City of Tallahassee Partners with House America
Goal of 2,200 New Affordable Housing Units
May 11, 2022
Today, May 11, Mayor John Dailey announced the City of Tallahassee has proudly joined House America, a federal initiative to increase affordable housing and address homelessness. This partnership furthers the City's collaborative efforts toward ensuring residents have a safe and affordable place to live.
"House America recognizes the vital role local government plays in growing affordable housing stock. Housing is a human right and with forward-thinking policies, we are making it easier and quicker to bring affordable housing units to Tallahassee," Mayor Dailey said.
House America launched as a partnership between the United States Department of Housing and Urban Development (HUD), the United States Interagency Council on Homelessness (USICH) and communities to respond with urgency to address the crisis of affordable housing and homelessness. The City is committed to working with HUD and USICH, as well as its many local partners, to use available resources to increase the stock of affordable housing units for low-income households and to make homelessness rare, brief and nonrecurring in the local community.
Encouraging the construction of affordable housing units is a priority in the City's Strategic Plan. The City Commission took early action to commit $12.5 million of its American Rescue Plan allocation to urgently address affordable housing and homelessness in the community. Additionally, the City has implemented innovative strategies such as the inclusionary housing ordinance, infill construction loans, community land trust, down payment assistance program and policy changes that support the conversion of hotels to affordable units. These initiatives have been successful in helping to increase affordable housing stock. Currently, there are more than 1,900 multifamily units in the pipeline.
"Actions taken by the City Commission have added new units in the pipeline at three times the rate of the previous decade," Mayor Dailey said.
As a House America partner, the City of Tallahassee pledges to grow the affordable housing pipeline to 2,200 units, including 100 units for extremely low-income households, and rapidly rehouse 200 homeless households by December 31.
"Housing is a national crisis. With construction loans and incentives for developers building affordable housing, a fund created to support small-scale landlords and at-risk tenants and continued investment in homelessness prevention, the City is engaged in addressing affordable housing at every level," Department of Housing and Community Resilience Director Dr. Kimball Thomas said.
The City of Tallahassee partners with community agencies to build and preserve the inventory of affordable housing within the community and to provide pathways out of homelessness for vulnerable neighbors. Learn more about the City's tools and strategies to grow affordable housing stock and view the interactive dashboard at Talgov.com/Housing.
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