Metro housing officials outline Barnes Fund, dashboard and gap in affordable housing pipeline

Council-hosted online forum — Metro Planning Department housing officials and partners on Tuesday reviewed the city's housing programs, a public-facing dashboard and the structure of the Barnes Housing Trust Fund, and warned the city remains below a needed pipeline of deeply affordable units.

Angie Hubbard, director of housing in Metro Planning, said the housing division maintains an online dashboard required by a council ordinance that tracks how many affordable units the city has funded and the status of projects in predevelopment, construction and completion. "When I talk about affordable housing, we're talking about housing that is restricted ... particularly ... for households at 80% of the area median income or below," Hubbard said.

The Barnes Housing Trust Fund, Hubbard said, was created in 2013 and has been funded in rounds. She said Metro Council has invested "about a 100 and, close to a 150, 145,000,000" into the fund; the fund awards competitive grants to nonprofit-led projects, requires nonprofit control of deals (51% nonprofit control where for-profit partners are involved) and reimburses developers on a construction draw basis to ensure delivery.

Hubbard cited the affordable housing task force recommendation that the city needs roughly 50,000 affordable units based on 2020 data, a target that implies about 5,000 units need to enter the pipeline each year through 2030. She said the city was averaging about 1,300 units in the pipeline in 2021 and has scaled to roughly 3,500 with recent funding increases, but remains short of the annual goal. "If someone had a shovel in the ground right now, at least two years to get something built," she said, underscoring that delays or funding interruptions push projects further out.

Hubbard also described program tools on the dashboard: a Barnes Fund accountability tab with funding-round details, a heat map of award concentration by council district, and tabs listing tax-abatement programs and ARPA-funded rounds. She said the trust fund commission performs initial oversight and recommendations before awards go to Metro Council for final approval.

The host asked whether budget-year fund balances could be repurposed; Hubbard said most awarded funds are under contract and paid on a reimbursement basis, and that some recently closed funding rounds will obligate available FY24 money once the commission and council complete approvals. She said a current round includes an ARPA reallocation of $5,200,000 pending trust fund commission action.

The meeting closed with Hubbard urging continued city investment in personnel and funding because, she said, the city lacks regulatory authority to impose private-sector affordability absent public subsidy or ownership.

Next steps: the housing division plans community engagement on a unified housing strategy and will continue quarterly dashboard updates as additional data becomes available.