Committee releases $200M housing bond bill
On March 29, the Legislature’s Joint Committee on Housing and Urban Development released a $200 million bond bill that includes funding for affordable housing over the next five years.
The bill would provide $100 million in new authorizations to fund the state’s Affordable Housing Trust Fund and would provide $100 million in new authorizations for the Housing Stabilization Fund.
The Housing Stabilization Fund was created in 1993 to help developers purchase, preserve and rehabilitate affordable housing. The fund focuses on new home ownership development and first-time home ownership support. All program funding applications are approved by the cities and towns where the project is located.
In fiscal 2005, the Romney administration allocated bond authority for the Housing Stabilization Fund at $14.85 million. After the current funding round, only $4.6 million remains in the fund, with more than $10 million in new home ownership applications already in the pipeline. During the previous five years, $89 million had been spent for this account.
The Affordable Housing Trust Fund was created as part of the fiscal 2001 state budget and supports projects that build or preserve housing throughout the state for households that do not exceed 110 percent of the area median income. Housing units developed using these funds must remain affordable for no less than 30 years. Out of the fund, $5 million is spent each year to repair and modernize existing state-assisted public housing.
Over the past five years, $83 million in AHTF funds have been used to construct or preserve more than 4,500 units of affordable housing. Of those, 1,341 units were affordable to persons earning 30 percent or less of area median income.
Two MMA representatives sit on the AHTF advisory board.
