Breakthrough in housing

Wednesday, Feb. 20, 2008 | 2:10 a.m.

Representing a milestone for local and possibly national housing, a building with 105 affordable apartments is scheduled to open in July at Harmon Avenue and Jones Boulevard.

What makes it a milestone is that the building Harmon Pines came about as the result of the Southern Nevada Public Land Management Act, passed by Congress in 1998.

A provision of this law, which was pushed by Nevada’s congressional delegation, authorizes the Interior Department to “make available any federal land in Nevada at less than fair market value for affordable housing purposes.”

The overall act directs that money from federal land sales in Nevada be dedicated solely to public needs in this state. The act was compensation to rapidly growing Nevada for the fact that 87 percent of its land is federally owned, depriving the state of large-scale economic development that would generate more state revenue.

Although the aspect dealing with land sale revenue was straightforward and relatively easy to administer, the affordable housing provision required interpretations and agreements that led to dozens of meetings among several federal agencies and local governments, including Clark County, which took the initiative to get Harmon Pines developed.

It also required numerous new federal regulations that would govern how the provision, and applications made under the provision, would precisely work. Because the provision could become a precedent for building affordable housing from discounted federal land sales in other states, too, this was tedious work.

Now that a nonprofit group Nevada Housing and Neighborhood Development has successfully navigated the complications involved with Harmon Pines, a blueprint of sorts has been established, a blueprint that we hope leads in the near future to less time-consuming affordable housing projects.

The need for affordable housing cannot be overstated among the elderly in the Las Vegas Valley, for example, 30,000 are living on less than $20,000 a year. We hope, now that Harmon Pines is approaching its opening date, that federal and local governments will begin planning for many other affordable housing projects to quickly follow.