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3 <br /> <br />Insight from other Cities <br /> <br />Columbia Heights <br />Contact: Joe Hogeboom, Community Development Director. jhogeboom@columbiaheightsmn.gov <br />Columbia Heights does not offer any housing revitalization programs at this time. As you mentioned, <br />the City did offer two programs, which both ended in 2015. The Rehab Incentive Program offered <br />income qualified mini-grants to homeowners who made improvements to their properties. The Single <br />Family Deferred Loan Program was, as the name implies, a loan. That program had stricter <br />requirements. <br />Both programs were funded through various redevelopment fund dollars that the City had on hand. <br />The allocated funding essentially ran out in 2015. Staff recommended that the programs be <br />discontinued at that time, basically, for two reasons. The first reason was that we were not seeing a <br />measurable increase in meaningful reinvestment in properties from either program. Basically, word <br />had gotten out that if you needed a new water heater, the “city would give you free money for it”. In <br />other words, we were finding that the people using the funds essentially would have gone through <br />with the projects, even if the funds weren’t available. The goal originally was to incentivize people to <br />make improvements that they otherwise would not have made, were it not for this funding. <br />The second consideration was that the programs were extremely time consuming and difficult to <br />administer. With a relatively small staff, administering these programs really became a burden. This <br />was particularly true for the Single Family Deferred Loan program. We are still dealing with <br />headaches associated with that program from loans that were taken out prior to the program ending. <br />I’ve copied our City Planner, Elizabeth Holmbeck, who had managed the programs. (Elizabeth and I <br />were not around when the programs were created – rather, we came on board during the final year <br />and a half of the programs’ existence.) Elizabeth may be able to provide you with some details <br />regarding how many people were served, etc. The recordkeeping of our predecessors was very lax <br />(another challenge of administering these programs), so my assumption is that if we do have specific <br />records, they would only be from the time at which Elizabeth took over the programs. <br />Since we’ve ended these programs, the City created an “Economic Development Manager” position. <br />Keith Dahl is our Economic Development Manager, and his focus is helping to create a clearinghouse <br />of available housing rehab programs offered through other agencies. We focus most of our economic <br />development energy on securing state and federal grants to acquire and redevelop properties. <br />Unless a city is large enough to have housing finance staff, such as Minneapolis or St. Paul, my <br />opinion is that it is very challenging to manage housing incentive programs in-house. I’d be happy to <br />share more thoughts on the matter if you like. Please let me know if you have any general questions <br />about the program, and please let Elizabeth know if you are looking for more specific data. <br />Below are some numbers on the two programs the City previously offered to residents (Single Family <br />Deferred Loan, and Rehab Incentive Program). Prior to 2010, the City contracted with Greater <br />Metropolitan Housing Corporation (GMHC) to process the applications and work directly with the <br />residents. The numbers below represent data from 2010-the first part of 2015 when the City was <br />overseeing the programs.