MISSOULA — With budgeting underway, storm recovery to fund and a likely tax increase coming, the Missoula City Council on Monday night voted against a request to add more money to the Affordable Housing Trust Fund.
Council member Daniel Carlino's referral sought to increase the trust fund's minimum annual contribution from the general fund from $100,000 to $200,000.
But a majority of City Council said this was a bad year to seek a funding increase.
“I'm very concerned about constraining our general fund because we use the general fund on items for which we have no other funding sources,” said council member Gwen Jones. “We do have other funding sources for (the trust fund). And as we go into a very difficult budget session, we have some unfunded things we need to look at closely.”
The City Council established the Affordable Housing Trust Fund in 2020 as part of its housing strategy. In doing so, it recommended an annual contribution of $100,000, though funding levels very each year based on the annual municipal budget.
The fund is also padded by other actions, including the sale of city-owned land, federal housing funds, and infrastructure funding.
The Missoula Redevelopment Agency also directs $1 million annually into affordable housing and it recently established a workforce housing program. Under that effort, any project that receives tax increment but doesn't include an element of affordable housing must pay 10% of its tax increment award to the housing trust fund.
“We have budget season going on. We have to have that discussion first before we talk about any increase in funding,” said council member Bob Campbell. “We still have the pending sale of properties. There may be an opportunity there to raise that $100,000 minimum.”
According to MRA, roughly $18 million in tax increment has been committed recently to build 546 housing units, many of them income-restricted.
The city is also looking to sell a number of city-owned properties including 9 acres on Scott Street, the Sleepy Inn, the Riverfront Triangle and the old library block, among others.
But Carlino said that while those efforts are fine, the city is willing to spend money on other issues including policing and moving homeless campers off public property.
In the latter case, he said the city doesn't “seem to be concerned about how much that costs.”
“When it comes to funding more money on affordable housing, there seems to be a lot of concern on how we'll fund it,” Carlino said. “We have a lot of projects we have requests for funding for. We as council have the authority to help fund more of those projects.”
All members of council have praised the trust fund for its ability to achieve certain goals, but most agree that the larger tools available to the city have more power to move the dial and get more affordable housing on the ground.
They also expressed concern over this year's budget. City officials have already said it will likely push the city up against the tax cap established by the state.
“I realize the trust fund is an incredible tool we have at our disposal. We try whenever possible to drive funds to that,” said council member Stacie Anderson. “But we also understand that each year looks a little different on budgets. The more year over year we allocate general funds to various things, we end up with less and less flexibility.”
