Integrated Supportive Housing Application Materials for the 2022 Round
The OPWDD Integrated Supportive Housing (ISH) program aligns with New York State’s initiatives to increase the number of affordable/supportive housing statewide. This program encourages and supports the development of new housing opportunities for people with intellectual and/or developmental disabilities (I/DD) who can benefit from an independent, non-certified community-integrated residential setting. The OPWDD ISH program support includes either: (1) solely rental subsidies and supportive services once in operation; or (2) rental subsidies and capital funding (or financial development source)
The ISH program began in 2012 through a partnership with NYS Homes and Community Renewal (HCR). Through this partnership, developers of affordable housing opportunities receive application scoring incentives for partnering with an OPWDD provider agency (also known as the housing “Support Agency”) and giving tenant preference for people served by OPWDD (see the section later in this document, entitled “Role of the Provider as the Housing Support Agency” for more information).
Under this program, OPWDD will provide funding for up to 25% of the total number of units which offer preference in tenant selection to individuals eligible to receive OPWDD services.
New for 2022:
In addition to capital requests, project can specifically request solely ongoing rental subsidies to be used in a capital project application. For these projects, where OPWDD capital funding is not requested, OPWDD can assess whether it will issue a support letter to provide ongoing rental subsides for project operations during the length of the regulatory period for the project. This can be submitted to other governmental capital funding programs to demonstrate commitments for special populations units, similar to the conditional support letters for the Empire State Supportive Housing Initiative (ESSHI) program. All OPWDD programmatic requirements outlined in this RFA must be met for OPWDD to consider issuing a support letter for these projects.
Each applicant will be required to demonstrate that their proposal is consistent with OPWDD service provision expectations as well as any fiscal expectations of the primary capital funding entity. As part of this requirement, each project team is required to have a Technical Assistance session with OPWDD Home and Community Living staff before submitting an application for their project.”
List of Supported Integrated Supportive Housing Projects
Below is a compiled list of all of the Integrated Supportive Housing projects that OPWDD has supported since 2012. The projects at the bottom of the list were supported in OPWDD’s most recent Request for Applications round. Please reach out to [email protected] with any questions.