Housing advocates anticipate end of COVID, funding plan reset
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Housing advocates anticipate end of COVID, funding plan reset

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New York State Homes and Community Renewal Commissioner RuthAnne Visnauskas speaks during a groundbreaking of Intrada Saratoga Springs on Wednesday, Aug. 15, 2018 in Saratoga Springs, N.Y. Intrada Saratoga Springs is a $34 million development that will create 157 affordable homes. (Lori Van Buren/Times Union)
New York State Homes and Community Renewal Commissioner RuthAnne Visnauskas speaks during a groundbreaking of Intrada Saratoga Springs on Wednesday, Aug. 15, 2018 in Saratoga Springs, N.Y. Intrada Saratoga Springs is a $34 million development that will create 157 affordable homes. (Lori Van Buren/Times Union)Lori Van Buren

ALBANY - The road to the creation of new affordable housing is long. At least a year — if not three years — of lead time stretch between a proposal and occupancy. It is a complicated blend of private investment, public funding, regulatory requirements and local government approvals. 

The application process for state funding, therefore, should be predictable for housing developers, said Ruthanne Visnauskas, commissioner of the state Office of Housing and Community Renewal. But how affordable housing dollars are distributed may change as lawmakers move toward a new state housing plan next year. The plan will replace in the current five-year, $20 billion state housing plan in April, 2022. 

The state's next housing plan was a focus of the annual Upstate Affordable Housing Conference Wednesday, held at the Albany Capital Center by the state Association for Affordable Housing. About 400 people attended the event - the association's first in-person gathering since the pandemic. The crowd was a mix of government employees, representatives from financial institutions and developers.

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Visnauskas told the attendees that she is looking to strike a balance between stability and new initiatives to address issues that weren't discussed in 2017 — sustainable construction, heating and cooling practices and broadband access, for example, as well as the ongoing impact of the pandemic.  

Visnauskas said she is optimistic about the massive influx of federal money in the form of infrastructure assistance that is expected to come into New York state. The pandemic both exacerbated and brought to light the shortage of affordable housing. Downstate, rent prices continue to outpace incomes and upstate, there is a general lack of options. 

Also Wednesday, Gov. Kathy Hochul issued a letter to Sec. Janet Yellen of the  Department of the Treasury asking for more money in the state's Emergency Rental Assistance Program (ERAP). After a slow start, the state has processed more than 205,000 applications from tenants who are behind on rent. The state has "obligated and/or paid more than $1.6 billion and actually paid more than $517.5 million to assist renters in more than 40,000 households. Hochul said the state will have spent all the money allocated by early October. 

Lt. Gov. Brian Benjamin, whose background prior to starting his career in politics was in affordable housing, addressed the criticism of ERAP. The program has been faulted for being difficult to access, and landlords cannot apply without their tenants' cooperation and tax return documents.

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"Rent relief is a moving target and we can't know the need until we get through COVID," Benjamin said. "We need to all be ambassadors for the vaccine. If we don't get to the other side, we will keep running up the bill." 

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Leigh Hornbeck is the editor of Spaces, the Times Union’s weekly real estate section and has a weekly real estate newsletter. She is also the senior writer for Women@Work magazine. Leigh came to the Times Union in 2002 after working at Boston-area newspapers. She covered Saratoga County exclusively for nearly 10 years before moving into the paper’s features department in 2012. She was raised in the Adirondacks and graduated from St. Michael’s College in Vermont. Contact her at 518-454-5352 or lhornbeck@timesunion.com.