Department of Community Affairs requests $2.77 million to cover administrative cost increases for housing programs

Pat Wilson, a representative of the Georgia Department of Community Affairs, told the Senate appropriations subcommittee that the agency is seeking $2,773,459 the governor recommended and the House supported to help cover administrative cost increases tied to federal block-grant programs.

"We're not getting more or less," Pat Wilson said of federal block grants, adding that administrative allocations are capped (for example, community development block grants limit administrative allocations to about 3 percent) and that recent state salary increases have left agencies absorbing higher costs. She said the requested funds would help the Georgia Housing Finance Authority’s Georgia Dream down-payment assistance program, which supported 3,035 households last year.

The nut of the request, Wilson said, is that agencies receiving large federal block grants cannot seek additional federal administrative dollars to cover increased state-driven salary costs; instead, the agencies must absorb those costs or seek a state offset. The $2.77 million request is explicitly framed as a partial offset to those rising agency administrative expenses and targeted to help the Georgia Dream program continue to fund down-payment assistance for first-time home buyers.

Wilson also reviewed specific line items and one-time funds: sweeping a $2,000,000 prior one-time appropriation and noting a House ad adding $170,000 to the Southern Georgia Area Agency on Aging for behavioral counseling services intended to help people remain in their homes. On a separate line, a $500,000 reduction tied to a past one-time infrastructure investment was identified and discussed as an amendment to prior-year budgeting.

Committee members pressed Wilson for historical numbers and program-level totals; she offered to provide detailed figures offline where precise multi-year comparisons were requested. The chair closed the DCA portion by thanking the commissioner and moving to the next presentation.