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Archive for month: June, 2016

Arlington Partnership for Affordable Housing Breaks Ground on Columbia Hills

June 13, 2016
June 13, 2016

APAHArlington Partnership for Affordable Housing (APAH) broke ground on its newest project, Columbia Hills Apartments, which will be located at 1010 S. Frederick Street in Arlington.   In a blustery but spirit-filled celebration, APAH’s finance, design and building partners, elected officials, neighbors and APAH leaders gathered to launch construction on the 229-unit building.

With a sentiment echoed throughout the proceedings, Libby Garvey, Chairman of the Arlington County Board, praised the Columbia Hills project as “a wonderful example of what we can do when everyone works together for the community. Today there are just 9,600 affordable homes in Arlington, yet there are 17,000 low income families here in our community right now in need of affordable homes.”

M&T Bank, who in partnership with APAH, donated the 1.2 acres of land on which Columbia Hills will be built, was a critical early partner. Speaking at the celebration, John Mangan, Vice President for Commercial Real Estate Finance at M&T Bank, stated “we all succeed when the communities where we live, work and play succeed. In a high price region like Arlington, land is one of the largest obstacles to growing our stock of affordable housing. Columbia Hills is one of the largest donations M&T has ever made and I can’t think of a better cause, group or project for our support.”

Delegate Alfonso Lopez (VA-49th District) expressed his gratitude for the support of the Virginia Housing Trust Fund, an affordable housing fund he championed in the legislature, but noted “today is a great day, but we must do more. Solving Virginia’s housing crisis is essential to economic growth, to creating jobs and to building thriving communities. Today, as we begin Columbia Hills, APAH and everyone here is taking a giant step forward to expand affordable housing here in Northern Virginia.”

Closing the festivities, Nina Janopaul, APAH President and CEO, observed “it is incredible what this community can accomplish when we link arms and muscle through complicated projects like Columbia Hills. We do it because we believe in this cause; we believe in the diversity of our community and we believe that Arlington is stronger when the 17,000 low income families who are our friends and neighbors are able to stay here in our community.”

PressReleasePhotoOption1Columbia Hills Apartments is one of the first projects to be developed under the Arlington County’s award-winning Columbia Pike Neighborhoods Plan and will contribute significantly to meeting the Plan’s goal of preserving 3,000 affordable homes along Columbia Pike. The building will be an attractive, new, eight-story apartment complex that includes community rooms for resident programs and a relocated playground for young children. The property includes 10 permanent supportive housing units and 13 accessible units to meet the diverse needs of the community, including senior and disabled residents who cannot live comfortably in the neighboring Columbia Grove walk-up apartments.

Built on 1.2 acres of APAH’s land adjacent to our Columbia Grove Apartments, Columbia Hills will provide a total of 229 homes, including 64 studio apartments, 27 one-bedroom units, 110 two-bedroom units, and 28 three-bedroom homes. All apartments are affordable to low income households earning 60% or Area Median Income (AMI, including 10 for households below 40% AMI and 39 for households below 50% AMI.

Located at 1010 Frederick Street, just a block off Columbia Pike, Columbia Hills is an innovative and highly efficient $91M project that includes land donated by APAH and M&T Bank, , federal Low Income Housing Tax Credits (LIHTC), innovative hybrid financing. Arlington County loaned $18.5 million from its Affordable Housing Investment Fund (AHIF) project which will repaid back by APAH into the County’s revolving fund. Additional funding is being provided by the Federal Home Loan Bank of Atlanta and the Virginia Housing Trust Fund

Speaker at the groundbreaking included:

Re. Andrew Merrow, Rector, St. Mary’s Episcopal Church

John Milliken, Chairman, APAH Board of Directors

Libby Garvey, Arlington County Board Chair

Dale Wittie, Director, Rental Housing, VA Housing Development Authority, VHDA

Derrick Perkins, Senior Vice President, Community Development Lending, Bank of America Merrill Lynch

John Mangan, Vice President, Commercial Real Estate Finance, M&T Bank

Chris Thompson, Deputy Director of Housing, Virginia Department of Housing and Community Development

Alfonso Lopez, Virginia House of Delegates (49th District)

Nina Janopaul, APAH President and CEO

Please find the property sheet here with more information on the project.

 

 

0 Comments/in HAND News, Member Events & Success Stories /by H.A.N.D.

Housing as Part of the Roadmap for the Region’s Economic Future: The Prospect for Regional Collaboration

June 6, 2016
June 6, 2016

The Washington, D.C. area economy is the in the midst of dramatic restructuring – largely as a result of declines in federal spending in the region.  A group of business and community leaders, along with advocates, philanthropists and funders, have come together to work on strategies for repositioning the regional economy to ensure that the Washington, D.C. area is able to compete in today’s global economy.

They called this strategy the “Roadmap for the Region’s Future Economy.”

In a series of recent interviews with senior business executives in the region, it was clear that quality-of- life issues—specifically housing and transportation—were key to our economic success. Many business leaders interviewed for this project said that “reducing social inequality across the D.C. region was critical to bolstering the region’s economy” and policies related to affordable housing and transportation were “more important than adjustments to corporate tax policies.”

So, according to the Regional Roadmap project, having sufficient affordable housing is vital to the region’s economic future.

house in handThe growing recognition of the link between housing supply and economic growth is not unique to the Washington, D. C. region. In a 2013 report, researchers Chris Benner and Manuel Pastor found a strong relationship between regional economic resiliency and economic integration. Last year, researchers Chang-Tai Hsieh and Enrico Moretti concluded that the lack of a sufficient supply of housing has reduced U.S. GDP by 10 percent. They also explicitly linked the economic loss to excessive regulation in the housing market which has precluded the building of enough housing. The Chairman of President Obama’s Council of Economic Advisors—a non-housing official—said that restrictive local land use regulations are contributing to increasing inequality and declining productivity, nationally.

Is Regional Cooperation on Affordable Housing Likely?

All of the partners involved in the Regional Roadmap project seem to agree that regional cooperation and collaboration is key to the success of the initiative and to building a vibrant, sustainable economy. However, regional cooperation on housing issues is probably more difficult than on any other issue identified in the project. Why is a formal regional compact (or a collaborative) on housing unlikely in the near term?

Local control over housing decisions. Land use and development approvals are ultimately local decisions. The decision to provide public resources—or to allow greater density, a streamlined approval processes, or provide other incentives to produce or preserve affordable housing—are subject to intense local debate by community members, elected officials and other stakeholders. Regional collaboration is very challenging when it involves—or even appears to involve—weakening local autonomy over these decisions

No good models. It turns out that there are very few models, from around the country of regional efforts that have had a meaningful impact on the production or preservation of affordable housing, specifically in Baltimore, Illinois and with the Northwest Regional Housing Authority. The regional initiatives that have been adopted in other parts of the country are quite modest, and have tended to focus on a regional approach to allocating housing choice vouchers. Furthermore, there are no examples of regional collaboration on housing issues across multiple states (or state-like entities), such as what we have here in the D.C. region.

Other more urgent challenges: Fix Metro. While housing is definitely an important issue, the region is currently grappling with a more immediate challenge—Metro. Local elected officials, business leaders and community members are focused on making sure Metro remains a viable transit system. There seems to be little opportunity to use this possibility as a way to bring stakeholders together to work more generally on regional issues.

subway-109245_1920Despite the hurdles with a formal regional initiative around affordable housing, there are several things that advocates, developers, planners and other stakeholders can do to keep the attention on the region’s housing needs and to move towards a more coordinated approach to expanding housing options throughout the metropolitan area.

Collaborate in some way on fair housing assessments: Under HUD’s new Affirmatively Furthering Fair Housing rule, local jurisdictions must use new data, and follow a new process, for assessing fair housing issues and identifying strategies for expanding housing options. Currently, there are no federal requirements or local pushes for a regional fair housing assessment.  However, there may be opportunities for housing planners and other stakeholders from local jurisdictions—with leadership from the Metropolitan Washington Council of Governments (MWCOG)—to work together to analyze HUD-provided data and assess regional conditions as part of local fair housing assessments.

Share best practices across localities. In addition, regional organizations, including the MWCOG, the Greater Washington Housing Leaders Group and HAND, should continue to find ways to bring area housing planners and elected officials together to talk about local land use and effective financial strategies used in their communities to facilitate the production and/or preservation of affordable housing. These meetings should go beyond the high-level program descriptions and discuss the nuts and bolts of garnering support, implementing the program and following through on measuring outcomes.

Learn more about how to communicate. We are probably not going to come up with a new approach to housing that has never been tried before. In fact, the local jurisdictions in the Washington, D.C. area tend to be leaders on affordable housing policy among communities across the country. Instead, we need to focus less on documenting the need (it’s considerable!) or identifying best practices (we know what they are!) but rather on how to communicate with residents, neighbors, community groups and elected officials to make a better case for action—both at the local and regional levels—especially considering there are so many competing needs and conflicting priorities.

Achieve small regional successes. Although a large-scale regional housing initiative in the Washington, D.C. region might be a long-term goal, in the immediate future there are opportunities for local jurisdictions to work collaboratively on a smaller scale. Last year, the District of Columbia, Prince George’s County and Montgomery County agreed to work together towards eliminating homelessness. Other potential regional efforts could involve a subset of local jurisdictions to advocate for at the state-level. Successful, smaller initiatives can help build trust among local leaders and lay the groundwork for more comprehensive regional housing efforts.

0 Comments/in HAND News, HAND Thought Leadership /by H.A.N.D.

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