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Friday, May 20, 2016

Bait and Switch coming on town affordable housing project?

Tuesday's Davidson Town Board meeting has an agenda chock-full of potentially controversial topics.  In addition to talking about the Catalyst Project, the Board will get an update on the use of the town Affordable Housing  Payment in Lieu (PIL) fund.

After a study which will be completed this month, the number one priority for this fund appears to be rental housing.

From the PIL prioritization memo...

"Rental housing will be prioritized over homeownership projects, with the goal 
toward a minimum of 50% of the annual appropriations (averaged over 2 years) to rental 
projects through a grant or loan to a low income housing tax credit developer, or other 
developer of low income multifamily rental properties, or town purchase of land to be 
used for multifamily low income rental housing."

This is bound to cause problems down the road as most neighborhood HOAs don't typically like the idea of building rental apartments among single family homes.

It will be reeeeeeaaaalllly interesting to see how this plays out with the town's current Affordable Housing project in Bailey Springs.

Just last month Affordable Housing Director Cindy Reid said the Bailey Springs project was to be for sale units, but she did leave the door open for rental proposals.

Reid was recently promoted to town attorney by Davidson Commissioners.   She replaces long time town attorney Rick Kline.

The RFP responses are due soon, so we won't have to wait long for that answer.


1 comment:

  1. Can we stop accepting the current definition of "Affordable Housing" and simply go back to defining affordable housing as housing someone can afford?

    ReplyDelete