Bethlehem City Council approved a $12,000 contract with the Center for Public Enterprise, a nonprofit based in New York, to design a new financing tool aimed at tackling the city’s housing shortage.
The initiative, passed on Oct. 8, will provide technical assistance for developing a revolving loan fund, a model intended to incentivize the construction of more mixed-income housing.
The revolving loan fund is a part of “Opening Doors: Strategies to Build Housing Stability,” the city’s plan to make housing more affordable. Unlike a traditional one-time grant, the fund is designed to be a self-sustaining financial tool.
Sara Satullo, Bethlehem’s deputy director of community development, said this initiative is a response to “a market of scarcity,” with a goal of increasing the housing supply for the entire community.
Satullo said housing scarcity has been a problem nationally for a long time, with underbuilding and increases in housing costs happening across the U.S.
The housing market is severely strained in the U.S. with a shortage of over 4.7 million homes. In Pennsylvania specifically, the housing shortage has caused almost $15 million dollars to be lost in economic output, according to the U.S. Chamber of Commerce.
Satullo said with the revolving loan fund, the city’s goal is to speed up housing production.
“This will bring more units to the market, especially units with guaranteed long-term affordability,” she said.
Ashwin Warrior, the deputy director of housing for policy and research for the Center for Public Enterprise, said the fund is capitalized once with an initial large sum of money, and smaller loans are then provided from that sum. He said these loans, on average, won’t exceed more than 20-30% of a project’s costs during the construction phase.
Warrior said the money is then paid back to the fund once a project is complete, and it can then be loaned out again for other projects.
He said this “shallow subsidy” model is meant to become a permanent piece of the city’s development toolkit.
Warrior said this model is a more flexible alternative than the current federal system, the Low Income Housing Tax Credit.
According to the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development website, the Low Income Housing Tax Credit gives local agencies the budget authority to issue tax credits for the construction and acquisition of rental housing for low-income areas.
Warrior said this program is highly competitive and often leaves many projects unfunded each year.
City Councilwoman Hilary Kwiatek said the fund is a way for the city to have a hand in all housing projects by taking part in funding, alongside other financing sources such as low-income housing tax credits.
“(The fund) should last in perpetuity,” she said. “As long as developers are using the fund and paying back the loans, it will continue to be replenished and used for new projects.”
Saltillo said the $12,000 contract is not for building houses, but for the Center for Public Enterprise’s advising in designing the fund with a six-month consultancy that will involve financial and community analysis.
Kwiatek said the analysis will involve looking at the economics of the region and engaging with the community to see what kind of housing is needed.
From there, she said this information will dictate the fund’s size, loan parameters and startup funding sources. The tangible outcome will be a report with recommendations on how to design and implement the fund.
Kwiatek also said the Center for Public Enterprises’s status as a nonprofit was a significant reason for this partnership.
“They aren’t charging higher consultant rates, and they don’t have a self-interest,” she said. “They’re not a bank trying to sell us a product. This gives us confidence that the final product they deliver will be fair and in our best interests.”
Satullo said other cities with successful funds all recommended the nonprofit as leaders in the area of housing that offer their services at an affordable rate.
She also said the primary goal of the city’s collaboration with the nonprofit is to create more mixed-income communities that include market-rate, affordable and workforce housing units.
Kwiatek said this approach is a modern philosophy of housing that seeks to deconcentrate poverty rather than isolate it.
She also said affordable housing can be expensive to build, so the fund could also support projects on the North Side such as the redevelopment of public housing, as opposed to just new constructions on the South Side.
“Building affordable housing within a mixed-income development makes it more financially viable and is simply better for the health of the entire community,” Kwiatek said.