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Boost in state funding helps thousands with affordable housing payments

Daily Press - 11/29/2021

A quintupling of state money for the Virginia Housing Trust Fund last fiscal year financed more than 2,800 new affordable housing units and helped more than 850 people who were homeless or who had disabilities with rent or mortgage payments.

The General Assembly special session this year sent $70.7 million to the trust fund for fiscal year 2021, up from $14 million the year before.

Some $24.6 million went to the trust fund’s competitive loan pool, which provides low-interest loans to a wide range of affordable housing projects, including permanent supportive housing options for people with disabilities or mental illness, according to the fund’s latest report to the General Assembly.

Those loans brought in another $648.9 million in other financing for housing.

In all, the low-interest loans funded construction or preservation of 2,835 affordable housing units. That included 25 projects with 383 permanent supportive housing units for people with disabilities.

Applications for the low-interest loans far outstripped the money available, however. Developers of some 66 projects requested more than $42 million in the loans; only 40 were awarded. It used $28.2 million for its COVID-19 rent relief program.

In addition, the trust fund’s $15.4 million allocation for its homeless reduction grant program assisted 477 households.

This money may be used for temporary rental assistance, not to exceed one year, as well as for permanent supportive housing services for the chronically homeless.

Dave Ress, 757-247-4535, dress@dailypress.com

©2021 Daily Press. Visit dailypress.com. Distributed by Tribune Content Agency, LLC.

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