AHFA 2016 Draft Low-Income Housing Credit Qualified Allocation and HOME Action Plans
Public Comment Form
Commenting Period October 7, 2015 – November 6, 2015
All comments regarding the Draft Plans must be submitted using this form. General Comments may be submitted at the bottom of
the form. Comments which include cut-and paste text (or redlined or re-worded sections) of the proposed Plans will be rejected.
Please provide full explanatory and careful comments regarding your proposed changes, keeping in mind that your proposed
changes might have an unintended consequence for a different project or location in the state. All forms should be submitted to
ahfa.mf.qap@ahfa.com as an attachment to the email. Other documentation, e.g., product information or photos, may also be
submittedt6. Upon close of the commenting period, all comments will be posted at www.ahfa.com for review.
Select Date Submitted
Name: Chris Retan
Plan Section
HOME
Organization: Aletheia House
Section
Reference
Add A - Point
Scoring
Email: cretan@specialkindofcaring.org Phone: 205-324-6502
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Specific Comments
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AHFA has consistently encouraged developers to develop
housing in areas with positive neighborhood characteristics
(e.g. grocery store, doctor's office, drug store) by awarding
points and discouraged development in areas that had
negative characteristics (e.g. pig farm, junk yard, airport, etc)
by deducting points. Awarding points to projects located in
census tracts where minorities do not exceed 50% of the
population suggests that living in a majority white census tract
is positive and a majority African-Amercian census tract is
negative. Providing these points is unacceptable and is most
likely a violation of the Fair Housing Act.
Under the proposed scoring system, if two projects have the
same score on all other variables a project located within 0.3
miles of a pig farm or airport in a majority white census tract (
2 point deduction) would score higher than a project in a
majority African-American census tract ( 4 point deduction). A
scoring system that would have this result should be changed.
While we understand this change may have been made in
response to the recent Supreme Court ruling on the disparate
impact of the Texas QAP, we can find nothing in HUD's Final
Rule for Affirmatively Furthering Fair Housing that would
support adding this section to the QAP.
The impact of this race-based scoring section is magnified
when it is added to the points that are proposed for locating
housing in census tracts with higher incomes since the highest
scoring census tracts would be those that are majority white
and incomes above 120% of the AMI ( 7 points) and the
lowest scoring census tracts would be those that are majority
African-American with average family incomes below 80% of
the median family income ( zero points). This combination of
points would create a serious disadvantage for urban cities
AHFA 2016 Draft Low-Income Housing Credit Qualified Allocation and HOME Action Plans
Public Comment Form
Commenting Period October 7, 2015 – November 6, 2015
and counties that have a significant number of census tracts
that are majority African-American and have average incomes
below 80% of the Median Family Income. It would also
disadvantage counties in the Black Belt which tend to have
lower average family incomes and higher percentages of
African-American residents.
HOME
Add A - Point
Scoring
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Proposed solution: Eliminate points for projects in majority
white census tracts.
HUD's Final Rule for Affirmatively Furthering Fair Housing
states jurisdictions should take a "balanced approach" in the
development of their Fair Housing Plan. It outlines three
approaches that can be used to promote fair housing: 1) the
development of housing outside of low-income areas, 2)
improving conditions in high poverty neighborhoods, and 3)
the preservation of affordable housing stock. ( Fed. Register
No. 136, page 42278-9).
This plan does a good job of promoting the development of
housing outside of low-income segregated area by providing
points for the development of housing in higher income
census tracts. It does a good job of promoting the
preservation of existing affordable housing by providing points
for the rehabilitation of existing multi-family housing and for
projects that include re-financedHOME loans. It should
support the third approved approach, "improving conditions
in high poverty neighborhoods," by providing points for
projects located in Qualified Census Tracts.
Solution: For 2016, AHFA should award 3 points for projects in
Qualified Census Tracts,w hich is the same number of points
for projects in a 120% AMI census tract. After the allocations
have been made, AHFA should review the projects that were
funded in each type of census tract and adjust the points, as
needed, to achieve balance in the future.
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AHFA 2016 Draft Low-Income Housing Credit Qualified Allocation and HOME Action Plans
Public Comment Form
Commenting Period October 7, 2015 – November 6, 2015
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