Seeking to put fresh emphasis on an issue that has been on the agenda for at least a decade, City Council on Monday followed through and joined Mayor Levar M. Stoney in “declaring a housing crisis in the city of Richmond.”

The approved resolution, among other things, embraces the mayor’s strategies for addressing the desperate housing situation

in which income-challenged residents are finding themselves as rents surge and housing prices continue to soar – such as rewriting zoning laws to remove barriers to income-restricted developments, creating a commission to offer ideas, and beefing up a city loan pool to help finance more developments.

The resolution did not mention that the city had essentially scrapped a 2020 plan to use new revenue from expiring property tax exemptions as a stream of income to finance additional affordable housing units.

Council President Michael J. Jones, 9th District, said the resolution hopefully would push the administration and the council to be “proactive and creative to ensure that teachers, restaurant employees, domestic workers and other working people can live in the city” and it can be attractive to college graduates and others.

The city is estimated to need 23,000 rental units and starter homes that are affordable for individuals and families at the lower end of the income scale — defined as requiring no more than 30 to 35 percent of income.

The approved resolution sets a goal of adding 1,300 apartments and homes a year that carry lower price tags in seeking to make a small dent in that huge need.

Second District Councilwoman Katherine Jordan said supply also could be increased if the city cracked down on the illicit conversion of blocs of apartments into short-term rentals – a process that she said reduces the overall supply of units and helps fuel rental increases.

Affordable housing advocate Tracey Hardney-Scott, speaking before the vote, told the council that she hopes the words fire up the city because of the impact that the cost of housing is having on people’s lives.

“This crisis is bigger than just bricks and mortar. It is affecting health, education and criminal justice,” said Ms. Hardney-Scott, who chairs the Help Me Help You Foundation and the Richmond Branch NAACP’s Housing Committee. She said that affordable housing is a key ingredient in changing the lives of people returning from jails and prisons.

But in passing the resolution, the council essentially endorsed the mayor’s plan for costly borrowing to beef up the loan pool overseen by the Affordable Housing Trust Fund (AHTF) while eliminating the 2020 program.

Under the mayor’s plan, the city is to borrow $10 million a year in each of the next five years to fuel the trust fund’s ability to support affordable housing developments at a cost of $88 mil- lion in interest. Council is preparing to vote for that plan when it finalizes the 2023-24 budget that will start July 1.

Just three years ago, the mayor and the council approved using increasing property tax revenue from renovated properties.

Though completely overhauled, Richmond had long reduced real estate taxes for a period of time as an incentive to owners and investors to rehabilitate blighted homes, apartments and commercial buildings.

In 2020, Mayor Stoney proposed and the council agreed that roll-off money, the increase in tax revenues from properties with expiring exemptions, should go to the AHTF for use to support affordable housing development.

At the time, Sharon Ebert, deputy chief administrative officer economic and community development, advised council that was the right way to go.

She stated that City Assessor Richie McKeithen agreed that expiring tax exemptions should generate $2 million a year in new revenue and over a 10-year period, should generate more than $100 million for the AHTF.

Under the plan, the initial $2 million was to flow each year to the AHTF, with additional dollars from expiring exemptions added to that each year. Under the scenario that Ms. Ebert out-

lined, the $2 million the first year would become $4 million the second year, $6 million the third year and so on.

However, Lincoln Saunders, the city’s chief administrative officer, issued a paper in March stating the revamp of the program and other complexities meant that the “expiring tax exemptions will not produce as much money” as had been anticipated.

He projected that the AHTF would receive a maximum of $5.2 million a year from the roll-off funds by 2027.

Martin Wegbreit, an AHTF board member, said that Mr. Saunders’ paper did not explain why the city planned to keep the roll-off dollars rather than sending them to the AHTF as the 2020 ordinance required.

The AHTF was to be credited with nearly $2.4 million this year and $3.7 million in 2024 from the roll-off funds until it reached the $5.2 million maximum in three years.

However, those roll-off dollars have not been made available to the AHTF. Last year and this year, the council approved the mayor’s plan to use $10 million in 2022 and $10 million in 2023 in the American Rescue Plan funds’ roll-off dollars over two years. This year, the council is poised to substitute borrowed money for the roll-off dollars.

Mr. Wegbreit noted that adding the roll-off dollars to the ARP funds and the borrowed money would increase the amount of city dollars. As he pointed out, $12.4 million is more than $10 million as is $13.7 million.