Howard County Executive Calvin Ball Announces Awards for Housing Opportunities Trust Fund, Investing in Affordable Homes for Howard County Families

ELLICOTT CITY, MD – Howard County Executive Calvin Ball and the County’s Department of Housing and Community Development (DHCD) today announced awards for $4 million in funding from the Housing Opportunities Trust Fund (HOTF). These awards will support the creation and preservation of approximately 350 affordable units, as well as rental assistance and eviction prevention programs for an additional 200 households.

In 2022, Ball created Howard County’s first HOTF. A key recommendation of the County’s The Housing Opportunities Master Plan, which was released in April 2021, the HOTF is a critical funding tool that allows investment in affordable housing opportunities, homeownership programs, unit preservation, and homeless services. During his time in office, Ball invested $16 million into HOTF, which has supported new affordable housing projects, promoted affordable homeownership, provided rental assistance to older adults, and more. HOTF received an initial allocation of $5 million in Ball’s Fiscal Year (FY) 2023 budget, followed by subsequent funding allocations of $10 million in his FY 2025 budget and $1 million in his FY 2027 budget.

On August 13, 2026, DHCD released a Notice of Funding Availability (NOFA) for $4 million available in the HOTF. The NOFA requested proposals for bold and impactful initiatives to address the County’s affordable housing goals and recommendations in the Housing Opportunities Master Plan. Applications to the NOFA were due on September 22, 2026; DHCD received 13 applications totaling nearly $23 million in funding requests.

The County’s FY 2027 awards from HOTF include support for:

1. Midway 32 Transit-Oriented Development (TOD) Project – Midway 32 will transform an underutilized office campus adjacent to the Savage MARC Station into a vibrant mixed-income residential community that advances County housing, TOD, and economic competitiveness goals. The Project will deliver approximately 600 apartment homes, including nearly 100 affordable homes serving households at 20 percent, 40 percent, and 60 percent of Area Median Income (AMI). This project will create one of the most significant mixed-income housing communities in Howard County history and the largest concentration of Disability Income Housing Units in the county.
2. Bridges to Housing Stability’s Financial Assistance Fund (FAF) – The flexible FAF will be available to tenants of the nonprofit Bridges to Housing Stability’s Affordable Housing Program. The FAF will provide targeted, one-time assistance to households earning less than 50 percent of AMI experiencing a documented financial hardship that threatens their housing stability. Funding may be used for critical expenses such as emergency rent assistance, utility payments, transportation-related costs, medical bills, or other one-time expenses that directly impact a household's ability to remain stably housed.
3. Bridges to Housing Stability’s Affordable Housing Preservation Project – This project will address critical repair and renovation needs across Bridges to Housing Stability’s Affordable Housing Programs for fiscal years 2028 to 2030. Funds will ensure that up to 45 existing affordable homes and future homes in Bridges’ portfolio remain safe, healthy, functional, and available to serve households earning less than 50 percent of AMI. Bridges will support necessary repairs, renovations, replacements, and capital improvements to these homes. This investment will preserve the County’s existing supply of affordable housing and help maximize the number of affordable homes available to households with significant housing needs. For these households, preserving an affordable home is critical to maintaining housing stability and remaining connected to their communities, jobs, schools, and support networks.
4. Community Action Council of Howard County’s (CAC) Family Stability Program (FSP) – The FSP supports families with children facing housing instability via coaching and flexible financial assistance. Paired with CAC’s eviction-prevention services, the FSP helps families stabilize their housing while building long-term stability. This funding will enable CAC to expand the reach of these programs by providing dedicated housing assistance in the form of monthly rental payments for key populations identified in the Howard County Housing Opportunities Master Plan, i.e., persons with disabilities, low-income households, and/or and persons over the age of 55. CAC has experienced great success with cultivating family engagement through the FSP, and will take the staff training, coaching methodology, and engagement strategies and apply it to this expansion. In addition to these ongoing rental payments, funding will support traditional housing assistance that will prevent eviction and housing instability for approximately 120 low-income renters within the county.  
5. Enterprise Community Development’s Fall River Terrace Community – The request will support Enterprise Community Development’s redevelopment costs, including construction, site work, accessibility improvements, sustainability measures, resident amenity spaces, and related development expenses, needed to replace the obsolete existing buildings at its Fall River Terrace with a new 76-unit community. The redeveloped community will preserve 56 low- and moderate-income households in Howard County with incomes between 30 to 80 percent AMI. The redevelopment will also create 20 additional market rate apartment homes in Columbia, a high-opportunity community with strong access to employment, schools, services, and amenities.
6. Howard County Housing Commission’s 9792 and 9796 Washington Boulevard New Housing Community – The Housing Commission is proposing to redevelop a roughly 9.8-acre site at the intersection of Washington Boulevard and Whiskey Bottom Road, on the 9700 block of Washington Boulevard in North Laurel, into a mixed-use development consisting of a 54-unit stacked condominium homeownership project, a 132-unit multifamily building, and a retail pad site. Both housing components will be mixed-income, with the homeownership component providing roughly one-third of its units as Moderate Income Housing Units and the multifamily building being financed and restricted under the Low-Income Housing Tax Credit, with units serving households with incomes averaging approximately 60 percent AMI.
7. The Arc of Howard County’s Rental Assistance Program – The Arc of Howard County rents 23 homes throughout Howard County that provide affordable, community-based housing for people with intellectual and developmental disabilities earning less than 30 percent of Howard County’s AMI. The proposed HOTF project will support rental costs for 21 of these homes and maximize other funding streams to serve more clients.  

For more information on the HOTF, visit DHCD’s “Housing Opportunities Trust Fund (HOTF)” webpage.