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COVER: Right

Commission Says City Should Up Its Ante With Controversial Housing Project

Published on Friday, January 10, 2014 | 6:04 am
 

[Editor’s Note: This story originally incorrectly identified Jim Wong as a representative of Bridge Housing Corpration. Mr. Wong is, in fact, with the City of Pasadena’s Housing department.]

A city commission recommended Thursday that Pasadena up the ante by $400,000 to help a developer win state tax credits needed to start construction of the controversial $21.2 million Heritage Square affordable senior housing project in northwest Pasadena.

The developer, Bridge Housing Corp., a San Francisco-based development company which focuses on affordable housing, has already failed twice to qualify for $17 million in low-income tax credit allocations from the State of California.

To help improve the odds that the project will win the vital credits with a third application, the Northwest Commission voted in favor of raising the city’s loan to the project to $1 million.

The city’s increased loan amount could then tip the scales to give the project a two-point advantage over the last application it submitted to the state. The commission’s recommendation must be approved by the full City Council to become effective.

“This is your third time, plus the appeal, so I’m hoping you get it right,” Commissioner Sheryl Turner said.

Bridge Housing will be reapplying for a 9 percent tax credit in March of 2014 after being barely beat out by competing projects in the previous two years.

“We believe that [in] this coming funding round we have less competition. This is very critical to the application that BRIDGE will be submitting. For the past several months staff has been monitoring those projects that competed with Heritage Square in the last round,” City of Pasadena Housing Department’s Jim Wong said.

The two highest scoring projects that 70-unit Heritage Square competed with will not be competing this round as they have found other sources of funding, Wong said.

In the past, the project lost by two points. With the new funding formula taking into account the city’s increased loan, the developer hopes to shutout new competition.

The $400,000 city loan is contingent on whether Bridge Housing receives the tax credit. This is the last round the project is able to apply for the tax credit under the current agreement with the city.

“Were trying to do whatever we can within reason to make sure this thing get funded,” City of Pasadena Housing Director William Huang told the Commission.

The three percent interest rate loan draws from the Inclusionary Housing Trust funds, which currently has $3.9 million of unallocated funds.

“It’s a numbers competition. The look at the numbers and compare projects to projects. We have reached out to Sacramento in terms of recommending some changes that favor our project,” Huang said.

Mayor Bill Bogaard also attended to hear the motion and left with a thumbs up on the approval of the increased loan amount.

The approval of the tax credit could occur by May, then the project has six months to break ground from the time of the award. If Heritage Square receives the tax credit, the project should break ground by November of 2014 and will take approximately two years for construction.

“If this is the only condition we can use to get this project done then let’s put our best foot forward,” Commissioner Allen Shay said.

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