The Las Cruces City Council unanimously adopted a Resolution approving a pilot program for an affordable homeownership revolving loan fund that will facilitate the development of affordable single-family housing in the city.
The Council approved the pilot program at its Monday, March 6, 2023, regular meeting in Council Chambers at City Hall, 700 N. Main St. The Revolving Loan Fund Pilot Program will offer a solution to expand the availability of affordable housing in Las Cruces.
A lack of affordable housing in Las Cruces has disproportionately impacted low- and moderate-income households.
The Revolving Fund will be initially supported at $500,000 from the Affordable Housing Trust Fund the City created in 2010. The Affordable Housing Trust Fund is a dedicated and restricted source of funding used to finance affordable housing projects through grants and loans.
The Revolving Fund is intended to incentivize developers to create modestly sized and priced homes that appeal to first-time homebuyers or other homebuyers who earn as much as 120 percent of Area Median Income.
The goal of the City’s funding is to help lower the costs for eligible developers constructing homes in a single-family housing development by providing low-interest construction loans to reimburse developers for land acquisition costs, on-site infrastructure costs, and construction costs.
City Council also unanimously adopted a Resolution, during Monday’s meeting, that updates the guidelines used for naming, or renaming, city streets, and property addressing. The previous policies and guidelines utilized by the City were adopted with Resolutions approved by the Council in 1980.
The new policy document adds a purpose statement; updates graphics; provides clarification of addressing, general roadway, new roadway, and roadway renaming criteria and conventions; and updates the processes for assigning property addresses and naming roadways.
The new guidelines also will include criteria to prevent inappropriate future street names and creates a process and criteria to eliminate derogatory, discriminatory, racist, or vulgar names for existing city streets.