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City has $6 million from TIF districts for housing programs; department says funds are available
Summary
The Economic Development Committee heard that approximately $6 million moved from three TIF districts to the Housing Department is available and will be deployed for home repair and down payment assistance through multi-year programs.
Committee members were told that the City Council approved transferring roughly $6 million from three TIF districts — Oak Cliff Gateway, Fort Worth Avenue and Deep Ellum — to the Department of Housing and Community Development for FY24 programs.
"The housing department is now in the process of deploying those funds in those programs for homeowner stabilization, home repair," Kevin Spath said, and introduced Thor Erickson, assistant director of the Department of Housing and Community Development, to provide details.
Erickson said the transferred funds are on hand. "We have the funds now on hand. There's two programs that we deploy those through," he said, identifying a home improvement/preservation (home repair) program and a down payment assistance program. Erickson said staff used the incoming funds to target outreach and that the fund is intended as a multiyear resource: "This will be spent over a number of years." He added that the department will provide quarterly updates to Economic Development on deployment.
The department said down payment assistance awards are generally available up to $50,000. On home repairs, Erickson said the department is recruiting contractors and expected to have about 15 active contractors in the pool in the near term. He also said the department currently has roughly $6,000,000 committed to addresses in the home repair pipeline and that the fund accounts and unit codes are segregated so expenditures can be traced.
Committee members asked whether the transferred funds were sitting idle; Erickson replied the funds are available and being operationalized by the housing department.
Ending: The committee did not make a formal vote; staff said they will return with quarterly deployment updates and continue contractor outreach to scale repair capacity.
