A funding consortium that Burlington has formed to promote affordable housing is now open for business – albeit without any of the federal funds that were the very raison d’être for this multijurisdictional initiative.
Michael Blair, a consultant with the Piedmont Triad Council of Governments, acknowledged this ironic turn of events when he briefed Burlington’s city council on the consortium’s inaugural activities on Monday.
Blair, whose organization manages Burlington’s community development program, conceded that, in the future, he expects something on the order of $2.2 million a year to flow through the consortium, which Burlington has launched to succeed a now-defunct Greensboro-based operation. Blair added that these funds will ultimately be used to bankroll workforce housing and home renovations within Alamance, Caswell, Davidson, Randolph, and Rockingham counties.
For the time being, however, Blair admitted that the new consortium is more of a paper venture than an actual vector for federal funds. He added that this fact became clear five months ago when the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Affairs signed off on the consortium’s creation.
“We were notified in late November that the consortium had been approved,” he recalled during a city council work session on Monday, “but that the first year, which is the year we’re currently in, would be an ‘unfunded’ planning year.”
Blair said that the consortium’s coffers are expected to remain empty until the federal government kicks off the next financial cycle in the fall of 2025. In meantime, the consultant said that the consortium has moved forward with various organizational matters, including its inaugural meeting, which took place on April 10 despite the lack of appointed representatives from either Burlington or Alamance County.
Last month, Alamance County’s commissioners declined to appoint two delegates to the consortium due to their admitted lack of familiarity with this Burlington-based venture. Meanwhile, the city took no action on its own two-seat allotment until Tuesday, when the city council agreed to tap Patrick Mills and Teresa Wiley for these positions.
As the consortium continues to go through the motions of its so-called “planning year,” Blair said that he and his colleagues haven’t lost hope in the belated distribution of the funds that were once earmarked for the financial cycle that began in 2024.
“We’re moving ahead as if we’ve received the funding,” he went on to inform the city’s elected leaders, “and we’re trying to lobby HUD for what we would’ve received in 2024. So, if that’s approved – bam – we’re up and running.”
