Developers, lender tell El Campo council proposed rental project will be market-rate, not low-income

Developers and the lender for a proposed rental project told the El Campo City Council during public comment on July 28 that the development will be market-rate and not an affordable-housing project. Joseph Bramante, identifying himself from 4914 Brinkman in Houston, said concerns raised by a recent public notice stemmed from wording in the lender’s paperwork and not from the deal’s economics. "There is a rent restriction, but it's a very high threshold. It's a 115% of the area median income," Bramante said. "Our rents are well over $1,400 a month on average, so it's well above anything that would be considered low income." The lender on the project, Blair Henderson of Churchill Stateside Group, said the company is the program’s largest RD lender and that the underwriting process is thorough. "This is a market rate deal," Henderson said. "As a lender, we want to really bump up the rents to have them at the market ... and that helps maximize the deal, get the deal to the finish line." Henderson said the project had progressed past an environmental phase and remained in the lender’s final underwriting and loan-document preparation stages; she said the developer and lender were on track for a groundbreaking around September. "We've since passed that phase," she said. "We are on track for a... groundbreaking around the September timeline." Why this matters: Residents who read the public notice had assumed the project would be income-restricted. Council members heard assurances from the sponsor and its lender that the proposed development will be priced for the market, with only a contractual rent cap set at 115% of AMI. The comments do not represent a council action; they were submitted during the public-comment period, and no vote or formal council direction occurred on the project during the meeting. Additional details from public comment: Bramante said the sponsor submitted materials in April and that final underwriting and loan-document preparation were the remaining lender-side steps. He and Henderson both attributed recent federal staffing delays to a slower review timeline, saying those delays were outside the sponsor’s control. "We've submitted everything since April. So it's been out of our hands since April," Bramante said. "It does take a little bit of time."