STOCKTON, Calif. — The city of Stockton is preparing to develop new affordable housing projects and is seeking nonprofits to buy the land.
The city opened a "notice of funding availability" (NOFA) Wednesday for nearly $1.5 million dedicated to the purchase of properties for affordable housing. The money comes from an annual federal Community Development Block Grant.
"It's not a tremendous amount of funding, given the cost of housing, but every little bit helps," said Stockton's director of Economic Development, Carrie Wright. "We do have an annual housing NOFA, which should be coming out in November that has several different sources, but this one is very specific to acquisition and so this is a unique opportunity."
Wright said that the city could couple the land-purchasing NOFA with its annual NOFA for housing projects in general, but that for now, the one that is available to the public is specific to only purchasing land.
In order to apply for the funding, applicants have to be nonprofit housing developers and must send a letter of interest and a proposal to the city's Economic Development Department.
Eligible properties can include vacant lots, single-family homes, motels, hotels, apartments, adult residential facilities, residential care facilities for the elderly, commercial properties or other buildings within city limits and with existing uses that could be converted to permanent or interim housing.
According to Wright, because the grant is considered "rolling," the city could decide to fund just one project or several.
"As (applications) come in, we'll review them and if they fit our criteria, we're going to go ahead and proceed, and if that's using all of the funding, it's using all of the funding," said Wright. "If it's not, then we'll go to the next one that's qualified, and maybe we'll have two projects or three projects."
The total amount of money available for the property purchasing grants can also increase if the city is able to find new sources of funding.
According to San Joaquin County's most recent count of the homeless in 2022, Stockton has the county's highest amount of homeless residents.
According to the count, 893 people are unsheltered in the city, a decrease of 3% from the previous pre-pandemic count in 2019. The county's report recommended that local governments help create new units of affordable housing to help curb the rate of homelessness.
"In the event that the city is able to capture more grant funding that can be used for acquisition, we would add that to the pot," said Wright. "The city is very aggressive about pursuing grant funding and our goal is to really be able to stack multiple funding sources together for nonprofit affordable housing developers. So we're just going to continue trying to pull down those dollars from the state and federal sources."
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