Gov. Joe Lombardo was among state and local officials marking opening of an affordable housing complex for seniors Monday. (Photo by Ronda Churchill for The Warren Group)
Amid the pandemic in 2020, Mary Ellen Ballard and her husband Hurbert downsized from their Las Vegas home to live in a camper trailer in order to stay near their children in Oregon during the lockdown.
By the time they returned to Southern Nevada, the 80-year-olds, who live on fixed incomes, found they were priced out of the rental market after rents increased more than 20%.
“About a year and a half later when we got back to Las Vegas, we found that the rents had gone up to the point that an apartment didn’t really fit our budget,” Ballard said.
The Ballards have recently been able to move into a new affordable housing project called Tempo IV, developed by Ovation Development Corp., which celebrated its official grand opening Monday.
The complex, located near Russell Road and Boulder Highway, has 208 new affordable apartments for seniors with nine units available for seniors making less than 50% of area median income and 199 units for seniors making less than 60 percent of AMI.
The National Low Income Housing Coalition (NLIHC) estimates Nevada lacks more than 78,000 affordable homes for extremely low-income households, defined as those with incomes at or below the federal poverty level, which is about $31,000 for a family of four.
Lawmakers on the federal and state levels have sparred in recent months over the best way to address the housing crisis and build more affordable and accessible housing units.
Gov. Joe Lombardo, U.S. Rep. Dina Titus and other local and state officials celebrated the opening of the complex on Monday. All agreed more work needs to be done to address the housing crisis.
The $51 million project used a combination of state and county funding including Clark County Community Housing Funds, Nevada Housing Division’s Growing Affordable Housing Program, tax exempt bonds issued by the Nevada Housing Division, and proceeds from the sale of Federal Low-Income Housing Tax Credits
Lombardo applauded Ovation for “committing a portion of their development pipeline to affordable housing” and said in order to build more affordable units, more developers need “policies, programs and funding sources that encourage the development of more affordable housing projects.”
Lombardo wasn’t available for questions following the event.
His office didn’t respond to email questions about what the state is doing to address financing gaps that arise when developing affordable housing and if there were policies he would and wouldn’t support to create dedicated funding sources.
Under former Gov. Steve Sisolak, the state committed to use $500 million in funding allocated by the American Rescue Plan Act of 2021 to go toward affordable housing projects. The on-time funding source helped alleviate financing gaps developers face to help create and preserve nearly 3,000 units throughout the state.
During his remarks at the project opening on Monday, Lombardo said his administration was committed to generating more affordable housing.
“Ultimately securing new affordable and attainable housing opportunities requires federal, state and private sector cooperation as you can see here today,” he said.
Lombardo’s efforts to address the housing crisis have been aimed at making more federal land available.
He sent several letters to the White House this year criticizing the Biden administration for not doing enough to address the housing crisis and expedite the process to open up land.
Though not referencing the letters directly on Monday, U.S. Rep. Dina Titus said addressing the housing crisis was “not just about getting more BLM land or providing tax credits to developers to build affordable housing.”
She also called for more Housing Choice Vouchers, commonly referred to as Section 8 assistance.
There is still more work to be done to address the housing crisis and the shortage of affordable units. But at least for Hurberts, Mary Ellen said they finally “have a wonderful place to call home.”