Santa Cruz gets $5 million from state to aid home-building efforts for lower-income people

The city of Santa Cruz will receive $5 million over the next five years to help fund several key affordable-housing developments, the city announced Monday afternoon in a news release.

The $5 million grant will come from the Local Housing Trust Fund administered by the California Department of Housing and Community Development. The city competed against 33 others in California for a piece of the $57 million pie, according to the news release.

Santa Cruz came in third place, along with five other municipalities, in terms of overall funding, and 17 total cities were awarded funding.

The funds will be used to subsidize at least three mixed-use development projects that have won city approval but have yet to break ground: Pacific Station North, Pacific Station South and the downtown library project.

“A typical affordable housing project relies on a complex web of funding sources. With three city-led projects representing more than 200 units of affordable housing in the pipeline, this new funding source is coming at just the right time,” Housing & Community Development Division Manager Jessica de Wit said in a news release.

Funding for affordable housing development is an oft-cited problem among developers and local government officials as there has been a decline in such pools of available money since redevelopment agencies were dissolved statewide in 2012, according to Bonnie Lipscomb, the city’s Economic Development Director.

“This is an incredible win for the City of Santa Cruz,” she said, according to the news release.