Marshall County Entry Level Housing Meeting

I sit on the Affordable Housing Task Force for Culver and as part of that as well as wearing my MCEDC hat, I sat in on a meeting at the Culver Library with Darin Edwards, Underwriting and Closing Manager for IHCDA.  The meeting was arranged by Jerry Chavez, MCEDC Executive Director, and included representatives from the Marshall County communities of Culver, Argos, Plymouth and Bremen.

There are a myriad of options available for help from the State and Federal government, but unfortunately the main take-away was that these are not things that would move quickly.  We discussed Community Development Block Grants (CDBG), the Home Investment Partnership Program, the Affordable Housing and Community Development Fund, Low Income Housing Tax Credit Program (RHTC) and the Community Enhancement and Economic Development (CEED) Loan Program.  Almost all of these would be looking at a three year period of time between beginning the grant application process and having housing ready to lease.  Mr. Edwards also indicated that the process was quite competitive, often having 5 times as many applicants as available grants.  One nice thing would be with the variety of targets these individual initiatives address, it is likely that several Marshall County communities could make applications without competing against one another.  There are also opportunities for the County to make applications that could benefit more than one community at a time, helping with planning, needs assessment, etc.  Mr. Edwards indicated that there is more than likely a need since the communities are coming together on this, but it would still be necessary to provide the data to prove this.

Mr. Darin Edwards from IHCDA speaking to Marshall County Community representatives in Culver

We actually got a little bit of press on this.  Stephanie Stang from Channel 16 was on hand and filmed interviews with Mr. Edwards and Mr. Chavez.  There is an article and video on the WNDU website here.  Most of the background shots were around Culver, so we got a little free press that way.

It’s becoming pretty obvious that there is not going to be any kind of quick fix to this problem.  Government wheels turn slowly and while there is the will to help, the funds and ability to expedite this are not.  Aside from the hurdles of grant competition, there will be financing issues, land acquisition timing, infrastructure extensions, Davis Bacon costs associated with some of the grants, etc.  It’s good that Culver is moving on this, but it’s becoming obvious that the “Task Force” will not be a dissolved any time soon.

Picture Source:  WNDU