Public Record Requests Nets 10 Metro Project Based RLRA Contracts with Rent Data for 169 RLRA Units.

Back in May I recommended to the Metro Supportive Services Oversight Committee that they post multi year project based long range rental assistance contracts to increase transparency of RLRA costs. A subsequent Metro staff response was that they would  take the recommendation under advisement but to date posting hasn't happened and the Oversight Committee later deferred RLRA issues to the Tri County Committee. (This committee has a scheduled meeting this Wednesday). 

In September I filed public record requests with the three counties for executed copies of agreements to enter RLRA contracts and the RLRA contracts themselves (if the project had reached that stage). I requested and got fee waivers based on my commitment to post these documents on my website.

I'm pleased to say I now have responses to my request: both Clackamas and Multnomah indicate they have projects with RLRA approvals and Washington county does NOT.  

Note that this does NOT include tenant based RLRA contracts which clearly cover substantially more units that covered by these project based contracts. 

An earlier blog post I did HERE has a summary of total RLRA before I received the details of the project based RLRA.  It showed that there were nearly 1,000 tenant based RLRA in use for which we currently have no cost, location, or demographic information. 

My preliminary count of current project based RLRA units and their contract rents is pasted below. 

It shows:

1. A total of 10 projects with 928 total units. 
2. A total of 169 project based RLRA units these projects, that's 18% of the total of 928 units. At least 40 of those units in Clackamas county/Lake Oswego will not be available until 2024. 
3. 88 units /67% of the remaining Multnomah county project based RLRA units (129) are in SRO or studio units.  
4. Average rents for Multnomah SRO's are $638 and $905 for studios. RLRA SRO contract rents range from $507 to $714 and studio RLRA contract rents had a wide range from $507 to $1,119. 
5. All of the Multnomah SRO and studio RLRA contract rents are BELOW HUD 2023 FMR's of $1,125 and $1,500.
6. In contrast the contract rent for the 3 bedroom 2024 Clackamas county project based RLRA is $2,888, 12% more than the current 3 bedroom HUD FMR of $2,574. Rents for 1-2 bedroom sizes are also above HUD FMR's. 
7. Note that ranges for contract rents should NOT impact the tenant share of rent which remains a constant percentage of their annual income. However, higher contract rents do impact the amount of subsidy for each unit, and therefore the number of households that can be helped with the same amount of funding.  

Most if not all of the contracts provide for a 3% annual contract rent increase. (For projects with fixed low levels of debt service this should result in more than a 3% increase in income available for variable expenses). 

As time permits I will post actual contract documents. 

Originally created and posted on the Oregon Housing Blog.