Drilling for Affordable Housing in the Keystone State?

Photo Credit: Becky Lettenberger (NPR) 

Earlier this month, the blog examined the oil industry's boom's effects on affordable housing in small towns such as Williston, N.D., where skyrocketing rents and limited housing stock have led to residents living in crowded motel rooms and trailers far from the oilfields. In recent months, a variety of Williston developers have created partnerships with local PHAs to address shortages. In other regions of the countries, states that have felt the housing squeeze from fracking have turned to special state funds derived from natural gas drilling to improve the availability of affordable housing options. In Towanda, a northeastern Pennsylvania borough that has become a center of activity amidst the drilling of the Marcellus Shale Formation, residents are displaced and newcomers dismayed by rents that have quintupled in the past four years. The Impact Fee Act, which created a fee based on the impact of each well drilled in Pennsylvania, has collected more than $200 million in fees since February 2012 and will be used to partially fund the creation of new and preservation of existing affordable housing in areas like Towanda. See 1 Pa. Cons. Stat. §13 (2012). The Pennsylvania Housing Finance Agency is combining $5M in Impact Act fees with money from the Pennsylvania Housing Affordability and Rehabilitation Enforcement Fund to develop affordable housing for residents below 50% of the median income in areas affected by fracking. The PHFA will be accepting housing proposals through June 7 and, according to a StateImpact report, the agency aims to "make a real, lasting and positive difference in people's quality of life" in many Pennsylvania boomtowns.