of 2006 we will have $2,470,160 in the fund. The goal is to make it to $10M so that the fund makes enough interest on that money to fund affordable housing projects while keeping the principle.
Now, at the time, we were extremely frustrated by the fact that all of our intended funding sources slowly got taken out of the policy. The core of the money currently comes from TIF funded projects that make more money than expected and then the developer has to give money to the City because of the unexpected profits.
The other sources of funding are the annual budget or sales of excess property, but whenever we sell property, we usually lose the battle to put the money into the Affordable Housing Trust Fund (In 2004 we got $47,318 but that’s it). So, the only sources really are our annual contributions and the so called TIF “equity kicker”.
In 2003 . . . again, because of the work of my collegues at the time, we made a budget amendment and got $400,000 put into the fund contingent on the Council passing an Affordable Housing Trust Fund policy . . . which we did.
In 2004, the Mayor put $100,000 into the fund. And then . . . if there was money left in the contingent reserve at the end of the year, the Affordable Housing Trust Fund could recieve an additional $400,000. Amaziningly enough, that happened and we ended up with $400,000 from the contingent reserve or a total of $500,000 that year.
In 2005, we again got $300,000 and with the opportunity to get an additional $200,000 if there was money left in the contingent reserve. There were no additional funds so there were no additional payments to the fund.
In 2006, there was again the $300,000, and a new contingency. This time if the City sold more than $1M in surplus property (primarily the houses in James Madison Park) then the next $500,000 would go into the Affordable Housing Trust Fund. Needless to say, that’s not going to happen. We’re currently at $695,000 and there doesn’t seem to be a hurry to resolve the James Madison Houses issue. In fact, the Mayor is now suggesting we sell them for $1 and move the houses. So , I think we can safely say were getting $300,000 in 2006.
So, lets review
2003 – $400,000
2004 – $500,000
2005 – $300,000
2006 – $300,000
If you take the average of the last 4 years at $375,000 a year, unless we get lucky on some property sales by the end of 2006 or get another equity kicker, it will another 21 years before we have a fully operating Affordable Housing Trust Fund that could so things like assist with downpayment assistance programs and other affordable housing activities.
Hmmmm . . . where’s our commitment to affordable housing? The sooner this fund is capitalized, the sooner we can be putting our money to work. It makes sense to invest now.
