Section 50600 Of Chapter 5. Preservation Interim Loan Programs From California Health And Safety Code >> Division 31. >> Part 2. >> Chapter 5.
50600
. The Legislature finds and declares all of the following:
(a) The federal Housing and Urban Development Department
subsidizes over 147,000 units of California's affordable rental
housing. As the owners' obligations expire, more than 19,000 of these
units have already been converted to market-rate housing, and an
additional 78,000 units are considered at risk of imminent
conversion. In addition, more than 7,600 units financed with state
and federal low-income housing tax credits will face some risk of
conversion as the first generation of tax credit developments reach
the expiration of their income and rent restrictions over the next
five years. These at-risk units will likely convert to market-rate
housing unless they are acquired by organizations that commit to
maintaining their affordable rents.
(b) The loss of these assisted units represents not only a loss of
precious affordable housing stock and hardship and potential
dislocation for tenants, 40 percent of whom are seniors, but also the
loss of billions of dollars of federal housing assistance to
California each year.
(c) This looming loss of affordable rental housing is exacerbated
by California's failure to produce more than 50 percent of the new
housing units needed to house the state's population for each of the
last eight years. The shortage is most strongly felt in the areas of
low-cost housing for working families, people moving from welfare to
work, and seniors and disabled people.
(d) Affordable housing organizations that wish to purchase
properties at risk of converting to market rate housing often do not
have access to the short-term capital needed to purchase the
properties quickly. This lack of short-term capital greatly reduces
the likelihood that these properties will remain affordable.
(e) The intent of this chapter is to create a short-term capital
loan program to ensure that California's supply of affordable housing
is not depleted by the conversion of existing government-assisted
rental housing to market-rate housing.