In accordance with HUD’s Citizen’s Participation Plan (CPP) regulations, the City is required to amend components of its Consolidated Plan/Annual Action Plan for a variety of reasons, including when a reallocation of funds increases or decreases the budget of an activity by more than 25%.
HCDD recommends moving $5,582,890.85 in Community Development Block Grant (CDBG) funds from the Single-Family Home Repair, Economic Development, and Acquisition activities to Public Facilities and Improvements/Neighborhood Facilities.
Single-family activities remain a priority for HCDD, and the department proposes to substitute TIRZ Affordable Housing funds for the reallocated CDBG dollars. With TIRZ funds, HCDD can provide affordable single-family homes, downpayment assistance and other single-family programs to a broader range of persons than is allowable under CDBG, which is more restrictive on income of population served and spending deadlines.
Additionally, HCDD’s HUD-mandated Consolidated Plan/Annual Action Plan contains non-housing uses of CDBG funds, including public facilities. HCDD’s Public Facilities division recently completed a Request for Proposals which identified several highly qualified proposals for facilities serving some of the City’s most vulnerable citizens. The proposed CDBG reallocation enables the department to fund more of those proposals, ultimately providing the citizens of Houston with services such as playground equipment serving both therapeutic and recreational needs of sexually abused children, job training and youth services for low-income populations, education programs for at-risk students, adult day care for elderly and disabled persons, and parks for low-income, park-poor communities.
Specifics of the proposed reallocations are listed on the table attached to this RCA.
This item was reviewed by the Housing and Community Affairs Committee on February 16, 2016.
__________________________________________
Neal Rackleff, Director
Housing & Community Development Department