Michiana’s community foundations have landed $30 million in grants to help tackle the affordable housing crisis. They’re saying this level of money toward the problem will be transformative.
In the 1950s and 60s the federal government built lots of high-rise apartments to house very poor people, with some awful results. These days HUD has a new philosophy: create publicly subsidized housing that’s mixed in with market-rate units.
That’s what’s planned for the blocks next to Four Winds Field in South Bend, once the vacant Rabbi Shulman high-rise is torn down this summer.
The Community Foundation of St. Joseph County announced two big grants from the Lilly Endowment: $10 million toward that new neighborhood, and $20 million to be shared with community foundations in Elkhart and Marshall counties to create affordable housing on vacant lots across the region.
Rose Meissner is the St. Joseph County foundation’s executive director. She says 70% of the units in the Western Avenue Transformation District will be subsidized but 30% won’t, yet you won’t be able to tell from the outside which is which.
"So there will be a whole spectrum of people, people who have jobs that are still stretching to be able to afford what rents cost in our community, and that's the exciting part of the whole project, in my opinion," Meissner said.
"And there will be beautiful amenities, a park. It's close to all the other attractions in downtown South Bend. I think it's going to be a highly desirable place to live and it's the type of concept that all cities need more of."
Aaron Perri is the St. Joseph County foundation’s vice president for community impact. He says there are an estimated 2,000 blighted properties across the region.
Perri says they’ll form a new South Bend-Elkhart Regional Housing Collaborative, with two programs. One will form a land bank that will acquire properties and prepare them for sale to developers and individuals.
The other program will create a Housing Investment Fund that will give low-interest loans, at zero to 2%. The loans will help people and developers buy, fix up and refinance homes on vacant lots or in blighted neighborhoods, and build new ones.
Perri says developers and homebuyers already can buy properties at tax sale. But tax-delinquent owners, often out-of-town investors, pay the back taxes at the last minute, just in time to keep the property out of the sale.
"It gives a tool to come in and take those out of that tax sale cycle and hold on to them for productive use," Perri said. "It's kind of a shortcut to the whole process."
Perri says they're forming a committee and setting the programs up, hoping to have them available to the public this summer. Land banks already have started up in Evansville, Muncie and Fort Wayne.
"Really this grant is a shot in the arm to get us caught up on some of these things and give us some brand new tools to combat the blighted property and affordable housing crisis that we've had in this region for quite some time."
