07/28/1982 Meeting - Laserfiche WebLink

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, ~ 1 council, chaired by Henry Langhaim of Equitable Savings & Loan, and its rehabili- - tat ion subcommittee, chaired by Sharon Matson of First Interstate Bank, deserve a lot of credit. They should share in that credit for working with the City staff to develop the leveraging component of these programs and for obtaining the participation of other lenders. He introduced Bob Thomas. Mr. Thomas said goal 1 is the preservation of the city's housing stock. The program expects in the first year to significantly extend the life of 50 homes within the central neighborhood areas. Goal 2 is general neighborhood revitali- zation which is the returning of people's confidence to the inner city neighbor- hoods as good places for permanent residence. Goal 3 is a practical one, keeping the City's rehabilitation program eligible for the expenditure of Community Development Block Grant funds. That goal was obtained by targeting the inner city neighborhoods, which is totally consistent with the economic diversification goal. Goal 4 is leveraging the limited public funds in order to get greater impact from the public dollar. This means 50 instead of 20 houses will be affected. Having lender participation is a very important and healthy part of the program as it relates to community economic growth. The regional industrial multiplier that is developed by the Department of Commerce looks at dollars put into the local economy through the construction industry as being respent or recycled 2.8 times per year. If the 2.8 factor is applied to the $500,000 that is expected to be leveraged into the program, there is a much bigger economic impact: $1.4 million for the next year through the residential rehabilitation program. The other program that HCC has implemented is the commercial rehabilitation program. He introduced jesse Smith. Mr. Smith discussed three features of the commercial loan program. The first - feature is the leveraging ratio and how it works. The City has put aside $700,000 from the early financial settlement dollars. This is expected to leverage approximately $2.8 million from private lending institutions over the course of a two-year period. For everyone dollar that the City invests in the commercial loan program, an additional four dollars will be produced from private lending institutions. The way that ratio works is by offering borrowers two loans~ the first from a private lending institution at market rate and the second from the City at a zero interest rate. Both loans will be repaid and the effect will be to reduce the rate to the borrower by six percentage points. The second feature is the public/private partnership. The City worked with the Lenders' Task Force since January designing the program. It is designed to provide incentives for both borrower and lender. The lender is working with a set of policies and procedures for that institution. It is important to work within the confines of those policies and procedures. There are a number of lending institutions involved, and it is important to have the City's goals and the private loan institutions' policies meshed together. The third feature is meeting in part, the City's goals for downtown redevelopment and the renewal agency's goals and objectives for downtown redevelopment. In particular those are to decrease core area blight and to increase retail activities, and to assist in private development in downtown as it takes place. Henry Langhaim, chairperson of the Lenders' Task Force, said the Lenders' Task Force has had a great opportunity in working with City employees and the HCC Department in getting this program together. The institutions involved have e MINUTES--Eugene City Council July 28, 1982 Page 2