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Housing Alliance Legislative Update Now Available. Excerpt below. Click HERE for full text.

Goal:  Balancing the Housing market; Increasing choices for lower income households. We believe that if you work hard and play by the rules, you should be able to afford a decent place for your family to live. We envision communities where people from all walks of life can live comfortably; communities with market rate and low cost homeownership, market rate and low cost rental homes, and supportive housing for those who need services. With adequate support, we can improve the quality of life for all Pennsylvanians.

1. Closing the Affordability Gap

Issue:  On any given day, 14,500 Pennsylvanians are known to be homeless. More than 90,000 qualified families statewide are on housing authority waiting lists for homes they can afford.  50.6% of Pennsylvanians who rent pay more than 30% of their income for housing leaving few dollars left to cover other family needs.  There is a shortage of 220,000 rental homes that are both available and affordable to extremely low income renters. As much as the private sector would like to address the shortage, they cannot do it alone. It simply costs more to build a modest home than a low wage worker or person on fixed income can afford.

Solution: Fund the State Housing Trust Fund

In 2011, a new state housing trust fund, the PA Housing Affordability and Rehabilitation Enhancement (PHARE) Fund was created. PHARE exists as a line item at the Department of Revenue and is ready to be administered by the PA Housing Finance Agency (PHFA). Unfortunately, there is no money in the account. It is an empty piggy bank. In order to achieve our goal of increasing the availability of affordable homes, we must fund the PHARE Fund.

An opportunity to fund PHARE has arisen out of the crisis in the Northern Tier rental market. With the influx of Marcellus Shale gas drillers, many of whom are from out of state, rental prices have skyrocketed. Displacement and homelessness have resulted. Recognizing the problem, the House and Senate agreed to housing language in the final impact fee bill (HB 1950 (Ellis, R-Butler). (The Senate bill which originally proposed the language was SB 1100 (Scarnati, R-Cameron, Clearfield, Elk, Jefferson, McKean, Potter, Tioga, Warren)).

HB 1950 lists affordable housing as one of 12 allowable uses of the local share of the impact fees. More significantly, the bill directs $5 million a year into the PHARE Fund, which would provide PHFA with the guaranteed revenue it would need to finance a bond. With $5 million a year, PHFA could finance approximately $70 million for the Shale region’s immediate use. It also limits the amount of fees each municipality may receive. If the distribution formula leads to an amount higher than the cap, the overage would go into the PHARE Fund.

HB 1950 is a county optional bill, so it will be up to county commissioners to impose the fee. If the commissioners decline to vote for a fee within 60 days, 50% of the municipalities or municipalities with 50% of the population may act to impose the fee on wells in the county.

Status: HB 1950 has been signed by the Governor and is now Act 13 of 2011.