-The National Low Income Housing Coalition defines extremely low income renters as those with incomes at or below the federal poverty line or those earning 30% of their area median income, whichever is greater.

In Nevada, someone earning 30% of the area median income, or AMI, makes about $25,000 a year.

The coalition says Nevada has just 17 affordable and available homes per every 100 extremely low income renters.

That's the fewest number of affordable and available homes per 100 extremely low income renters in the whole country.

South Dakota has the most at 58 homes per 100 renters.

That data is from the coalition's annual gap report which shows Nevada is short nearly 84,000 rental homes for extremely low income renters.

That's up from the almost 80,000 homes needed the year before, but there are efforts to improve those numbers.

Recently Clark County, Ovation Development, and the Bureau of Land Management announced a partnership allowing a land transfer from the BLM to Ovation in order for an affordable apartment complex for seniors to be built on that land near Pebble Road and Eastern Avenue.

In addition to securing the land, the County will provide millions of dollars in funding to offset costs through its Welcome Home initiative.

(Michael Naft) It's been a year to the date that Clark County Commission, my colleagues, allocated $120 million for this problem to really help close the gap between public and private partnerships and really help projects just like this one here at Ovation Ensemble get up and running.

-Ahead, Maria Silva shares the story of a local couple who has benefited from similar affordable housing.

But right now we explore what else it will take to adequately address the housing needs of Nevada's most economically vulnerable.

And for that, we bring in Tim Veenstra, Chief Operation Officer at Nevada HAND; and Lewis Jordan, Executive Director of the Southern Nevada Regional Housing Authority.

Gentlemen, thank you so much for joining us.

-Good morning.

-Thanks for having us.

-Land availability is an issue here in Nevada, with so much of it being controlled by the BLM.

That's one example, but let's talk about what else is out there for making more affordable housing from the nonprofit development perspective.

I'll start with you.

Where would you start to get this problem solved?

(Tim Veenstra) Yeah.

It starts, from our perspective, with construction.

So building more affordable housing is our primary goal in supporting the needs of low income residents from Southern Nevada.

So it's identifying the land, it's getting the zoning, it's getting the building permits, getting the design that meets the community standards, getting the financing together, building the building, and leasing it up.

Affordable housing isn't any sort of magic.

It's not any different than building a single family house or a market rate, luxury high-rise building.

It has all the same steps, and it's due to the support from the federal government or local jurisdictions to help lower the amount of debt that's needed to finance the construction.

So we really work very closely with our partners in the Clark County, City of Las Vegas, Henderson, North Las Vegas, to make the financing more affordable.

And that allows us to keep the rents at a more affordable level, 500- to $1,000 in rent instead of 2,000 and up.

-Lewis, from the government housing perspective, same question: Where do you start?

(Lewis Jordan) One thing I'd like to add to what Tim says is that in bringing down that debt, we have a tool called the Project-Based Section 8.

And we partner with developers to go into long-term contracts to keep affordability down.

So supporting new development, as well as preservation.

You know, if you look at affordable housing or the public housing in our community, as around the country, it's very, very old stock.

And so the federal government has tools that will allow us to put debt on those properties and update them, if you will.

So those are a couple of things.

I think another thing that's really important is we talk about our Section 8 vouchers, the ability to partner with landlords in the community so that it gives tenants an opportunity to have choice where they live.

So it's a holistic approach.

It's not just a "one size fit all"-- -Of where you would start.

-Where we would start, as well as a strong collaboration in partnership with developers, with landlords, with federal and local government.

-Which we will explore, but why isn't this happening now?

Tim?

-Yeah.

I think in Southern Nevada, we just have a lower amount of vouchers and rental assistance here locally than is available nationally.

I think there's a misconception.

Some people think public housing and vouchers, people don't pay rent at all or there's-- it's a free pass.

That's not the way it works at all.

So while what I will call an affordable rental unit, our normal product at Nevada HAND, is anywhere from about 500- to $1,000, if you only have $1,000 in income from Social Security, it's not possible to pay $1,000 in rent, right?

It's not really possible pay $500 in rent.

The voucher comes in and makes that affordable to be $300.

And then the Housing Authority comes in and pays landlords, like Nevada HAND, that difference.

And so because we have so few federally subsidized rental assistance units here in Southern Nevada, that's why we have so many of our extremely low income people paying such a high percent of their income towards rent.

-How many vouchers are available here in Southern Nevada?

-Here in Southern Nevada, we have 12,500.

-Is that Southern Nevada, or Nevada in total?

-That's Southern Nevada.

That's where the region, where the North Las Vegas, Henderson, and in Las Vegas, about 10 years ago came together and formed--in Clark County, obviously--formed the Southern Nevada Regional Housing Agency.

And we were given roughly 12,500 vouchers.

Now, keep in mind, 20 years ago, we had about 400,000 people in the region.

Now we're somewhere in the neighborhood of 2.3 million.

We're working feverishly with HUD to convince them, which is our funding source, that as we've seen this exponential growth, the amount of federal subsidy has not kept up with it.

We recently opened up our Section 8 waitlist.

We got 27,000 applicants in a matter of 30 days.

We'll take 10,000 of those and put them on a waitlist so that we can try and provide housing.

Now, some will say, Well, if you got 27,000, will you have enough vouchers to meet those needs?

The answer is absolutely not.

-What would you say in regards to that aspect?

Why?

Why is the federal government not providing enough?

And how much are they providing other states and areas?

-Yeah.

It goes back to the way vouchers are allocated to the Housing Authorities.

Housing Authorities get an allocation based on how many they used the year before and based on the year before that and the year before that.

And so they really haven't adjusted the formula based on population.

So the other resources available to build affordable housing--the Low Income Housing Tax Credit, the HOME program, the other sources of funds that we use to construct housing--are based on population.

The rental assistance program is based on whatever it was in 1980 and then carried forward today.

And we're clearly a different region, a different state, than we were in the '80s, and we have a bigger population.

And so we need to get our fair share in Nevada, like other states are getting in rental assistance to help with the lowest income.

-Do we have an example?

-Well, as Tim talks about utilization, you know, again, in order to-- One of the factors in asking for more is using what you have.

And that's why it's important that we partner with landlords and make sure that rental units are available.

The Housing Authority is in the midst of kicking off something we're calling the Landlord Partnership Program, where we're going to give landlords cash incentives, new landlords, to bring on or make available units for our Section 8 clients.

And existing landlords, if they will add to their stock, we'll do things like, you know, if a landlord will hold a unit vacant so we can get a Section 8 voucher holder, and we'll do things like that.

But really developing a strong, a stronger business relationship with our landlord community as a means of addressing this problem.

It's a daunting issue.

And I know, for example, the federal budget gave us a little more money this year.

Is it enough?

It's rare that we get what we ask for.

And I say "we," meaning all Housing Authorities.

But the efforts are being shown, but there's two things we have to do: We have to produce more units, and we have to preserve those units we have.

And we need those partnerships and collaborations to support those residents.

-And bring on more units from landlords that are already out there.

-Absolutely.

-As far as development, how do you attract developers to build affordable housing in Nevada?

-Yeah, it's-- It's really about the finances, right?

So it has to make financial sense.

So going out to borrow $100 million to build 400 or 500 units of affordable housing and only be able to charge 700 or $1,000 in rent, it's not going to be financially feasible, because all of that rent is going to go to pay that mortgage, and there won't be any money to pay for the staff.

So it's about building a financing plan that makes sense.

I really appreciate what Lewis was saying before about-- hearing the Housing Authority say, We want to build a business relationship.

You don't usually hear that from a Housing Authority always saying, thinking about business.

The Housing Authority, it's great that they're thinking about, what does it take for a landlord to come into the program.

We have over 10% of our portfolio at Nevada HAND with a voucher on them.

So thinking about what does the landlord need, not just what the tenant needs, but also what the landlord needs, because the Housing Authority is bringing those two pieces together.

From a construction side, it's working with the local jurisdictions, the federal government to come in with that construction capital, and building that overall package.

And the local community, in terms of zoning, how to build in a way that integrates the community and makes the community stronger as a whole-- -And let's let Lewis talk about that real quick, because we are running out of time.

-Okay.

-You talked about bringing together community partners.

How do you do that?

-Well, you know, it has to be a intentional effort.

You know, when we're talking about housing, and let's be clear, it's not just housing.

People need health care, people need jobs, people need education opportunities.

I think that holistic approach allows us to, to look at poverty from the perspective of how do we cut it off and how do we create better for the next generation?

Case in point, I mentioned we had 27,000 applicants.

We ask two questions in addition to housing needs: Would you like a job opportunity here at the Housing Authority, and would you like training?

And we'll use that collaboration with our partners to see how we can create opportunities for those individuals.

-Gentlemen, we have run out of time, but thank you so much for joining us.

-Thank you for having us.

-Thank you.