SGC Criticized On Scoring for Senior Projects
- William Fulton
- Oct 18, 2016
- 3 min read
The Strategic Growth Council granted $289 million to 25 projects last week in the Affordable Housing and Sustainable Communities program – but not without considerable criticism about how the SGC scored the applications for senior housing projects. SGC funded only two out of 17 full senior housing applications, many of whose scores were apparently affected by the Air Resources Board’s decision to reclassify those applications under the “Retirement Communities” land use subtype rather than the “Apartment” subtype”. According to several unsuccessful applicants, this change caused an increase in estimated vehicle trips and hence a lower estimate in greenhouse gas emissions reduction. “Senior housing is typically a housing source for low-, very-low, and extremely-low income seniors,” Stuart Hartman, vice president for operations at the Retirement Housing Foundation, a nonprofit developer, told the SGC at its meeting in Sacramento on October 11. “It is a radically different type of housing than a retirement community. “It’s like calling a horse a dog and a dog a horse,” Meghan Rose, director of policy for Leading Age California, told the SGC. “They’re just not the same thing.” Several speakers asked SGC to rescore the projects for this round, the SGC declined to so and approved the staff recommendations instead. Most speakers also asked SGC to consider a supplemental round in order to give the senior projects another chance, but SGC Chair Ken Alex downplayed expectations on that idea as well. “It's not obvious to me that it should go back simply to ‘Apartments’,” Alex said. “For that reason I think it's not appropriate to change the proposed allocations this year or to do a new round based on next year’s money until we figure this out in a better way." The two senior projects funded by the SGC were the Kings Canyon project in Fresno, a mixture of affordable and senior housing that received $15 million, and the Sun Valley senior veterans housing project in Los Angeles, which received $11 million. Both were funded through the Integrated Connectivity Program. Among the senior projects that did not receive funding were the Beacon Pointe project in Long Beach by Century Affordable Development, the Valley Vista senior apartments in Jamestown, a senior affordable housing project in South San Francisco, Eden Housing’s senior project in Alameda, and a senior housing project in Crescent City by Danco Communities. Several applicants and advocates also criticized SGC and ARB for a lack of transparency. Although SGC held several workshops on proposed changes to the guidelines, this shift was buried deep in ARB’s “Quantification Methodology” document and not highlighted by SGC staff at the workshops. Deputy Executive Director Allison Joe said the staff would discuss the senior housing issue in detail in developing guidelines for next year’s program. The question of affordable housing has been a difficult one for the SGC ever since the AHSC program was created two years ago. The program is funded by state cap-and-trade pollution permit funds and is designed primarily to reduce greenhouse gas emissions. However, housing advocates have lobbied hard to give priority to affordable housing projects in the scoring, with considerable success. In his remarks about the senior housing issue, Alex referred to the tension between sustainability and affordable housing. “I do want to remind everybody that at the end of the day this remains a cap-and-trade greenhouse gas emission reduction funded program,” he said. “So as important as affordable housing is in this State, and as important as it is that we deal with it, the function of this Council on this topic is to reduce greenhouse gas emissions.” SGC permitted more than 70 proposals to move forward to the final scoring, seeking more than $700 million in state funds. The final SGC decision was to fund 25 projects with $289 million. The Bay Area and Southern California received seven projects each, with the average project receiving between $10 million and $12 million. Originally the SGC had been expected to give away $400 million, but cap-and-trade auction sales have been weaker than expected. SGC meeting materials can be found here. Videotape of SGC meeting can be found here. Prevous CP&DR coverage of these recommendations can be found here. The free online CSS cleaner tool allows you to organize style for websites.