Southern Five Regional Planning District

and Development Commission

Newsletter

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Winter 2001

Southern Five Regional Planning District and Development Commission

219 Rustic Campus Drive

Ullin, Illinois  62992

618-634-2284

It’s that time of year again – time to start thinking about applying for housing grants. These grants are available to communities each year in order to upgrade their housing stock. During the next 2 years, the Department of Commerce and Community Affairs will make available $21 million for the rehabilitation of single-family, owner-occupied homes.

Ordinarily there is $7.5 million available each year for the State of Illinois to do housing rehab. In 2002 however, DCCA is doubling their funding pool and $15 million will be available for housing rehab. Then in 2003 there will be the standard $7.5 million available again.

The grant applications are due in to DCCA by June 7, 2002 for the double grant funding round. One half of the applications submitted will be announced and funded in September of 2002. The other half will be announced and funded in February of 2003. Then in June of 2003, applications will be due once again! As always the most a municipality may apply for is $400,000. Your leverage that DCCA requires will automatically come from the IL Housing Development Authority’s Housing Trust Fund pool.

To take advantage of these grant funds, you need to act now! Remember, if a municipality is interested in applying for housing rehab funds, that municipality has to conduct surveys of the homes in that community. Surveys are the most important factor in a housing rehab application!! Every household must be surveyed in order to determine a "target area" for rehab. A 75% response must be given in order to be eligible. Once a target area is determined, 100% of households in that area must be surveyed. These are the requirements that the DCCA staff puts forth in order to apply for a housing rehab grant.

Southern Five asks that if your municipality is interested in applying, please do the surveys and Southern Five will do the rest in order to get your application submitted. Contact the Southern Five office to assist you in the survey process or with any other questions you may have.

Public Facilities

Public Facilities applications were submitted to the Department of Commerce and Community Affairs in October so the next grant round is October of 2002. These grants assist communities each year with their water and sewer projects that may not be able to afford the project on their own. Also it is important to note that these funds are not 100% grant – they require a 25% match from other funding sources. In other words, if your total project is $100,000, DCCA will only fund $75,000; the other $25,000 has to come from another source.

DCCA is stressing more and more about completing a project on time – that is, during the 2-year time frame that is allowed. Because of this, DCCA is starting to recommend that municipalities think about submitting Design Engineering Grants first. Then, after the design is complete, they can submit a full construction grant for their public facilities project. That is so the project can move forward in a timely manner. The Design Engineering takes care of the design of the project along with the legal aspects, such as easements, which can tie up a lot of time.

Also a very important thing that DCCA is concerned with is the leverage funds that a project requires. A municipality must start this process early on in the planning for a grant application. If DCCA does not see a firm commitment in the application from another funding source on the leverage funds, the application will not score well at all and it could even prevent the application from being funded.

Projects that demonstrate project readiness at the time of the application will receive a higher rating. Project readiness includes things such as leverage commitment, complete design, site secured, purchase agreements, and easements secured.

Again, applications for Public Facilities are not due until October 2003, but it is a good idea to get started early – do not wait until the last minute to "throw a project together" because it will show and probably not get funded. If you have questions about the Public Facilities Program, please call the Southern Five office.

Grant Submissions:Public Facility

Brookport – water

Pulaski County – design sewer

Tamms – design sewer

Jonesboro – sewer

Anna – sewer

Johnson County – water

Olmsted – water

Karnak – water

Union County – water

Community Facility

Union County – Courthouse

Tamms – Gas

Economic Development Administration

Pulaski - Business Incubator