(Spirit Lake)– Officials with the Iowa Lakes Corridor Development Corporation are hoping that two rental housing projects in Dickinson county are awarded state assistance. Curt Strouth, President and CEO of the Iowa Lakes Corridor Development Corporation, says one of those projects, The Shores in Spirit Lake, is already under construction. It consists of 146 units in two phases. The other, Boji Bay Apartments in Milford, includes 30 units.
In an update at today’s (Tues.) Dickinson County Board of Supervisors meeting, Strouth said assistance through the Iowa Economic Development Authority’s Workforce Housing Tax Credit program is crucial for projects such as those…
“From an organization standpoint we do partner with municipalities and the developers to be able to generate letters of support from our companies and to make sure we guide them through the application process to make sure they have a competitive application down to the Iowa Economic Development Authority. And just as an FYI, on the housing tax credit there’s a 35 million dollar pool of funds which honestly is not enough to be able to facilitate the amount of development that we need to have across the state of Iowa. Developers are eligible for up to a million dollars in tax credits per application depending on the size of the project and historically only about 30 percent of those projects statewide get funded.”
Strouth says rental projects such as the two he mentioned appear to be the best options to help at least in the short term with the local housing crunch…
“That’s going to be a little bit more of an affordable market to get people actually here, buy them some time to be able to maybe find that house that opens up on the market that might be a little bit more affordable. Every housing project you see throughout the county, it’s putting up rooftops, that’s new units. It provides a great opportunity for that are maybe looking to potentially downsize or looking to get something different, opens up that internal house which really is an affordable market, hopefully, for people to hopefully enter into.”
Strouth says they expect to hear an announcement very soon as to whether or not those applications have been approved for funding.
