April 11, 2022
After some starts and stops, the New York State Legislature began passing FY 2023 budget bills Thursday evening and finished their work in the early morning hours of Saturday.
A review of the published budget bills finds that Rural and Neighborhood Preservation Programs are essentially flat funded with RPCs set to receive $ 5.460 million from the Mortgage Insurance Fund, an increase of one hundred thousand dollars that would cover increased funding for the Rural Housing Coalition. RHC is set to receive $250,000 in the coming contract cycle. Also funded from MIF is the Rural Rental Assistance Program that will receive $ 21.6 million to continue fully funding the Section 515 RA program.
The Capital Projects budget contains funding for several of NYS Rural Advocate’s priorities. Recognizing increased demand and the impact of recent changes to the program, The Affordable Housing Corporation (AHC) which has long been funded at $26 million will receive a $10 million bump to $36 million in the 2023 budget. The historically oversubscribed RESTORE program which provides emergency home repairs for seniors will also be increased from $1.4 million to $3.4 million. In another important win for Rural Advocates, the Capital Projects Fund will also include $7 million for an updated version of the Small Rental Development Initiative (SRDI).
After extensive lobbying by the entire affordable housing community, funding for the 5-year Affordable Housing Capital Plan remained as the Governor had initially proposed at $4.405 billion. That amount includes $20 million for the Mobile and Manufactured Housing Replacement Program. It is important to note that the MMHRP has still not been formally created in Statue and this is business we hope to address later in the Legislative session. The five year capital plan also includes $400 million for homeownership programs with details of the program remaining to be ironed out.
The newly enacted budget will provide funding to continue support of the Homeownership Protection Program (HOPP) at $35 million, an increase over the $20 million proposed by the Governor. The budget will also provide nearly a billion dollars to support an emergency rental assistance program to be administered by OTDA and intended to provide very low income households that are homeless or at risk of homelessness. The budget will also provide $50 million for a one time program for service and expense of Land Banks.
NEW YORK STATE RURAL ADVOCATES 