THE ENVIRONMENTAL PROTECTION AND GROWTH MANAGEMENT DEPARTMENT AND THE HOUSING FINANCE AND COMMUNITY REDEVELOPMENT DIVISION RECOMMEND APPROVAL OF THE ABOVE MOTION.
This item supports the Board’s vision of offering sustainable, compatible, innovative housing options for all income-levels, including integrated supportive housing and rapid-rehousing: Goal 1: Facilitate a regional approach to growth and redevelopment through coordination and collaboration at the federal, state, county, and local levels; Goal 2: Strengthen stakeholder partnerships to increase the availability of affordable housing of all types (e.g. rental, purchase, supportive, etc.), county wide, in every community; and Goal 3: Develop, through effective community collaboration, neighborhoods and communities incorporating intermodal connectivity, while integrating energy efficiency, community resilience, and other livability standards and initiatives.
The FHFC was created by the Florida Legislature more than 25 years ago to help Floridians obtain safe, decent affordable housing opportunities and to ensure that the programs are well matched to the needs of those served.
On July 28, 2017, the FHFC published its “Florida Housing Finance Corporation Tentative 2017/2018 Funding Amounts/Time Lines” (the “FHFC 2017/2018 Time Line”), charting the estimated amounts and deadlines for its various funding programs, including 9% tax credit financing and State Apartment Investment Loan (SAIL) funding, collectively, the “2017/2018 FHFC Request for Funding Application" (“RFA”s). The current deadlines to apply for the 2017/2018 FHFC RFAs that are expected to require a Local Government Contribution (LGC) begin in late September, and run through December, 2017. As many FHFC 2017/2018 RFAs have not been published, it is possible that additional RFAs may require a LGC or that the FHFC 2017/2018 Time Line may be revised to include additional RFAs requiring a LGC. In order to achieve the maximum possible score within the 2017/2018 FHFC RFAs requiring a LGC, a multifamily development project is required to have a LGC - with an expected value of at least $100,000.
Each year, the Broward County Housing Finance and Community Redevelopment Division (the “Division”) advertises for applications for use of the annual Community Development Block Grant Program (CDBG), State Housing Initiatives Program (SHIP) and HOME Investment Partnerships Program (HOME) HOME funds allocations. This year’s FHFC local deadline date of late September, 2017, is too early for the Board of County Commissioners (Board) to provide HOME or SHIP funded LGCs for the recently announced FHFC RFA's. Therefore, to provide developers an opportunity to get a local match certification for the RFA funding opportunities, the HFA, at its August 16, 2017 board meeting, approved Resolution 2017-005 (Exhibit 1) authorizing the use of up to $3,000,000 from the HFA Reserve Account to provide an LGC for the 2017/2018 FHFC RFA's, subject to using future HOME funds or other available County affordable housing resources to replace the use of HFA funds if one or more projects are approved by the FHFC.
The HFA Resolution 2017-005 was approved as to form by the Office of the County Attorney.
This action would allow Broward County projects the opportunity to take advantage of the significant financing leverage that is provided by the 2017/2018 FHFC RFAs. Without the LGC, Broward County projects would not achieve maximum scoring and, therefore, would not be competitive in the FHFC process. All selected projects will require future Board approval for the allocation of HOME funds, SHIP funds, or other available County affordable housing resources in calendar year 2018. |