Atlanta City Council passed a resolution Monday allocating $17 million from the Affordable Housing Trust Fund to create housing and help keep people in their homes.
City council members adopted the resolution unanimously as part of its consent agenda. In June, the council approved the mayor’s request for $17 million as part of a $2.75 billion budget request for the Fiscal Year 2025. The resolution outlines how those funds will be spent.
It says the funding will help the city reach its “dual goals of housing production and programs to promote housing security,” and Dickens’ bid to build or renovate 20,000 affordable units by 2030.
The resolution allocates $8 million for affordable housing production to cover the costs of development, financing, and construction. Another $5 million goes toward housing security programs to help low-income residents stay in their homes and live in “safe, dignified and affordable housing.”
Members approved $4 million for contingency reserves, debt service for affordable housing debt, and “transfers to Invest Atlanta and nonprofit partners.”
In 2023, the City Council passed legislation to fully fund the affordable housing trust fund for the first time since its creation, approving $3.5 million from the general fund for the Fiscal Year 2024 budget.
That was after the city established recurring local funding in December 2021 for the fund, earmarking 2% of its general fund budget to be phased in over three years.
The legislation called for 1% of the general fund budget for Fiscal Year 2023, 1.5% for Fiscal Year 2024, and 2% for the Fiscal Year 2025. The fund received $7 million in FY23 and $11.5 million in FY24.
At City Hall on Monday, the council members passed another housing-related ordinance allowing the city to apply for a $250,000 grant award of membership in the National Housing Crisis Task Force.
Launched in July by the Nowak Metro Finance Lab at Drexel University and Accelerator for America, the task force describes itself as a coalition of leaders and experts formed to address the housing crisis and “identify and scale the most promising innovations in housing production and preservation.”
According to the ordinance, the grant award will allow Dickens to serve with other housing policy leaders to “set the course for housing policy and practice in the United States.”
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