AZ and WA news from the CARH meeting

AHF's Donna Kimura has the following for us from state officials attending the San Francisco meeting of the Council for Affordable and Rural Housing:

Approximately 5,000 hurricane victims have made their way to Arizona, according to Sheila Harris, director of the Arizona Department of Housing and executive director of the Arizona Housing Finance Authority. She says the evacuees may be staying because they have found wages are good in the state and the cost of living may not be much more than in the Gulf States.

Harris reports that overall, Arizona has become a more healthy market for both market-rate and low-income housing tax credit apartments.

She noted that her department has a director’s discretionary fund to help supplement projects. Developers who were awarded tax credits but find their projects coming up short on financing can come back and request additional credits. This fund is particularly important as construction material prices and other costs have increased.

Arizona, she said, is aggressive in trying to fund rural developments. Harris estimated that about half of the tax credit projects funded in 2005 were rural deals.

Valeri Pate, manager of the tax credit division at the Washington State Housing Finance Commission, said the deadline for tax credit applications in her state was Jan. 19. Washington officials are also trying to help rural projects, she said, and they made changes to assist these deals in the tax credit competition this year.