OAKLAND, CA - Federal bank grants to be announced today will pump almost $3 million into a handful of new affordable housing projects in Oakland and Berkeley, officials said. Plans for a total of more than 300 units of affordable housing in the two cities will have access to funds made available by the Federal Home Loan Bank of San Francisco. The bank has doled out almost $28 million to projects in the county since 1990, when it began an affordable housing program, according to bank Vice President Kevin Blackburn.
Those funds have bolstered projects that created 250 homeownership units for struggling families and more than 4,300 rental units for renters earning less than the local median income, officials said. "I've seen tremendous impact," said Susan Broadnax, a lending manager for the bank who said she has lived in Oakland her entire life.
"In the Fruitvale district, for instance, there was an old motel about five years ago at Lincoln and Telegraph that had been a bane to that neighborhood for decades," Broadnax said. "It was run by someone who was living somewhere else and "... attracted drugs and prostitution, this in a neighborhood with an elementary school four blocks away. This was a place where arson was frequent, just mayhem and madness."
Community leaders banded together and sued the landlord, ultimately winning control of the property and putting in affordable housing for the elderly, an urgent need in that neighborhood, Broadnax said. "I watched the rise of the new building as a member of the staff here, so I know that part of this was financed by FHL Bank and its member banks," she said. "And we've seen this happen in any number of communities in the city."
The new grants will be announced at a luncheon where Rep. Barbara Lee, D-Oakland, will be honored with the bank's 2008 Friends of Affordable Housing Award for her work in supporting affordable housing, Blackburn said. The funding for the projects comes from set-asides mandated by federal law since the Great Depression, Blackburn said. "Twelve banks make up the federal home loan system, created by Congress in 1932," he said. "We're one of the 12. Ten percent of our net earnings have to be set aside for affordable housing, and the mission of system is to expand homeownership."
The housing program requires that new homeowners moving into properties with this funding live in their homes for five years. For rental properties, the program monitors leasing policies for 15 years, requiring that tenants prove that at best they make 80 percent of the median income for the area, bank Vice President Jim Yacenda said.
"The baseline qualification is 80 percent or below, but in the East Bay we're typically serving low and very low income people, at or below 60 (percent), 50 (percent), 35 percent," Yacenda said. "A lot of that is dictated by other sources of funding. If a rental project is getting low-income tax credits, that dictates the income levels they can charge."
The money often is used in a variety of ways and at a range of speeds, Yacenda said. Some grant recipients are ready to spend the money immediately, and others use the grants as leverage to get funding from other sources.
"If a project is hitting the ground running, we can fund it as soon as our partner bank and the recipient agree to the funds being dispersed," Yacenda said. "In some cases it will help develop ground being broken, and in other cases you see doors being unlocked, so to speak."
The bank's program serves programs around California and in other states and sees projects rolling to completion all the time, Broadnax said.
"Maybe a month ago, the homeownership part of the Mandela Parkway project, behind the rental part on Seventh Street, four or five single-family residences opened up," she said. "The Jack London Gateway, Phase II, is nearing completion, which should open up about 60 units of senior housing near Market and Seventh streets."
The program is an essential part of keeping Oakland diverse, Broadnax said. "We look at neighborhoods as if only one group lives there," she said. "An upscale neighborhood, we figure only rich people live there. But every neighborhood is served by everyone, and there ought to be that kind of diversity everywhere. It's one of the beauties of Oakland."
Source: MercuryNews.com