Lawmakers hear bill to boost homelessness grants and add $200 million to housing incentive fund

Representative Ben Koppelman, interim chairman of the Legislature’s Government Services interim committee, presented Senate Bill 2030 at a hearing of the Appropriations — Education and Environment Division and described a multi-part plan that would add short-term homelessness grants, a consultant study, matching grants for school homeless liaisons and a large appropriation to the Housing Incentive Fund.

The bill draft presented would dedicate $10,000,000 “for the biennium” for short-term emergency homelessness grants, $50,000 for a housing finance agency consultant study, a matching grant program for the 10 school districts with the highest rates of student homelessness (up to $1,000,000 total, $50,000 per district per year), and what the committee described as a $200,000,000 commitment to the Housing Incentive Fund spread over the next four to six years. “That amount is $10,000,000 for the biennium,” Koppelman told the committee, and he later summarized the larger request: the committee believes “that the number is at least 200,000,000 over the next 4 to 6 years.”

Why it matters: witnesses told the committee that North Dakota’s homelessness response is strained by limited shelter capacity and by a shortage of affordable housing, and they urged the Legislature to use the Housing Incentive Fund to fill financing gaps that block projects statewide. Jennifer Henderson, director of Community Housing and…