Southern Iowa Cog Housing Trust Fund

Are you interested in helping low-income senior citizens, persons with disabilities, natural disaster victims left homeless, or perhaps a teacher achieve the American Dream by buying a home? If so, then you have come to the right place.

WHO WE ARE – WHAT WE DO

The Southern Iowa COG Housing Trust Fund (HTF) was created in 2005 to help ensure decent, safe, and affordable housing for families living in Southern Iowa. The HTF serves an 8 county region that consists of Adair, Adams, Clarke, Decatur, Madison, Ringgold, Taylor, and Union counties.

The HTF provides assistance to area service organizations during times of crisis and is the only entity in our region that provides wide-ranging affordable housing services. Major programs that are offered include owner-occupied rehabilitation, down payment assistance for teachers buying their first home, and rehabilitation of care centers for seniors and those with developmental disabilities in order to keep rent affordable for residents.

One of the most utilized programs is the owner-occupied rehabilitation program, which provides a forgivable loan of up to $10,000 per home in order to help the homeowner make repairs that are emergency in nature. The HTF has been able to help dozens of households with repairs to their homes and has provided nearly $100,000 in support. Primary areas of interest include: water heaters, furnaces, roofs, accessibility measures (wheelchair ramps, etc.), and windows. These items were chosen to fill the gap in services not provided by other aid organizations.

Recently, the HTF provided homeless assistance to the community of Creston when a tornado destroyed several low-income housing complexes. The HTF also provides general relief assistance to counties in order to help low income residents make housing and utility payments. Support to date has totaled nearly $55,000.

The HTF also assists the City of Creston in administering the Inflow and Infiltration Hardship Assistance Program, where homeowners who have illegal connections to the sanitary sewer can receive a forgivable loan to remove those connections. The sewer system is not designed to handle this additional water flow, which can overtax the system and can cause sewer overflows into streams and /or lakes. Removing these connections will help protect the area’s public health and environment.

The bulk of the funding that is available is for project financing. 8 projects have utilized HTF financing for a total of $682,000. This assistance has helped keep rent affordable for many low income and disabled residents. In the City of Osceola, 4 buildings with a total a 10 units were built for low-income households. In the cities of Adair and Lenox, senior living facility operators utilized HTF financing to rehabilitate housing units so that rent could remain low while improving living conditions for residents. The HTF also partners with a number of organizations to build owner occupied homes. For example, the HTF gave money to demolish a dilapidated home in Creston so that the local community college could construct a single-family house priced for a low-income family.

The Housing Trust Fund is an excellent resource for area communities because it is a source of financing for community projects that may otherwise not come to fruition. However, match money is required for every project and can be a major hurdle to overcome for families and non-profit organizations. Money donated to the HTF will be used by and for the benefit of low-income households and individuals.

Low-income individuals in the HTF area are assisted by these services for necessary repairs, down payment assistance, and rehabilitation of necessary yet vulnerable facilities. As an organization it is important to maximize the limited funding that is available. Donations will be used to leverage additional capital in order to continue to help those in need.