REPORT TO COUNCIL
SUBJECT
Title
Action to Approve a Housing Division Write-Off Policy and Reconcile the City's Neighborhood Conservation & Improvement Program (NCIP) Loan Portfolio
Report
COUNCIL PILLAR
Promote and Enhance Economic, Housing and Transportation Development
BACKGROUND
The City of Santa Clara's NCIP program offers technical and financial assistance to low-income residents for the repair and rehabilitation of owner-occupied single-family homes. The program offers grants for accessibility improvements, emergency situations/urgent repair needs, and low interest deferred loans for more significant projects. NCIP offers affordable interest rates and deferred payments to low-income homeowners that ensure affordability of homeowner rehabilitation.
The NCIP is a partnership between the City of Santa Clara and individual homeowners. The goals of the partnership are to identify rehabilitation needs, select a contractor and design team, and to provide financial and technical assistance in managing the construction process.
Since 1976 the City has assisted more than 1,650 homeowners to rehabilitate their homes, address health and safety issues and ensure compliance with the current Building Code through the NCIP. While budget reconciliation and overall portfolio management processes of the program have occasionally been updated and modified, it has been over 25 years since the NCIP portfolio of old loans have been thoroughly evaluated regarding loan balancing and compliance with current policies and procedures. The addition of specialized staff in recent years has allowed staff to engage and complete this assessment and it was found that there were multiple opportunities to increase efficiency or adopt best practices to provide better risk management and monitoring of the program portfolio. Over a four-year period, these efforts included the review and reconciliation of over 250 program loan files, review of the NCIP Procedure Manual and the creation of...
Click here for full text