Apartment construction in East Village. The San Diego Housing Commission is offering up to $22 million in loans for new affordable rentals. Photo: XF Law, CC BY-SA 3.0, via Wikimedia Commons.
The San Diego Housing Commission said Nov. 6 that up to $22 million is available this year for loans to build new affordable rental homes in the city, with rents that would have to stay affordable for at least 55 years. In a commission news release, President and CEO Lisa Jones said the awards “will help create affordable rental homes for veterans, retirees, young people starting out on their own, families struggling to make ends meet, and our unhoused neighbors.” The money comes from funds SDHC administers and is offered through its annual Notice of Funding Availability, subject to budget approval.
The homes would be reserved for households earning up to 60 percent of San Diego’s area median income, which the release put at $84,000 a year for a two-person household. Rent is generally treated as affordable at 30 percent of pre-tax income, the commission said, which at current limits would cap rent at about $2,100 a month for that two-person household. Those dollar figures will move when AMI is updated. Since 2018, SDHC has awarded more than $131 million through this process to support more than 3,100 newly built affordable rentals in the city, the release said.
SDHC also administers the city’s Affordable Housing Preservation Fund, which is meant to keep existing affordable units from converting to market rent, and the commission listed creating and preserving affordable housing among the priorities in its current strategic plan. The Nov. 6 announcement is a call for developers to apply, not an award list. How many homes the $22 million will actually support will depend on the projects selected and on what other financing they bring in.
The notice lands in a week when the city is also pointing to new construction already in the ground, including Hillcrest Hall, a 97-home project that received a $3.1 million city gap loan. Those are separate pots of money. For this NOFA, the commission’s own figures are the ones that matter: up to $22 million, 55-year affordability, and a 60 percent AMI cap, announced on the commission’s site on Nov. 6.
By 
