The Center for Housing Policy today released a report declaring California’s redevelopment process an innovative and successful model for affordable housing funding.

Since 1993, redevelopment agencies have helped to develop or rehab more than 98,000 affordable homes, according to the report. In fiscal year 2007-08 alone ( the most recent period for which reports are available from the California Department of Housing and Community Development), more than 16,400 households benefited from assistance from the Low and Moderate Income Housing Fund, according to the report.

Specific activities during this period include:

• Development of more than 9,300 new or “replacement” affordable homes
• Subsidy assistance for some 1,200 households
• Substantial rehab of more than 1,080 existing affordable units and other rehab and repair of an additional 1,576 units
• Activities to increase, preserve, or maintain some 870 mobile homes
• Preservation of nearly 150 units affordable to very low income households
• Other assistance for more than 2,200 additional units

Notably, some 7,000 elderly households benefited from Low and Moderate Income Housing Fund expenditures in fiscal year 2007-08, and nearly half of expenditures – 49% – supported housing affordable to very low-income households.