Home plan targets C.R.’s core

The timing, says council member Chuck Swore, is perfect for homebuilders here who are stuck in a down economy and for people in working households without all the resources but with plenty of the dreams needed to buy a new home.

This week, the City Council crafted a plan after much discussion that will launch a second round of disaster-relief subsidies to support the construction of single-family homes with the intent to replace housing the city lost in the June 2008 flood.

The Single-Family New Construction Program will have $13.35 million in federal Community Development Block Grant funds with which to work, an amount that is expected to build an estimated 235 residences.

The program is not intended to specifically help survivors of the 2008 flood, but to replace housing lost to the flood. Swore, though, said some survivors will be among those who get new homes.

He said the program will get people into new homes who meet the program's income guidelines and it will give builders a chance to build for a market that without the subsidies wouldn't be there.

“I think it's timely and I think it's fair,” Swore said.

The results of the program's first round of building in 2009 - which turned $8 million into 173 residences, about half of which were condominiums - prompted the council this week to tailor the latest plan in a way that the council hopes will steer more of the dollars and the building in the second round to “infill” lots closer to the core of the city.

Nearly all of the 2009 building went to builders in existing developments on the city's periphery in a city where the City Council has talked repeatedly against urban sprawl and for infill development.

In this round, the council will award more points to developers who build in the city's traditional urban-renewal neighborhoods, fewer points to those who build in a second-tier area, and fewer points still to those who build on the city's periphery.

The problem, both Swore and Mayor Ron Corbett said on Friday, is that many of the lots at the ready for building are, as they were last year, on the outskirts of the city.

The council asked the city staff to work to try to identify vacant lots closer in and see if owners and builders might submit those for building.

Corbett said the program's guidelines permit homes up to $180,000 in price, but he said that price is too high. He and others on the council said he would push for smaller homes with lower selling prices so the funds could build more homes.

The deadline for the city to submit its list of builders to the state is March 1, and both Corbett and Swore suspected that the timeline would work against finding lots in the core of the city to include in the program.

“We can wish and hope for it, but unless we monitor it, it's not going to happen,” Corbett said.

The program's subsides go to both builder and buyer, with buyers able to receive up to 25 percent of the cost of one of the new residences. In the first round, the subsidies were up to 30 percent, which for some buyers equaled $54,000.

However, all buyers must have household income at or below 100 percent of the area median income, which is $67,600 for a family of four. Half of the buyers must have household income at or below 80 percent of the area median income, which is $54,000 for a family of four.

Developers will receive up to a 15 percent of project cost as a development fee if they build the new homes in the city's core neighborhoods or in a second tier of area around those. They receive a 10 percent fee if they build closer to the city's periphery. Developers also can access up to $12,000 for infrastructure costs tied to the lots on which they build.

New Construction