City staff review year of affordable-housing monitoring, report 1,102 units under watch

Antoinette Moseley, chair of the Housing and Community Development Committee, heard a year-end report Aug. 19 from the city’s affordable housing staff that summarized monitoring work, storm-response allocations and a push to standardize income verification across programs. Sasha Burtynsky, the city’s affordable housing officer, told the committee staff monitored 26 projects comprising 1,102 units over the past year. The report described storm-related reallocations and rental assistance: the city shifted $1,000,000 from returned housing trust fund general-fund allocations to rental assistance, contracted with local providers to distribute funds, and directed $759,000 in Community Development Block Grant (CDBG) funds to Buncombe County’s rental program. Burtynsky said the combined federal and local funds used in rental-assistance efforts amounted to about $1.8 million and helped 649 families. Alex, the city’s affordable housing specialist, walked committee members through the monitoring methodology and the income rules the city uses to calculate eligibility. He said the city bases its procedures on the HUD standard in 24 CFR part 5, subpart F as a “gold standard” for consistent income calculation, while noting that the city’s affordable-housing programs themselves are not directly subject to those federal rules. “The gold standard is from 24 CFR part 5 subpart F,” Alex said, adding that the approach creates a universal standard for property managers and staff. Alex described the city’s approach to income projection and deductions: the city generally uses projected annual income rather than only actual past receipts, counts recurring gifts as income, and offers specified deductions for households with minors, elderly or disabled members and for full-time students. He addressed a common question about income growth in-place: households that move in at an income level tied to an affordable unit may remain in compliance through renewals as their income rises up to 120% of area median income (AMI); beyond 120% they would no longer qualify for that affordability requirement. The report summarized the monitored stock by AMI tiers and funding sources: staff reported about 509 units at the 80% AMI level and 557 units reported at the 60% AMI level (the latter figure includes some units at 30% AMI that are not yet split out). Funding noted in the monitoring inventory includes the city’s Housing Trust Fund (HTF), conditional zoning agreements and other local and federal sources. Staff said many older HTF loans carried short affordability periods; most currently monitored projects have 30-year affordability periods, with some shorter (10–20 years) and a few long-term (up to 99 years). Burtynsky and Alex said monitoring historically had been uneven because of staff capacity and inconsistent record-keeping, so the division created reference documents and outreach materials for property managers and is shifting to a more proactive annual monitoring schedule (contacting managers in December and reviewing documentation January–May). Alex said a next step will be more tenant-level parsing to identify very-low-income households that may currently be undercounted. Committee members asked follow-up questions about voucher acceptance and unit-level data; Burtynsky and Alex said they would compile more detailed figures on voucher usage in specific projects. Councilwoman Sage Turner and others praised the presentation and asked staff to return with more detailed voucher counts and clarified lists of which funding streams support which units. The presentation also covered storm-related home-repair funding: staff redirected approximately $1,465,000 from bond-returned funds to home repairs and contracted with Archer, a five-organization collaborative, to deliver repairs. Burtynsky said Archer has established a dashboard that should be publicly available within one to two months. The committee did not take a formal vote on monitoring procedures; staff said the materials are informational and will be used to guide future monitoring and funding decisions.