Workforce housing projects coming to Mesquite

By VERNON ROBISON

The Progress

State rural housing money is finally on its way to help bring workforce housing to Mesquite. That was the assurance given by Nevada Rural Housing Authority (NRHA) Executive Director Bill Brewer during a Mesquite City Council Meeting held on Tuesday, July 28.

Brewer said that the NRHA has been working with City officials to develop a large apartment complex in Mesquite which would provide much needed workforce housing to the community.

“We have engaged an engineer to help design the project,” Brewer said. “We have done all of the homework in terms of starting Phase 1 and we are ready to pursue financing at this point. We hope that by this point next year, we will be coming out of the ground with something.”

The reason Brewer had come to the City Council was to request that the City transfer its 2020 allocation of the Private Activity Bond Volume Cap to the NRHA. Mesquite’s unused portion of the Bond Cap totaled more than $1.2 million.

Brewer explained that the Private Activity Bond is distributed by the US Treasury each year to the states based on population.

“Nevada gets about $318 million,” Brewer said. “The state then takes half of that and distributes to local governments like Mesquite, based on population.”

The municipalities can then allocated the funding to specific purposes including manufacturing plants, single family home mortgages, multi-family housing projects and more.

The funds must be allocated by the city before Sept. 1, Brewer explained. Otherwise it reverts back to the state.

“Often the amount of money allocated to local jurisdictions is just too small to be used for anything substantive,” Brewer said. “So NRHA pools those funds together which allows us to create programs which help in the communities.”

Brewer said that the NRHA launched its Home At Last program in 2006 with Private Activity Bond Cap money provided by municipalities.
“Some of it was provided by the City of Mesquite at that time,” he said.

This funds programs like the Mortgage Credit Certificate program (MCC) which allows first-time homebuyers to receive a federal tax credit based on up to 20 percent of the mortgage interest that they pay for the life of their loan, Brewer said.

“We have invested $2.8 million in affordable mortgages here in Mesquite,” Brewer said. “And we look forward to doing more.”

City council member George Rapson clarified with Brewer that the transfer did not obligate the City to anything.

“That is right,” Brewer responded. “It is not taking away from the City at all. If Mesquite had something better to do with its bond cap, we would applaud that and step out of the way.”

In a public comment, Mesquite businessman David Ballweg suggested that the city should retain its Private Activity Bond Cap to be leveraged in order to accomplish projects directly for Mesquite.

“For years and years we just hand this over to the NRHA and they don’t do anything here and haven’t done anything,” Ballweg said. “It is time to, for once, take some risk and manage it on our own.”

But Rapson said that Mesquite was looking forward to some significant projects coming from NRHA in the very near future.
“What we have been asking for is here,” Rapson said. “Just give it a minute, if you don’t mind.”

Rapson recalled, in last year’s similar NRHA presentation, asking why Mesquite had never seen any of this money. That question had been taken into consideration, he said.

“We had a wonderful meeting today and we are finally going to see some absolutely incredible stuff from Bill’s department,” Rapson said. “I’m excited about it and it will be coming quickly.”

Rapson explained that the NRHA is now involved in two different multifamily home phased projects coming to Mesquite, eventually totalling 400 units.
“The investment is to the tune of $52 million,” he said.

“I certainly don’t blame Mr. Ballweg’s concern on this item,” said Mesquite Mayor Al Litman. “It has been a very long time. But finally we are at a point where some of it will come to fruition.”