The Metro Council on Thursday passed a resolution that directs staff to create a Housing Production Accelerator Fund through which $5 million from Metro’s Construction Excise Tax (CET) will be used to accelerate housing production. The program will be designed to provide technical assistance, local staffing capacity, and predevelopment support.

Current estimates show that Portland still needs 27,000 more homes to support its existing population and 151,000 more to keep up with forecasted population growth over the next 20 years, a Metro staff report states.

In a work session last month, the Metro Council supported the $5 million investment of CET reserves to accelerate housing production in the region. Funding will be made available to regional partners.

Also last month, the council adopted the regional housing coordination strategy for collaborative work with cities and counties. The accelerator fund will help advance five strategies: funding pre-development activities necessary to unlock public properties and others whose owners are interested in developing affordable housing but lack the expertise required, expanding resources available for brownfield assessment and exploring grant opportunities for small-scale remediation that leads to middle housing and multifamily housing development, assisting cities and counties with approved housing production strategies, offering technical assistance to support planning and implementation of housing production and affordability and choice, and exploring regional land bank strategies.

Metro staff will design the grant and technical assistance programs, hold listening sessions to get feedback on program design and effectiveness of strategies, and increase management capacity.

“We also want to avoid predetermining funding allocations across the five actions,” said Hau Hagedorn, community investment manager for Metro. “Instead, we intend to offer technical assistance on a first come, first served basis to move funds quickly to projects ready for development and award grants to jurisdictions that are ready to move projects forward that are aligned with the actions.”

Allocation of funds is expected to take about three to five years, but the goal is to do so as soon as possible, said Malu Wilkinson, planning, development and research deputy director for Metro.

Councilor Mary Nolan said that time frame is not as urgent as she believes it should be for a $5 million investment. She also asked about measurements for success. As the program is designed, Hagedorn said, staff will inform the council what is expected to be accomplished this year and beyond.

“As we work more with our partners around the region to define this so it is most useful for them, we will be defining those metrics that we can bring back to you to talk about how successful and how much impact this $5 million will have,” Wilkinson added.

The resolution passed by a 6-1 margin, with Nolan voting no. Staff will return before the council to provide an update on program specifics.

The post Metro devoting $5 million to help spur housing production appeared first on Daily Journal of Commerce.