By Sara Strong
More housing and financing options could be on the horizon for Rock County.
The Rock County Board of Commissioners Tuesday passed a resolution agreeing to support the new housing program and approved $625 to go toward applying for it.
The Southwest Minnesota Housing Partnership wants to apply to the Minnesota Housing Finance Agency for $750,000 to go toward purchasing and rehabilitating blighted properties.
They would be sold in a 0 percent contract for deed arrangement.
The Housing Partnership is proposing completing a total of eight homes in Rock, Nobles, Murray and Pipestone counties. Each county would then have two refurbished homes.
The program requires that the housing be located within a municipality. The housing would be sold to persons with an income of less than 80 percent of the area median income. That income is as follows:
Family size Gross income
1 $27,550
2 $31,550
3 $35,400
4 $39,350
5 $42,500
6 $45,650
The housing payment would be set up to be 25 percent of the familyÕs gross income and includes principle, taxes and insurance. The loan is fully amortized and is repaid to a revolving loan fund, which is recycled for the same purpose.
Room to grow
Housing in Rock County has been a long-standing issue.
The city of Luverne commissioned a study last year that concluded the city of Luverne could support an additional 30 units of houses to sell and another 80 to 84 units to rent over the next three to five years.
The selling price of homes in Luverne has steadily increased during the '90s. The median selling price from 1989-90 was $28,500 and from 1999-00 was $65,000.
The city also has a considerable number of open lots for building, but the need may lie in lower-cost purchases.
Luverne has a goal of increasing population to 5,200 by 2010 and it is working on ways to reach that.
One example of that is that some Gold 'N Plump workers are bussed to shifts in Luverne. The city had expressed hopes that more housing choices might bring more of those employees to live in Luverne.