Both the Rental Housing Support Bill and the extension of the state’s successful Affordable Housing Tax Credit Program passed out of the General Assembly. By signing these two key pieces of legislation, the governor can realize core objectives of his Comprehensive Housing Plan.
Gov. Rod Blagojevich has shown tremendous leadership on
housing issues, embodied most recently with “Building for Success: Illinois’ Comprehensive Housing Plan
." The
Illinois General Assembly has now delivered to the governor two pieces of
legislation – the Rental Housing Support Program and the extension of the
Housing Tax Credit -- that will advance the priorities outlined in his housing
plan.
Click
here to see MPC’s letter urging the governor to sign these
bills.
Click here to download a more general, sample letter.
Both Senate Bill 75, creating the Rental Housing Support Program, and House
Bill 603, extending the Housing Tax Credit program, passed out of the Illinois
General Assembly with bipartisan support.
Addressing the governor’s commitment to improve housing
options available to people earning less than 30 percent of Area Median Income,
it is estimated that the Rental Housing Support Program will provide $30 million
annually in rental subsidies to 5,500 of the state’s most vulnerable households.
The rent subsidies will make housing affordable for people earning, on average,
less that $19,000 per year, many of who are at great risk of becoming homeless.
Numerous studies, including MPC’s own Regional Rental Market Analysis
, have documented the
profound mismatch between the supply and demand for housing for households at
this income level. To pay for this precious resource, the legislation
increases the fee for filing real estate documents by $10. One dollar of
each fee will go to county government budgets and to county Recorders of Deeds
to pay for any administrative costs related to the collecting the fee. The other
nine dollars will be administered by the Illinois Housing Development Authority,
and available to eligible applicants statewide.
The Illinois Housing Tax Credit, created in 2002 as a
five-year initiative to provide tax relief to corporations investing in
affordable housing, addresses the governor’s commitment to innovative
partnerships that leverage public and private sector dollars. A set-aside
for those investing in employer-assisted housing has also been a key component of
this legislation. Analyzing the success of this program , key stakeholders began
working with legislators to advance the renewal of this bill prior to the
conclusion of the pilot -- -thus ensuring that developers and employers creating
housing plans now could budget
an affordable housing investment that will yield the tax credit in the years
ahead. To see MPC’s letter of support for this strategy, click here
.
There is no panacea for bridging the widening
affordability gap between supply and demand in Illinois’ housing market.
But the governor’s comprehensive housing plan outlines a number of essential
strategies. These two pieces of legislation, both central
to MPC's own Policy Agenda
, are among them.