Las Vegas
Review Journal
Spiraling Home Costs a Concern
to LV Mayor
By Bubble Smith
Thursday, October 23, 2003
While the housing industry has boomed here,
the median price of a home is $187,000, well out of reach for
a service-oriented work force making $7 or $8 an hour, local
housing experts said Wednesday.
Las Vegas continues to be one of the nation's fastest-growing
cities with monthly net population gains of about 6,000, but
many of those people toil in low-paying hotel and casino jobs.
"We have some serious work to do on the social
ramifications of this," Las Vegas Mayor Oscar Goodman said
in leading a roundtable discussion at City Hall on affordable
housing.
Rising land prices and lack of new home supply
have created a problem with housing affordability, and dealing
with that problem will be a key issue if Las Vegas is to maintain
its economic vitality.
The mayor met with about 50 business leaders from
home mortgage companies, banks and nonprofit organizations to
address those issues and identify services and resources available
to eligible households.
The meeting launched a new homeownership initiative
through the nonprofit Nehemiah Corp. of California, a privately
funded provider of down-payment assistance.
The Nehemiah Community Reinvestment Fund is a nonprofit
community development loan fund capitalized at $5.5 million,
Nehemiah President and Chief Executive Officer Scott Syphax said.
It provides loans ranging from $10,000 to $750,000
with terms of five years to finance all phases of affordable
and work-force housing development, from feasibility studies
and land purchase to construction and short-term permanent financing.
Over the next three years, the Nehemiah reinvestment
fund is projected to loan nearly $13 million for community development
projects nationwide worth $40 million.
Syphax learned from the discussion that housing
services are available in Las Vegas, but the city needs a centralized
directory to make those services known.
"Las Vegas is actually ahead of the curve
in having a warm environment between the nonprofit sector and
for-profit sector and between those sectors and the government.
There's not a polarization that sometimes exists in other cities," he
said.
"Second, I think it's clear that work-force
housing is an issue that continues to challenge the community."
The Nehemiah program has provided 4,122 grants
in Las Vegas totaling $14.1 million over the last three years,
Syphax said.
The average grant, used for down payments on homes
by qualifying families, was $3,427 and the average sales price
was $109,923. Average family income was $50,694.
Elizabeth Fretwell, deputy city manager for Las
Vegas, said $93 million in private activity bond volume has been
made available through the state for low-interest rates on single-family
houses.
She said 464 affordable housing units are under
construction in Las Vegas and another 1,172 are in the planning
and development process.
"The three pillars of building a community
are housing, education and economic development," said Hazaiah
Williams of Nehemiah.
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