Mayor, housing office and MOHCD highlight Oceanwide fee appropriation, housing trust growth and $30M in homelessness initiatives

Benjamin McCloskey of the Mayor's Office of Housing and Community Development told the committee that MOHCD's budget emphasizes affordable-housing loans and grants to community-based organizations; he said the Downtown Neighborhoods Preservation Fund (fees tied to development at 50 First Street, commonly known as the Oceanwide Center) yields roughly $40,000,000 in fee revenue, of which $33,000,000 must be used for acquisition and preservation of affordable housing.

McCloskey also described an annual, charter-mandated growth in the Housing Trust Fund of $2,800,000 that will be used for cost-of-doing-business increases to community partners and additional multifamily development investment. He said the 2018-19 proposal includes an annualization of immigrant-services funding and a $1.3M package for culturally specific nonprofits.

Separately, Mayor Mark Farrell addressed homelessness and public-safety priorities in a public remarks segment during the hearing day. The mayor said the fiscal-year-first-year package includes $30,000,000 in new homelessness initiatives, including rental assistance, eviction prevention, a doubling of the Project Homeward Bound budget, additional navigation centers and an expanded street-medicine team to deliver medication-assisted treatment in the field.

Committee members asked about staffing shifts, program oversight and whether revenue designations would supplant other funding; city officials said reserves and program-specific restrictions govern the proposed appropriations and that some items are one-time appropriations tied to fee revenue.