Housing commission adopts revised scoring rubric prioritizing deeper affordability and quicker starts

The Housing Opportunities Commission on Oct. 8 approved a revised scoring rubric for its affordable housing fund that increases emphasis on deep affordability and on projects that can start quickly.

The commission voted to adopt the rubric "based on the decisions we made today," moving the measure by motion and approving it by voice vote, after staff walked commissioners through edits from legal and previous meetings.

Commissioners said the rubric now awards unit-targeting points by percentage rather than raw unit totals. Under the new approach a project earns points based on the share of its units dedicated to a targeted income bracket (example breakpoints agreed in the meeting: 20% = 1 point, 40% = 2, 60% = 3, 80% = 4, 100% = 5). Commissioners also doubled the earlier values so that the rubric's top sections total roughly 150 points; staff noted projects can also earn up to nine bonus points, making a possible top score of 159.

Why it matters: Commissioners said the change is intended to avoid bias toward large multifamily projects or toward tiny single-unit projects and to explicitly reward deeper affordability. Commissioner Posner and others argued…