The CEQA Working Group reported that the long-planned effort to remake the Edward II Inn into affordable housing has hit a snag due to neighborhood opposition. The project to create “transition age youth housing” for people between the ages of 18 and 24 who are at risk of homelessness has created lots of local foes. The Working Group says that delays created by NIMBY groups seeking to use environmental review procedures to derail the project have resulted in financing problems for the nonprofit groups behind it.
The delays “caused the project to miss two funding deadlines for Low Income Housing Tax Credits, setting the project back a whole annual cycle,” the CEQA Working Group reports. Low Income Housing Tax Credits, used to spur private development of affordable housing in the wake of the federal government’s pullback from funding public housing, are a complex process in which qualified projects receive tax credits, which they pass along to for-profit partners in return for investment in their projects.
