The Colorado Housing and Finance Authority awarded a record $25 million in low-income housing tax credits to 12 affordable housing projects around the state on Tuesday, $8.3 million of which will flow into Boulder County.
In all, the $8.3 million will help fund 120 affordable units in a new three-story complex at known as 30Pearl in Boulder and 73 affordable units in a mixed used development at 518 Coffman St. in Longmont.
It also will fund the renovation of 159 affordable units in Boulder and Longmont owned by Thistle Communities.
While the projects took years to plan, as the state and federal governments look to invest more into affordable housing — doubling the amount of state tax credits allowed to be allocated each year from $5 million to $10 million — housing experts around Boulder County hope the success of these projects can serve as readily replicable models.
“Once people see these things happen, they say, ‘this is something clearly we can do, too,’” said Jim Williams, director of communications for Boulder County Housing and Human Services. “And you need to have several partners come together to make housing work here.”
While it certainly helps to have several organizations combine their resources for a single project, none of the projects would be possible without the tax credits, and as far as the Colorado Housing and Finance Authority is concerned, the fewer tax credits a project needs to succeed, the less risk there is in it failing and the more projects it can help over the hump during each allocation round.
“It’s really important in terms of the competition to have as many resources ready as possible,” Tasha Weaver, manager of the Colorado Housing and Finance Authority’s tax credit program, said of the application review process. “It helps with efficient credit use, so we can spread them around to more projects, which is good for the whole state.”
For example, several projects proposed designating rooms specifically for those with special needs, mental health problems and homeless people, as did the 30Pearl project, where 20 apartments will be reserved for residents with special needs and 10 units will be designated for permanent supportive housing. Some even provided access to programs such as early childhood care, after-school activities, financial classes and caseworkers to provide resident support.
What put the 30Pearl project over the top, Weaver said, was the 4.6 acres donated by the city of Boulder, which left Boulder Housing Partners only needing $838,020 in state funded low-income housing tax credits.
“This is the kind of complex partnership and financing needed to provide more housing for more people in our community,” said Laura Sheinbaum, director of real estate development for the Boulder Housing Partners. “We would not have been able to do this without tax credits, it really helped us fill our financing gap.”
While the Coffman Street project in Longmont also is using “free land,” by repurposing a county-owned parking lot into 73 units of affordable housing, and the Thistle Communities project offered a similarly efficient use of tax credits by refurbishing 159 already constructed affordable housing units, free land wasn’t the only thing that caught the attention of the Housing and Finance Authority.
The downtown location for the Coffman Street apartments, Weaver said, represented a unique opportunity to build affordable in the area.
“This evaluation round illustrated several housing innovations,” the Colorado Housing and Finance Authority wrote in a statement announcing the tax credit allocations. “Collaboration and outreach were a recurring theme, with several developments demonstrating strong community partnerships formed to facilitate outreach, ongoing resident and supportive services, infrastructure development, funding, and/or land donations.”
As Jim Williams, the director of communications for Boulder County Housing and Human Services put it, “it’s an example that other communities around the county can look to do within their own jurisdictions that will make all our communities more accessible.”
Letters of intent for the second round of allocations were due May 1. Letters of intent for the first round of allocations in 2020 is Dec. 2.
