CEO Corner

Linda Braunschweiger, CEO

It’s 2015 already and the Ventura County Housing Trust Fund (VCHTF) has been busy. In a few short years we’ve built up our Revolving Loan Fund to almost $4 million; just $250,000 remaining toward our State matched-grant. Our Revolving Loan Fund has funded loans helping to create 94 new affordable housing units, with another 38 homes in applications to close this Spring. At the recent grand opening of Citrus Grove Apartment I toured the newly opened apartments for seniors in Santa Paula and they are beautiful. Each unit is spacious, homey, well made, and welcoming.

I want to sincerely thank all who, through your generosity, have helped VCHTF accomplish our mission, which is to generate more affordable housing. It has taken years of planning and hard work to get to this point, but working with our State, County, city, corporate and charitable partners VCHTF has been able to assist those that are providing homes for our County’s neediest residents.

The Board of Directors, staff and I continue to look for ways to impact the community even more. At our recent Annual Meeting, the VCHTF Board changed its loan application procedures to an Open Funding Process. We are now accepting loan applications year-round and will approve and fund loans as our Revolving Loan Fund pool allows. This means projects that previously didn’t work with the timing of our NOFA process (Notice of Funding Availability) can now potentially be funded.

We have also begun the process to be certified as a CDFI (Community Development Financial Institute) opening up new sources of funding. With a $50,000 matching grant from VC Community Foundation, Farm Worker Housing Fund, VCHTF is working with developers to find a farm-worker housing project to finance this year. The Board is working on ways to encourage for-profit developers of affordable housing to utilize VCHTF’s products. Finally, we are researching how VCHTF loan products can help prevent affordable units with expiring agreements from transitioning to market-rate.

I am honored and grateful to be a part of this remarkable work and hope to have the pleasure of meeting many new supporters of affordable housing in the coming year. Finally, please feel free to contact me if you have questions or suggestions for VCHTF. I can be reached at 805-407-2455 or [email protected].

Linda Braunschweiger
CEO