Agenda - Council Work Session - 02/08/2016

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Housing and Economic Development • The Council should recognize market factors such as downward economic cycles when setting timelines and look backs in calculating recent affordable housing production. 3-G State Role in Housing The state must be an active participant in providing funding for housing needs, including direct funding, financial incentives and initiatives to assist local governments and developers to support affordable housing as well as housing that is appropriate for people at all stages of life. State funding is a major, necessary component for the provision of housing needs and current resource levels are insufficient to meet the spectrum of housing needs in the metropolitan region and across the state. Primarily through the programs of the Minnesota Housing Finance Agency (MHFA) and the Department of Employee and Economic Development (DEED), the state establishes general direction and prioritization of housing issues. The state financially supports a variety of housing types including transitional housing, supportive housing, senior housing, workforce housing and family housing. The state must continue to be an active partner in addressing life cycle and affordable housing issues. Workforce housing is generally defined as housing which supports economic development and job growth and is affordable to the local workforce. Governor Dayton dedicated $10 million in one-time funds to MHFA in the 2013 legislative session to fund the Housing and Job Growth Initiative, to aid housing in support of job growth within a community or region by meeting locally identified housing needs. Metro Cities supports: • Increased state and federal funding for programs that support life cycle, workforce and affordable housing, foreclosure mitigation and senior, transitional and emergency housing. The state should consider establishing a non-competitive program to create a pipeline to match city -subsidized affordable housing projects; • Housing programs that assist housing development, preservation and maintenance of existing housing stock throughout the low -to -moderate income range; • Housing programs designed to develop market rate housing in census blocks with emerging or high concentrations of poverty, where the private market might not otherwise invest as a means of reconciling affordable housing with community development goals; • Continuing the policy of using the Minnesota Housing Finance Agency's investment earnings for housing programs; 24 2016 Legislative Policies