The second round of federal tax credits needed to make housing units at the new Westside development affordable for some of the city’s lowest-income residents were awarded this week.
The credits, paired with bonds also issued by the Tennessee Housing Development Agency, help make the math work to finance new buildings to replace aging public housing at College Hill Courts.
When local officials were applying for a federal Choice Neighborhoods Initiative grant for the Westside in 2024, Housing Development Agency Director Ralph Perrey said he’d pledge eight years of low-income housing tax credits for the project if they received the Housing and Urban Development grant.
“There was a panel of three HUD officials from D.C., and they would smile, but they did not show their hand at all,” said Betsy McCright, executive director of the Chattanooga Housing Authority. When Perrey made that pledge, she said, “One lady finally broke and said, ‘Wow, we don’t hear that very often.’ That was the only thing that gave me a sense of, this is a good interview.”
Read more from our newspartners at the Chattanooga Times Free Press.
