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Affordable-housing developer says vapor-intrusion requirements threatened financing and design of Anaheim project
Summary
Developers of a 47-unit affordable housing project in Anaheim said vapor-intrusion cleanup testing, uncertain long-term monitoring costs and uncoordinated agency deadlines put a TCAC funding readiness date at risk and required budget tradeoffs on resident services and design.
Developers described at the workshop how vapor-intrusion assessment and long-term monitoring requirements affected financing, design and schedules for an affordable-housing project in Anaheim called Lincoln Beach. Maricela Fuller, director of real-estate development for Innovative Housing Opportunities (IHO), and Renee Funston, project manager for Link Housing, outlined the project and the challenges it faced. The site is roughly 0.65 acres and the planned development includes 47 apartments for seniors and transitional-age youth. Fuller and Funston said developers needed a regulatory ‘‘ready-to-build’’ determination from DTSC and other milestones in order to meet an April 2025 readiness deadline to close on tax-credit financing administered by the California Tax Credit Allocation Committee (TCAC). They said uncertainty about testing costs, frequency and the duration of long-term monitoring forced conservative budgeting and contingency reserves; in their case these contingencies reduced funds available for resident services and construction quality. “Our budgets are already extremely tight,” Funston said. “We had to shift funds…including taking money away from other things such as resident services, doing value engineering to reduce the quality streamline design.” Fuller and Funston called for practical tools from agencies: mitigation templates, cost guidance for ongoing monitoring, examples of conditional approvals that can be issued in advance of financing, and clearer early coordination between regulators and developers to avoid surprises and timeline risk. Why it matters: Affordable-housing projects often rely on time-limited public funding and tight budgets; prolonged environmental review or conservative contingency requirements can make a project financially infeasible or reduce services and design quality. Ending: The developers said the Lincoln Beach project ultimately met requirements after significant coordination with DTSC and partners, and they encouraged agencies to produce templates, examples and expedited pathways to help similar infill projects proceed.
