How Spartanburg's ARPA funding is creating new affordable housing

In 2024, City Council allocated $5 million of the City's federal ARPA (American Recovery Plan Act) dollars to facilitate development of new affordable housing. The move served as both a recognition of an obvious need in our city, namely more quality housing that can serve Spartanburg's cost-burdened residents, and as a statement of our values. The City of Spartanburg doesn't just believe in the importance of affordable housing as a conceptual "nice to have," but as a priority worthy of nearly a third of all the ARPA funding our community received. What has that funding produced so far? Quite a lot. The $3.8 million distributed so far has been used to leverage more than $60 million in development either proposed or underway, representing around 200 units of affordable housing units for renters and homebuyers (reserved for residents with household incomes at or below 80 percent of area median income). How does all that work? What are the various housing types and projects that we've invested in? How have those ARPA funds been used to boost our usual affordable housing development efforts? Today on the podcast, we have Community Development Director Martin Livingston with us to share the details. For full specifics on how our ARPA affordable housing dollars have been spent so far, follow this link.