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Advocates say housing TIF proposal could channel more infrastructure dollars to market-rate projects than to affordable housing
Summary
Witnesses told the House General & Housing Committee that the proposed housing infrastructure tax increment financing (CHIP) uses assessed valuation in ways that may give market-rate developments bigger financing capacity than comparable affordable projects, and offered numerical examples from Winooski and larger master-planned developments.
Nancy Owens, president of Evernorth, told the House General & Housing Committee April 30 that Vermont’s draft housing infrastructure tax increment financing program (CHIP) ties borrowing capacity to assessed property value in a way that could favor market-rate housing over deeply affordable projects.
"Affordable housing is going to be assessed at a lower rate, lower valuation than a similar market rate property," Owens said. "In the case where the lower assessed value of two identical multifamily projects, one market and one affordable, it would mean that the affordable housing project would qualify for less TIF funding than the market-rate project."
Owens, whose nonprofit community development finance organization Evernorth operates in Vermont, Maine and New Hampshire,…
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