The Blueprint Intergovernmental Agency is considering adding affordable rental housing to its slate of projects. The agency’s leaders agreed in November to have staff prepare an analysis of how it could be done. That meeting will take place on Thursday.
The proposal comes from the Capital Area Justice Ministry, whose idea is to use Blueprint’s infrastructure funds to buy land and help subsidize the development of affordable rental housing.
The group has been working with local officials to address the lack of options for low-income renters, says member Robert Deyle [DIAL].
“Private sector developers can’t earn enough money to pay their bills if they rent to too many folks with extremely low- and very low-incomes," he said. "We’ve got over 16,000 families in Leon County now who are in that income bracket who are spending more than half their income on rent.”
Blueprint gets its funding from a one-cent sales tax surcharge that was last approved by voters in 2014, and affordable housing wasn’t one of the projects the voters approved at that time.
That means adding the affordable housing project to the Blueprint slate would be considered a “substantive amendment.” So it would take a super-majority vote by both the Tallahassee City Commission and the Leon County Commission to make it happen.
