August 19, 2004

San Jose Department of Housing reaches goal of 6,000 new affordable homes
Director focuses on increasing affordable housing

Editor’s Note: The following is the sixth article in an ongoing series about the city’s departments and appointed officials. Next week: San Jose’s Department of Environmental Services Director Carl Mosher.

By Sheila Sanchez
Staff Writer

In the city’s outrageously inflated housing market Leslye Corsiglia fights for housing rights and is ever ready to educate the public about affordable housing—the need for decent homes at prices hardworking but low-income earners can actually afford.

Through a variety of funding and tax breaks, the energetic housing director beams with happiness when she speaks about the city’s Housing Investment Strategy, which resulted in the completion of more than 6,000 affordable housing units, including a large number of homes earmarked for extremely low-income families, as well as improvements and rehabilitation of thousands of affordable homes.

During the last five years, San Jose has invested more than $500 million in city and redevelopment funds that will leverage an additional $1.6 billion from state, federal and other sources for the creation of affordable housing.

“It’s probably one of the most active programs in the nation,” says Corsiglia, 44. “There are other cities working hard to increase the availability of affordable housing units, but not many cities are doing it as aggressively as we’re doing it.”

A new goal to build thousands of more affordable housing units in the future is keeping the young director on her toes, who explains that affordable housing construction during the past five years has represented between 25 and 30 percent of all construction in the city. Corsiglia considers it “substantial,” especially with the recession and little market-rate housing being built.

It was a goal not hard for Corsiglia to complete. For years, she’s been championing housing fairness, bravely fighting the NIMBY syndrome and most recently working to educate the public about legislation that is forcing municipalities to comply with a 2002 law that allows for the construction of so called granny or mother in law apartments in larger properties.

“The demand for housing is great and the resources are limited,” laments Corsiglia. “Lack of affordable housing can become a major competitive disadvantage for the valley. If people can’t find a place to live, then the private and public sectors can’t find employees.”

Corsiglia heads one of the city’s smallest departments, with 68 employees, created by the San Jose City Council in 1988 when it decided to focus on housing, particularly affordable housing. The department consolidates a variety of housing programs under one roof and ensures that affordable housing receives priority attention.

As a public-purpose lender, the department provides funding for a variety of affordable housing activities. Aside from administering funding programs, it maintains a housing policy staff and provides homeless assistance and referrals.

The department’s mission is to assist San Jose’s lower- and moderate-income families by increasing, preserving, and improving housing that is affordable and livable, and to the extent possible, ensuring long-term affordability and contributing to neighborhood revitalization.

“I like to call us a public purpose lender,” says Corsiglia. “That we’re like Wells Fargo Bank or Bank of America, except that we work with people who are riskier borrowers with credit problems and whom other lenders may not work with.”

The department runs a variety of housing programs including large developments in which the city provides loans to nonprofit and for-profit developers to build housing for lower-income people. It also runs a variety of rehabilitation programs that provide loans and grants to low-income people in the community for their homes and in more limited situations to rental properties to upgrade them through rehabilitation.

The department also works hard to keep up its mobile home parks trying to help the city’s lowest-income homeowners maintain their properties when they need roof repairs and other rehabilitation projects.

As required by state law, a minimum of 20 percent of the gross tax increment funds received by the San Jose Redevelopment Agency must be deposited into a fund that assists in the preservation and production of affordable housing. Through a cooperation agreement with the agency, the department is responsible for the administration of the funds.

The 20 percent tax increment fund generally grew to $34.1 million during fiscal year 2003-04. Due to the economic slowdown, however, the fund dropped to $29.5 million during fiscal year 2004-05.

In 1990, the San Jose City Council approved the Expanded Housing Program, which allows the city to use its 20 percent tax increment funds to issue bonds to finance affordable housing construction. Doing so allowed the city to build more units sooner than if it relied solely on “pay-as-you-go” tax increment funds. For fiscal year 2003-04, the city borrowed approximately $70 million and plans to borrow more than $100 million in the next several years.

The department also receives between $4 and $8 million annually from a variety of sources, such as loan repayments.

In early 1993, the council approved the establishment of a Housing and Homeless Fund with an initial balance of $1.9 million, to fund nonprofit organizations that seek to improve, increase or preserve the affordable housing stock and assist the homeless. In 2003, the fund was amended to create the Housing Trust Fund. One-time direct services eligible for funding include general homeless assistance to individuals, including motel fees and transportation costs, support to shelter operators for capital expenses, administration of jobs programs for homeless individuals; and assistance to homelessness prevention programs such as default and foreclosure assistance, housing counseling, and rent payments to prevent eviction.

The Housing Trust Fund also assists the housing needs of extremely low-, very low- and moderate-income persons and households and assists agencies that serve their housing needs.

The department also receives funds from the federal Community Development Block Grant (CDBG) funds; Emergency Shelter Grant funds; HOME Investment Partnership funds; and Housing Opportunities for People with AIDS (HOPWA) funds. While the department received $8.6 million in fiscal year 2003-04, proposed program changes and funding reductions at the federal level make future funding unknown.

When eligible, the department actively seeks to obtain other funding. In the past, the department has successfully secured funds from the California Disaster Assistance Program and HUD’s Rental Rehabilitation Program.

One of the department’s biggest programs is its Teacher Homebuyer Program, started in 1999, which has hit its milestone of giving more than 400 educators homes in the city. The department is continuing to assist between 80 and 100 teachers a year with that goal.

Most educators are buying townhouses and condominiums and require four to six sources of funding to buy them, such as mortgage credit certificates, funds from the Santa Clara County Trust Fund and money from other sources to piece together enough money to buy their own property. Eligible teachers can receive up to $40,000 in zero-interest down payment assistance through the department.

The city’s housing goals can only be accomplished through the collaborative commitment of many partners, Corsiglia says.

The department, therefore, works closely with the nonprofit Neighborhood Housing Services of Silicon Valley, a private-public partnership whose major focus is home ownership, providing a homeownership center to give future home buyers full-cycle lending education, training and help with maintenance, payments, default and foreclosure issues.

Corsiglia, a California native, began working in the housing field when she was a junior at the University of California at Davis and worked for a housing lobbying organization that gave her the opportunity to represent students on tenant-landlord issues, counseling them and teaching them to be renters.

During her senior year at UC Davis, she was appointed WHAT for the State Department of Housing and Community Development Department in Sacramento working on housing and bond programs.

In 1982 Corsiglia received her bachelor of arts degree in political science and public service. She admits that she’s always “enjoyed everything that’s related to housing.”

In January of 1991she was appointed as an assistant director of housing helping former San Jose Director of Housing Alex Sanchez. She remembers beginning her career with the city on the same day former San Jose Mayor Susan Hammer began serving as mayor.

When Sanchez became the executive director of the city’s Housing Authority, Corsiglia was appointed as director in 2001. “We worked together as a team and we still work together because we’re partners.”

“It’s been my career. I like all things housing. I’m really committed to helping people. That’s been a passion for me. I like trying to figure out new ways to do things as we’re trying to work through the funding challenges. It’s hard when the resources are limited.

“The programs that we need to apply for are not necessarily right for San Jose. There are a lot of federal programs which are focused on East Coast older lower-cost cities.

But San Jose is a West Coast younger high-cost city and it doesn’t qualify for some of the best federal programs to increase the affordable housing stock.

During her leisure time, Corsiglia enjoys attending soccer games and musical theater arts presentations in which her two children always have important roles.

For more information on San Jose’s Department of Housing, 4 No. 2nd St, Ste. 1350, San Jose, Calif., 95113, contact (408) 277-4747, log onto www.sjhousing.org.