ALLENTOWN, Pa. \u2013 Allentown City Council held a special meeting Wednesday night to hear a presentation on how to use housing funds which are being accumulated from an increase in the deed transfer tax.<\/p>\n
Council President Santos Napoli explained that last year council made a unanimous decision to increase the deed transfer tax for real estate transactions by a half percent.<\/p>\n
\u201cThis increase did not affect any existing homeowners or seniors and was focused on improving housing conditions citywide,\u201d Napoli said. \u201cThis additional revenue was all pointed to a housing fund within our Community and Economic Department.\u201d<\/p>\n
Napoli said that based on last year\u2019s data, the estimate of the housing fund would be about $2.3 million.<\/p>\n
As of June 30, Napoli said the fund has received $1,080,000.<\/p>\n
\u201cThis legislation also calls for an annual action plan, which is a public meeting to discuss how best to utilize housing fund dollars for housing initiatives,\u201d he said. \u201cThat’s why we’re here tonight.\u201d<\/p>\n
Recommendations for the fund were been prepared by Karen L. Black, CEO of May 8 Consulting Firm Inc., Philadelphia.<\/p>\n
Vicki Kistler, director of community and economic development, presented four options for use of the new funds: a rehabilitated first-time homebuyer purchase program, a Local Economic Revitalization Tax Assistance Act (LERTA) ordinance for affordable housing, an owner-occupied home repair grant and a childcare facility improvement loan.<\/p>\n
Rehabilitated home purchase program<\/p>\n
The program\u2019s goal would be to deliver a code-compliant, move-in ready home at a price an eligible first-time homebuyer could finance.<\/p>\n
Black has suggested the city begin with a pilot program to rehabilitate three publicly owned single-family homes at a cost of between $100,000 and $200,000.<\/p>\n
The homes would be sold to city residents who have a household income at or below 80% of the area\u2019s median income.<\/p>\n
Buyers would be selected from a lottery among qualified applicants.<\/p>\n
The city is anticipating offering a maximum sales price of $230,000 for the first-time home buyers.<\/p>\n
Proceeds from the sale of the homes would be used to continuously expand the program by adding more available homes.<\/p>\n
LERTA for affordable housing<\/p>\n
The LERTA program allows municipalities to exempt the assessed value of improvements from local property taxes for up to 10 years.<\/p>\n
An affordable housing LERTA would reduce the cost structure for developers, allowing them to create affordable rental and homeownership opportunities for residents at or below 80% of the area\u2019s median income.<\/p>\n
Developers would receive 100% abatement in initial years and then the amount would decline by 20% in the later years.<\/p>\n
Owner-occupied home rehabilitation program<\/p>\n
This program would provide loans up to $40,000 per property to low- and moderate-income homeowners to address critical repairs to stabilize homes.<\/p>\n
The loans would be secured by a lien recorded against the property, and repayment would be required upon the sale of the property to allow the city to continue to offer the grants.<\/p>\n
Family childcare facility improvement program<\/p>\n
The program would provide zero percent-interest home repair loans up to $50,000 to licensed family in-home childcare providers to improve the safety and quality of the homes where childcare is offered.<\/p>\n
The idea would be to preserve viable family childcare businesses that are at risk of closure due to deteriorating facility conditions.<\/p>\n
The loans would be paid back to the city when the homes are sold or transferred, or when the business ceases operations.<\/p>\n
Next steps<\/p>\n
Kistler said her department is seeking feedback from City Council on ways to amend the recommendations, and to determine which programs the city would begin in 2027.<\/p>\n
Councilmembers said they will submit questions to Kistler and begin to discuss the programs at the committee level.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"ALLENTOWN, Pa. \u2013 Allentown City Council held a special meeting Wednesday night to hear a presentation on how…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":33768,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[10],"tags":[2313,119,2748,121,120,114882,114881,114879,30359,114880,114878],"class_list":["post-273023","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-allentown","tag-affordable-housing","tag-allentown","tag-allentown-city-council","tag-allentown-headlines","tag-allentown-news","tag-deed-transfer-tax","tag-housing-fund","tag-karen-l-black","tag-real-estate-transactions","tag-santos-napoli","tag-vicki-kistler"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/273023","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=273023"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/273023\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/33768"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=273023"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=273023"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=273023"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}