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Council outlines guiding principles for $500,000 housing‑initiative fund; leans toward $100,000 guideline per project
Summary
Staff asked council how to deploy roughly $500,000 set aside for a housing initiative (fund 140). Council favored flexible, rolling applications with a guideline of up to $100,000 per project (with discretionary exceptions), preference for dense/multi‑unit projects, and a small nonprofit grant tranche (up to $20,000) for resilience or economic development uses.
City staff asked the council for policy direction on deploying fund 140 (the housing initiative fund), which staff described as roughly a half‑million dollars set aside to promote workforce and affordable housing. Mr. Spence reviewed eligible uses (gap financing, SDCs and off‑site utilities, fire/life‑safety upgrades to enable housing in older structures, predevelopment work on city parcels) and recommended excluding single‑family homes and projects already supported by urban renewal.
Council debated whether the fund should operate as loans (possibly forgivable) or direct grants. Staff recommended a flexible approach—using loans with potential forgiveness or grants depending on project circumstances—so the city can recover funds when projects can pay while preserving options for 100% forgiveness where appropriate. Councilors raised concerns about how a forgivable loan might appear on a developer’s balance sheet and how that could affect other financing.
On allocation, council generally supported a guideline of up to $100,000 per application to stretch the pot and set expectations, while retaining the council’s discretion to approve larger awards for projects that deliver significant community return. Councilors discussed but did not finalize per‑unit dollar caps (staff offered an example of a $10,000 per‑unit metric as a possible preference scoring tool) and favored a rolling application process handled at the front counter to help applicants refine proposals.
Staff also proposed a separate small‑grant component (suggested cap $20,000) for nonprofit resiliency or targeted economic development, to be administered via partner organizations; council signaled support for that approach. Mr. Spence said staff will reformat the program based on the work‑session input and present an adoption item at a regular council meeting with final program language and a resolution clarifying the fund’s purpose.
Council gave general direction to staff; no formal vote was taken.
