Louisville awarded funds to build workforce housing
With rent prices and construction costs climbing, working families across Georgia are finding it harder and harder to keep a roof over their heads.
As the deputy director for the Center for Community Development for the Central Savannah River Area’s Regional Commission, Linda Grijalva serves communities in 13 counties in and surrounding Augusta.
“All of my communities have the same problem,” she said. “There is no workforce housing. None.”
Louisville Mayor Jenny Smith, who owns 57 rental properties throughout the area, said that she gets calls daily from people looking for housing. All of her properties are booked and she has waiting lists for when openings arise.
“Nobody has anything,” Smith said. “Ideally, when you have this kind of demand, you would have a developer come in and build homes for sale, but realistically nobody is going to do that in Louisville.”
As far as she can tell, there has been only one new home built inside the city limits of Louisville in the last 20 years.
But now, thanks to a $296,800 Community HOME Investment Program grant from the Georgia Department of Community Affairs, the Louisville City Council is working to change that.
The city is planning to use the grant, funded by the US Department of Housing and Urban Development (HUD), to create a revolving loan specifically designed to build workforce housing inside the city that it will market to individuals or families who qualify as receiving low-to-moderate incomes.
The median family household income for the whole state of Georgia is $83,200. In Jefferson County, the median family income is $48,700. A family of four who qualifies for these new Louisville homes would have a combined income of around $49,100.
Grijalva does not like to use the term “affordable” housing.
“When people hear that word, they think cheap,” she said. “That’s not what we build.”
The city is looking to build two separate three-bedroom, two bath homes of about 1,200 square feet.
“You need starter homes for people just getting out of college or new couples and single people,” Grijalva said. “But you need the same type of housing for elderly people who are in bigger homes, who want to stay in the city where they are living, but they want to downsize so they can age in place.”
Without housing that meets the needs of these individuals, businesses are unable to expand, city and economic growth is stifled. When new industrial plants do open, management has to look for executive housing in other areas.
The city of Louisville had identified a lack of available housing as the primary issue restricting growth and local business.
In late July or August the city hopes to hold meetings for prospective homeowners interested in purchasing these new homes. Smith and Grijalva both said that they would be working with prospective buyers to help them get approved for loans and securing down payment assistance.
“If we build these two homes and they sell and they do well, I think we’ll just keep going. I’m hoping that it will help attract a developer, but you never know,” Grijalva said. “But either way, the money from the sale of the homes will go back to the city in a revolving loan that can be used to build more houses.”
Smith said that the city is committed to do as much as possible to reduce the cost of the homes. It will provide the land, which it already owns, and then also tie the homes into city utilities.
The grant officially takes place Sept. 1 and runs through August 2025, Grijalva said. For the next several months her office will be working through the necessary paperwork, clearing environmental conditions and developing necessary plans. She is hoping to begin breaking ground by the end of January 2023, but thinks that the city will start marketing the properties by this fall.
“This will help meet the need for workforce housing, but I’m very excited because it’s also a jumping off place for the city to do more housing and cover more territory,” Grijalva said. “There hasn’t been a lot of housing built to target this population and I think it’s really helpful as it targets your school teachers, your police, your healthcare workers.
“I hope this will show developers that Louisville is serious about addressing housing issues.”
This article originally appeared on Augusta Chronicle: Louisville awarded funds to build workforce housing
