Arlington Community Foundation Shared Prosperity Initiative:
Final Report on 2020-23 Pilot Test of Private Rent Subsidies to Achieve Affordability at 30% AMI June 2023
This paper describes an Arlington Community Foundation (ACF) pilot rent subsidy program focused on several gaps in household eligibility in Arlington County’s Housing Grant program. This pilot deployed private funding to nonprofit housing owners to temporarily lower rents from the standard “committed affordable” rent, which is targeted to a 50% AMI or 60% AMI household, to a rent level affordable for a 30% AMI household. We are grateful to APAH (Arlington Partnership for Affordable Housing) and AHC, Inc. who collaborated with us to create and implement the pilot. Working together, we were careful to design a straightforward set of program parameters without the complexities that are often part of government rent assistance programs to reduce the administrative burden on the nonprofit partners and the participating residents. Program Design Beginning in 2020, ACF deployed $0.55M in private funding to provide a guaranteed two-year rent subsidy to 36 households living at APAH and AHC committed affordable (CAF) properties who: 1) had incomes at or below 30% AMI at the inception of the pilot, and 2) were paying rent for 50-60% AMI units. Eligible households had to be experiencing a rent burden that was not covered by another program (such as a Housing Choice Voucher or an Arlington Housing Grant). The program was designed to fill several gaps in household eligibility in Arlington County’s Housing Grant program, which is limited to the elderly, disabled, and working adults with minor children. Our goal was to test ideas and broader eligibility that could be adopted by governmental or other funding entities to assist more households who struggle on very low incomes. Specifically, the pilot did not limit participation based on the resident’s immigration status and it was available for single adults with no children. Households were expected to have at least one working adult – defined as typically working at least part time (full time or consistent work was not required for eligibility and there were no minimum work hours required). The ACF funds were provided as a grant to the housing provider rather than to the resident to ensure that households did not receive the funds as income and thus lose eligibility for existing forms of public assistance. The housing providers agreed to lower the rent for the selected households to the equivalent of the 30% AMI rent for their June 2023
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