City Budgets $6.6M for Affordable Housing Trust Fund
Date Posted: January 17, 2020
Posted In: News,
From The St. Louis American: The City of St. Louis is bound by federal law to take steps towards desegregation, advocates told members of the Affordable Housing Commission at a January 6 meeting.
“As rents and land values in many parts of the city continue to climb, the needed increase in funding necessary to generate affordable housing opportunities will be costly,” said Glenn Burleigh, with the St. Louis Metropolitan Equal Housing and Opportunity Council (EHOC).
That’s why EHOC, Community Builders Network and other organizations called on the commission to request a minimum of $10 million in the upcoming budget year.
“The need is far greater, but an increase to a minimum of $10 million would show a commitment from the city towards making real progress towards the kind of funding necessary to tackle this growing problem,” Burleigh told commissioners.
Four days later, Mayor Lyda Krewson released a statement that she had increased the budget for the Affordable Housing Trust Fund, which the commission oversees, from $5.76 million to $6.6 million in 2020.
“Everything about who we are and who we become begins at home,” Krewson said. “That’s why we must ensure access to safe, affordable, and decent housing.”
The increase funding comes from the unallocated tax revenue that resulted from passing Prop 1 in 2017 – a half-cent sales tax increase for a North-South light rail extension, public safety cameras, and neighborhood development. A local-use tax automatically increases when the sales tax does, and that increase generates an additional $4 million a year. Since city voters rejected funding a new soccer stadium with this money, the $4 million was left unallocated.
Two years ago, Burleigh and advocates urged a $7-million allotment for the fund. Now they have finally gotten near that, but data shows that the need for affordable housing has grown even in the last two years, he said.