County Council Approves Nearly $20 Million for New Nonprofit Housing Preservation Fund

Patrick Herron April 3, 2024 at 11:58am

The Office of Montgomery County Council President Andrew Friedson issued the following news release on Wednesday, April 3:

The Montgomery County Council voted Tuesday to approve nearly $20 million to begin funding the new Nonprofit Preservation Fund, introduced by Council President Andrew Friedson, which will provide capital lending to nonprofit housing developers to preserve existing affordable housing. It is expected that more than 4,500 affordable units will be preserved, once the Nonprofit Housing Preservation Fund reaches $50 million. Montgomery County’s initial investment of $20 million will help preserve more than 1,800 units of affordable housing over the next year.

“This historic level of new dedicated funding to preserve naturally occurring affordable housing reflects our meaningful and unyielding commitment to providing accessibly priced housing options for our residents, said Council President Friedson, who serves as the chair of the Planning, Housing and Parks (PHP) Committee. “As the largest investment of its kind across our region, this is yet another tool in our toolkit to combat the housing crisis. This approach is modeled after the extremely successful, nationally recognized Housing Production Fund, which has been replicated in jurisdictions across the nation.

“This approach has been years in the making and is the second piece of two revolving housing funds to accelerate the preservation and production of affordable housing–the $100 million investment to help the Housing Opportunities Commission supercharge their ability to execute projects in their pipeline and this revolving loan fund to support nonprofit affordable housing partners. Working in partnership with our nonprofit organizations, once the program is fully funded at the $50 million level, we could preserve roughly half of the at-risk naturally occurring affordable units in Montgomery County.”

According to the 2020 Planning Department Preservation Study, Montgomery County is at risk of losing 7,000 to 11,000 unrestricted, naturally occurring affordable housing units by 2030. The PHP Committee began exploring the creation of an affordable housing preservation revolving fund in 2022, and after years of work with public and private partners, PHP Chair Friedson proposed the establishment of a $50 million Nonprofit Preservation Fund in 2023.

The Nonprofit Preservation Fund is modeled after the Housing Production Fund, a $100 million revolving loan facility administered by the Housing Opportunities Commission. Funds are expected to revolve based on refinancing or redevelopment financing. The nearly $20 million is the first tranche of funding toward the new Nonprofit Preservation Fund which is expected to reach its $50 million funding goal by the start of next fiscal year on July 1.

The Nonprofit Preservation Fund will support efforts by the County’s nonprofit development partners to preserve these at-risk properties and will provide much needed additional capital to preserve and create affordable housing units.

View the full staff report.