Florida Article

City Officials and a Developer Have a New Affordable Housing Formula. Will it Fly?

18 November 2019

The Miami Herald goes behind the scenes of a new affordable housing formula.

The CRA’s latest idea: Teaming up with a private developer on a plan to build 252 affordable and workforce high-rise apartments, with a financing twist that officials say could speed up production of so-called income-restricted housing in the area.

The CRA’s administrators are proposing to inject $15 million in direct subsidies into the $75 million project by developer NR Investments, the private partnership that built the new Canvas condo in the neighborhood.

In return, the developer would restrict all of the apartments in a planned tower abutting Canvas to people with low and moderate incomes. What’s unusual is that NR Investments principals Nir Shoshani and Ron Gottessmann bought the lots where they plan to build at market rates, and the developers are not among the handful of firms that specialize in affordable housing, often in deals using publicly owned land. The CRA plan deliberately eschews the complex, time-consuming and increasingly hard-to-get federal tax credits that are key to the business model used by firms focused on affordable housing.