Wilmington Mayor John Carney’s 2027 budget plan proposed investing $20 million in affordable housing. Some City Council members want more details.
Carney presented his budget address last week. His proposal included $20 million in city funds going to the new Affordable Housing Fund.
The bulk of that allotment – more than $16 million – is allocated “to incentivize the development of affordable housing.”
City Councilmember Christian Willauer said she wants to hear more about what actually entails.
“It's important for council members to be part of the conversation about how to allocate that other $16 million because we want to make sure that it's going to be invested in solutions that are going to make the most impact on housing, to make sure that it's affordable, to make sure that people can be stable and to make sure that we have availability of affordable units,” Willauer explained.
The proposed housing budget also included $500 thousand to the Home Repair Lottery and $500 thousand to the Landbank to redevelop vacant homes.
Mayor Carney’s Deputy Chief of Staff Daniel Walker said Carney’s focus is largely on one-time expenditures like assisting housing development.
“Programs that naturally bring ongoing costs [...] will inflate the city budget, i.e. then charging the taxpayers more dollars,” Walker said. “It's not something we are looking at. As we said in the City Council Committee meeting, there are already existing state programs that do this work, and there's already state money where these ongoing rental assistance programs live.”
There are also local initiatives to establish rental assistance funds. Councilmember Coby Owens presented one such initiative at a Council meeting earlier this month. If passed, Owens’s ordinance would create the city’s Low-Income Rental Assistance Program.
Willauer and Owens are part of a trio on Council pushing their own affordability agenda. Willauer said actions to prevent homelessness like rent assistance and eviction prevention need to be a part of the city’s future, too.
“I would say that we need a set of investments that is based on the complexity of the housing issue,” Willauer said. “And I would hate to see all the money go towards one thing or one most of it go towards one giant investment, because I think that we need to make investments in different parts of the housing system to achieve the most impact.”
Walker said Carney’s administration is in part focused on vacant properties when it comes to addressing the housing supply.
That includes architectural and engineering work to streamline design processes and decrease the time between project conception and installation.
“And then there's the standalone incentive program, which we will be working with private developers from across the spectrum – your smaller developers to your larger developers,” Walker said. “... And it's going to be from home ownership to rental opportunities.”
Willauer added the city’s affordable housing strategy needs to include keeping low-income families in their homes, which includes long term efforts like rental assistance.
City Council’s first budget hearing is April 1 at 4:30 p.m.
