Kim Foutz, Temple’s assistant city manager, said the grant is comprised of $385,000 from the department for housing improvements, $7,500 for administration and a $58,000 city match.
“We are required to build at least six new homes for those with low to moderate income, or rehab at least six homes,” she said. “The direction the city is planning to focus on is for rehabilitation because we believe that we will get a significantly higher number of homes rehabilitated than going with the new structures.”
Patsy Luna, District 2 council member, said the funding would be welcomed.
“This is certainly needed,” she said. “For four or five years we’ve had no money for rehabbing any type of dwelling. This is a very real need in our community.”
Ms. Foutz said funding for the TDHCA grant cannot be distributed until the city develops a process for prioritization.
“Before we start selection of the projects we have to have an extensive process where we establish prioritization, how to go about taking applications and determining the ranking and priority system,” she said. “That is because we anticipate there will be more applications than there is money to do the projects.”
She said the process would involve working with a committee to set up guidelines.
“The council was very specific to make sure that we have set the appropriate priorities as to who will get those projects at their homes,” she said. “It will take a little while to work through that - to make sure that we are able to accomplish that.”
Ms. Foutz said the city learned in October of the availability of the state funds and had just a two-week period to apply.
“It was on a first-come, first-served basis,” she said. “We were successful in getting our application in, and we were the only community to ask for the funds.”
Ms. Foutz said work related to the grant could be done in conjunction with the city’s home repair program, which consists of $38,000 in the general fund. That program is designed for minor repairs such as new roofs, heating and air conditioning.
The city could eventually draw on an unknown share of more than $1 million in federal funding available via Bell County from the federal troubled assets relief program. That program is part of the $700,000 billion federal bailout.
The funding is designed to prevent or eliminate blight by freeing up funding to buy foreclosed properties.
“It includes buying foreclosures, rehabbing them (the houses) and then they would be sold to low-, moderate- and regular-income housing (buyers),” Ms. Foutz said.
“There are certain areas where you might have multiple places on a particular street or in a particular neighborhood that may have been foreclosed on, and the tendency is that the care was not great during that time period,” she said. “So it’s trying to lift the neighborhood back up and prevent decline.”
