The fund's mission is to support quality affordable housing options that meet the needs of Utah's individuals and families. Affordable housing for this program means that a household spends no more than 30% of income on all housing costs (including utilities). The money goes to home builders and buyers via low interest rate loans. The fund is a revolving loan fund.
During the 2015 General Session, the Legislature appropriated for Fiscal Year 2016, $15,528,000 from all sources for Olene Walker Housing Loan Fund. This is a 6.8 percent increase from Fiscal Year 2015 revised estimated amounts from all sources. The total includes $3,242,900 from the General/Education Funds, an increase of 44.6 percent from revised Fiscal Year 2015 estimates.
In addition to statewide compensation and internal service fund cost increases, the following appropriation adjustments were made during the 2015 General Session:
There are five programs that make up the Olene Walker Housing Loan Fund. The list below has these programs and their share of total funding:
- Multifamily (five or more units) loans (50%)
- Rural areas of chronic economic distress (about 20%)
- Community housing development organizations (15% minimum) - A nonprofit, community-based organization that has capacity to develop affordable housing in the community it serves. There are four in Utah.
- Special needs (15%) - housing reserved for individuals who are elderly, mentally, or physically disabled.
- Single family loans
- Transitional Rental Assistanc- help to paindividuals' rent for a temporary period of transition. For most this means up to two years of help, but in some cases may be up to five years.
- Individual Development Account- qualifying low incomes savers can receive state and federal matching funds to use for the costs of buying a home.
The majority of the funds go out as loans, which do not show up in the expenditure detail below. These loans show up as receivables on other financial statements.
COBI contains unaudited data as presented to the Legislature by state agencies at the time of publication. For audited financial data see the State of Utah's Comprehensive Annual Financial Reports.