Housing program sees drastic funding cuts

Deeper cuts to funding and aging

facilities are two major concerns at the Whitefish Housing

Authority, executive director SueAnn Grogan told the Whitefish City

Council during an April 4 work session.

The session was requested on March 22

after the council delayed voting on city manager Chuck Stearns’

suggestion that WHA receive $15,000 in tax-increment financing

(TIF) money for two years.

The money could be used by WHA to

rehabilitate three homes in the Railroad District that BNSF Railway

said it would donate to WHA. The work would be eligible for TIF

money because it would address blight, Stearns said.

WHA, founded in 1967 to address growing

housing needs here, has not received any city funding since 2004,

Grogan told the council. Since 1998, WHA has won more than $2

million in grants that they wrote in-house — $77 for the community

for every dollar the city invested, she said. But times have

changed.

“The Whitefish Housing Authority is

confronting deep cuts to our most important housing and community

development programs in 2011, and I expect the trend to continue in

2012 and beyond,” she said.

Mountain View Manor, which opened in

1970 and was WHA’s first project, provides 50 apartments for the

elderly and disabled. Funding for WHA’s public housing has been cut

by about 70 percent since 2009, Grogan said, and last October, WHA

spent $26,000 replacing a rusted-out, 40-year-old water tank for

the Manor’s heating system.

WHA received $80,312 in federal

stimulus money in 2009, one-time money it used to upgrade windows

and doors at the Manor to save energy. The water tank repair should

also save energy, Grogan said.

“At this time, the Moun-tain View Manor

is able to make ends meet, but we do have serious doubts about the

funding for public housing at the national level,” she said.

WHA was awarded a planning grant last

year that will help them decide if Mountain View Manor should opt

out of public housing and move to a project-based housing-choice

voucher system.

A housing-choice voucher system is

already in place here. The federally-funded program assists

low-income households by paying a portion of their rent. WHA

currently manages 16 vouchers averaging $375 per month per

participant, but the program is currently under-funded, Grogan

said. It receives $788 per month to operate, when costs are

actually $1,000 per month.

A housing rehabilitation program funded

by federal, state and local grants has helped about 50 low-income

households finance repairs to their homes, with loans averaging

from $2,000 to $42,000. The program has received about $390,000

since it started here in 1998 and is currently funded by a $30,000

federal grant.

WHA’s homeownership program has helped

24 low- and moderate-income households purchase homes in Whitefish

since it started in 2004. A subsidy was provided to help buy down

the price of the home. In 2008, WHA founded the Whitefish Area Land

Trust to create homes that remain affordable after resale.

About $1.7 million in grant funding has

been awarded to WHA for the homeownership program, but Grogan notes

that “it has proven difficult to pass the community land-trust

model through the various financial institutions and funding

hoops.”

The city’s inclusionary-zoning

provision was intended to give developers a chance to increase

project density in exchange for providing affordable housing in

their project or money to WHA. But when the recession hit in 2008,

projects that had taken advantage of the provision stalled and were

never developed.

As for the three BNSF homes, the

councilors discussed the likelihood of them ever being converted to

affordable housing units. Two were in particularly bad shape, they

agreed. WHA instead could end up selling the land for mixed-use

projects or even a parking lot for the gentrifying Railroad

District.

Grogan was well aware of changes in the

Railroad District. She pointed out that a home at the corner of

First Street and O’Brien Avenue was one of the first homes WHA

rehabilitated for affordable housing. The woman who bought it sold

it for about three times what she paid for it, and the home was

later torn down and replaced by condos, Grogan said.

Seeing that Grogan needed $20,000 this

year for a grant match, the council reached a consensus to provide

her with that much in TIF money, but she’ll have to wait until next

year to see if she gets more money from the city.