HEART: Opening Doors in Our Community

On Thursday afternoon, 5/14/09, Mid-Peninsula Housing Coalition celebrated the groundbreaking for Peninsula Station, a new development on El Camino Real in San Mateo. When completed in summer 2010 or so, Pen Station will provide affordable rental homes for 68 working families.

The actual ground was broken several weeks ago, so the ceremony took place in the parking lot of the Borders bookstore next door. However, city officials and funders, including HEART, were able to go down the ramp and turn the requisite spadefuls of dirt for the cameras.

Speakers included Jan Lindenthal, vice president of development for Mid-Pen; Yoomie Ahn, project manager for Mid-Pen; Brandt Grotte, Mayor of San Mateo; Janet Stone, San Mateo County Department of Housing; Brian Perkins, Office of Congresswoman Jackie Speier; Chris Mohr, Housing Endowment And Regional Trust (HEART); Margaret Schrand, Wells Fargo Bank; and Brian Frankel, Union Bank.

Here’s a link to the story in today’s San Mateo Daily Journal.

Here are a few photos from the event, posted to HLC’s Flickr account.

City officials break ground

Project Manager Yoomie Ahn

Mid-Peninsula Housing’s Jan Lindenthal

Cross-posted to Housing Leadership Council’s blog.

This is the public service announcement produced by Comcast:

Yesterday, April 23, 2009, the Association of Bay Area Governments presented HEART with the 2009 Growing Smarter Together Award in the category of Public/Private Partnerships.

The award was presented to San Mateo County Supervisor Carole Groom, former Board chair for HEART, and Executive Director Chris Mohr at an awards ceremony in San Francisco.

A short video was produced by ABAG in concert with the award. We will try to upload it to YouTube soon and link to it on our website.

Photos aren’t available yet, but the award announcement is online.

HEART’s been busy with funding two new housing developments and monitoring federal and state funding opportunities.

We’ll post our press release about the two new development loans soon.  Here’s what the San Francisco Business Times published on their website: San Mateo’s HEART to invest $2M for housing.

The proposed federal budget for 2010 includes an 18% increase for the Department of Housing and Urban Development, including $1 billion for the National Affordable Housing Trust Fund. This is extremely good news, in addition to the funding that was included in the economic stimulus package.

The state is looking to create a permanent revenue stream for affordable home development. Senate President pro tem Darrell Steinberg has introduced a placeholder bill, SB 500, that establishes the intent to create such a funding source. We’ll be monitoring that and weighing in at the appropriate time. You can see what little text there is for the bill on the State legislative website.

Finally, we had a nice “friendraiser” event just before Valentine’s Day. You can see photos on HEART’s Flickr page. Many thanks to Borel Private Bank & Trust Co. for hosting the event at their San Mateo branch!

This came by way of an email from Philip Kilbridge, executive director of Habitat for Humanity Greater San Francisco:

Habitat for Humanity is deeply saddened by the death of Millard Fuller, the visionary whose ideas and tireless work created Habitat for Humanity.

Mr. Fuller led Habitat from its founding in 1976 until his separation from the organization and his founding of the Fuller Center for Housing in 2005. He died early today, Feb. 3, following a brief illness. He was 74.

“Millard Fuller was a force of nature who turned a simple idea into an international organization that has helped more than 300,000 families move from deplorable housing into simple, decent homes they helped build and can afford to buy and live in,” said Jonathan Reckford, chief executive officer of Habitat for Humanity International….

The idea for Habitat for Humanity was born at Koinonia Farm, a Christian farming community founded in 1942 in rural southwest Georgia to be a “demonstration plot for the Kingdom of God.” Millard and Linda Fuller made their way to that demonstration plot in 1965.

Click here for the full piece from Habitat for Humanity.

The State Housing and Community Development Department has posted the jurisdictions that could qualify for the federal Neighborhood Stabilization Program funds. However, no jurisdiction in San Mateo County qualified.

That’s good, in that the county has not been hit with foreclosures at as a high rate as the majority of California counties.

It’s unfortunate, in that there are local communities that are much harder hit than the rest, and they could have used the assistance.

Here’s the link to the state’s <a href=”http://www.hcd.ca.gov/fa/nsp/subamendment.html” target=”_blank”>NSP web page</a>, with the “Substantial Amendment” listing the qualified localities.

The federal Neighborhood Stabilization Program was created by the Housing and Economy Recovery Act passed by Congress earlier this year, and signed into law 7/31/08 (pre-big bailout). The program provides funds to local governments to acquire and rehab foreclosed properties. Some hard-hit counties got direct grants, but San Mateo County did not. The rest of the funds were divvied up among the states to be apportioned to local governments by an assigned state agency. In California, the Department of Housing and Community Development (HCD) is responsible for this allocation process.

HCD is now moving to implement this program. This via the Non-Profit Housing Association of Northern California:

The State Department of Housing and Community Development (HCD) is holding a series of meetings on the NSP to get input on the Action Plan that needs to be adopted by December 1st 2008. In addition, HCD will be holding a public hearing on the Action Plan on November 21st.

The Action Plan will be released on the HCD website on November 14th for the 21 day public comment period.

Stakeholder Meetings :
WHEN: Monday, November 3rd, 10:00 a.m.-3:00 p.m.
WHERE: VCGBC Building 400 R Street, Sacramento

WHEN: Thursday, November 6th, 10:30 a.m.-3:30 p.m
WHERE: Location to be determined

If you have any questions please contact Jolena Voorhis, Director of Legislation HCD at (916) 323-0169, jvoorhis@hcd.gov

The earlier bailout bill, the Housing and Economic Recovery Act of 2008 (HR 3221), created the Neighborhood Stabilization Program. The bill allocated about $3.9 billion to the states to help deal with foreclosures. The United States Department of Housing and Urban Development (HUD) was given 60 days to develop an allocation formula for states and hard-hit counties.

HUD announced the awards today. HUD has now listed the allocations at

www.hud.gov/nsp

San Mateo County, which has had a relatively light foreclosure rate compared to many parts of the state, did not receive a direct allocation. Should the County wish to pursue funds, it will have to seek an allocation from the State of California’s grant amount of $145,071,506.

Cross-posted at the Housing Leadership Council blog.

The National Low-Income Housing Coalition will be holding another conference call to provide information about the newly created National Housing Trust Fund:

Repeat Call About the Housing Trust Fund For Those Unable To Join In August

Date: Monday, September 15

Time: 3:00 PM (EDT), noon (PDT).

Details: Click here.

This is from the State Department of Housing and Community Development today:

The Multifamily Housing Program (MHP) is pleased to announce our new Notice of Funding Availability (NOFA). MHP will be awarding $70,000,000 this funding round. Please go to our website below to download the NOFA. If you plan to attend the workshop on Tuesday, September 9 please complete NOFA Attachment 1 and email back to Barbara Stolk, HCD technician.
http://www.hcd.ca.gov/fa/mhp/19-Aug-08_NOFA.html

HEART is looking forward to finding out when the Local Housing Trust Fund Program funds will be announced. Stay tuned!