Conference committee sets $25 million for new housing incentive program, drops dedicated slum-and-blight carve-out

The conference committee on Senate Bill 2225 approved a $25 million total to start a new state housing incentive program and removed a separate, dedicated $3 million carve-out for slum-and-blight remediation, the committee decided during a session on Oct. 12.

The committee vote adopted a $25,000,000 total and set the program’s distribution by population buckets at $7,000,000 for subsection A, $10,500,000 for subsection B, $6,000,000 for subsection C, and $1,500,000 for subsection D. The committee also removed the explicit $3,000,000 enumeration for slum-and-blight on page 1 while leaving slum-and-blight remediation as an eligible use in program language.

Committee members debated the size and source of funding for much of the meeting. Chairman Sickler said the smaller amount under discussion would still establish the program: “20,000,000 gets something, gets us started,” and members repeatedly described the plan as a pilot that should be evaluated over time. Staff fiscal briefed the committee that, as previously reported in a separate conference committee for the Industrial Commission, that fund had been discussed at $35,000,000 total, “of which…