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For immediate release: Tuesday January 24, 2023
Contact: Charlene Heydinger, president, Texas PACE Authority, charlene@texaspaceauthority.org; 512-633-5169
AUSTIN, Texas – The U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development (HUD) has formally approved the Texas PACE Authority’s request to offer its energy- and water-saving financing tool for HUD and Federal Housing Administration (FHA) multifamily properties in Texas.
The approval, received last month after a multi-year review process, comes at a key juncture as Texas confronts an enormous gap in affordable housing and rising interest rates that are making new development projects more expensive.
“This authorization is a huge win for low-income populations in Texas that are desperate for affordable and sustainable housing in rural and urban areas alike,” said Charlene Heydinger, president of the Texas PACE Authority. “Adding the PACE financing tool will dramatically increase the number of multi-family projects built with energy- and water-saving features, which will lower tenant utility bills while also achieving environmental benefits, including water conservation.”
HUD’s approval was issued on Dec. 23 after carefully reviewing the Texas PACE Authority’s eligibility criteria, standardized contracts, and underwriting standards.
Approved by the state legislature in 2015, and established by 83 local governments, the Texas PACE Authority’s programs enable building owners to lower their operating costs and use the savings to pay for eligible water conservation, energy efficiency, resiliency, and distributed generation projects. Owners gain access to private, affordable, long-term (typically 10-20 years) financing that is not available through traditional funding avenues.
Since 2013, the Texas PACE Authority helped mobilize more than $362 million of PACE financing for energy and water efficiency projects across Texas. More than a third of that amount, over $125 million, was used for multifamily properties. Many of these projects also received historic tax credits and other incentives.
With additional energy efficiency tax deductions offered under the Inflation Reduction Act and other federal incentives also on the table, Heydinger said the addition of PACE for HUD and FHA multifamily properties “will be a much-needed game changer for scaling efficiency efforts in affordable housing in Texas.”
Up For Growth, a national network committed to providing more affordable housing across the country, estimates that Texas is short 322,000 housing units to meet existing demand. According to estimates from the National Low Income Housing Coalition, for every 100 extremely low-income households in Texas, there are 29 available rental units.
GoBankingRates.com identified eight Texas cities – Laredo, Houston, Killeen, El Paso, Corpus Christi, Brownsville, Amarillo and Waco — that could be poised for a housing crisis. “All of these cities have established PACE programs administered by Texas PACE Authority that can now use PACE to facilitate increased HUD and FHA multifamily investments to address their housing shortages,” Heydinger said.
A webinar explaining how TX-PACE financing can be used for HUD and FHA multi-family housing will be held at 2 pm CT on Feb. 16. Speakers include Bob Iber, senior advisor of HUD’s Multi-Family Housing Programs; Robert Dye, developer and former mayor of the City of Farmers Branch; and Texas PACE Authority’s Charlene Heydinger. Registration info is here.
About Texas PACE Authority
Texas PACE Authority (TPA) is a 501(c)(3) organization formed in 2015 to administer city and county property assessed clean energy (PACE) programs as a public service while also ensuring quality control and providing education and outreach. To date, TPA has facilitated $362.3 million in energy and water saving PACE investment in Texas commercial (including nonprofits), industrial, and multifamily properties across Texas. Projects range in size from $70,000 to $40 million.
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