NEW UNDERWRITING AND SCORING SYSTEM WILL BE EMPLOYED IN HOUSING FUNDING DECISIONS
Nov. 7, 2005 -- Milton Wilson Jr., Director of Housing and Community Development, announced today that a new underwriting and scoring system will be employed in housing funding decisions. All applications for funding for multifamily rental housing will be analyzed under the new process.
"The multifamily review process has not been revised in many years," said the Director. "Input to the new guidelines has been widely sought from a variety of stakeholders, and we believe that more affordable housing will become available to Houstonians, sooner, as a result of the new process."
The new guidelines, which will be posted soon on the Department web site, will provide for prompt, fair, and thorough project review. Projects will be evaluated against clear and standardized criteria and scored competitively. The department's goal is to ask applicants to begin submitting multi-family proposals on December 1, 2005. Conditional Commitments for funding will be issued within 90 days of an Application Closing Date. The first Closing Date will be February 1, 2006.
Projects will be first evaluated for basic feasibility and compliance with the City's Consolidated Plan - a "Threshold Review". Projects that do not pass threshold review will be returned promptly with an explanation of how they fell short. These projects may be improved and resubmitted in six months during the next competitive application round.
Projects passing threshold review will be evaluated by the HCD Project Review Team and scored against criteria to be posted by Dec 1 on the website. Criteria include project and area amenities; development team experience; property management experience; and other items to be posted by Dec. 1.
HCD will provide opportunities for potential applicants to attend workshops explaining the new guidelines, criteria, and process. Workshops will be held in early December and early January. Dates will be announced.
