From The Republic:

The Board of Public Works and Safety on Monday unanimously approved agreements with three groups who will each support different strategies for addressing homelessness and increasing the stock of affordable housing.

Each agreement runs through Dec. of 2026 and comes after Columbus City Council members last week agreed to direct the remaining balance of federal American Rescue Plan (ARP) funds, totaling $1.97 million, to the two areas.

The council designated $1.5 million to go towards affordable housing development and $500,000 for implementation of United Way of Bartholomew County’s Homelessness Initiative.

The federal government required that the funding be committed by the end of this year and spent by the end of 2026. Columbus received $8 million in ARP funds in total, Mayor Mary Ferdon said.

One agreement with United Way of Bartholomew County—for an amount not to exceed $500,000— will go towards funding four homelessness-specific initiatives, including a rental assistance and homeless response team, supportive housing, eviction prevention and a continuation of a street social worker program.

The rental assistance and homeless response team will provide funds to those at risk of being homeless “in the next 14 days” or to re-house someone who has been homeless.

According to the agreement, an eviction prevention program will “proactively help those people facing eviction or foreclosure.” The program would include eviction counseling and would have an element where someone would complete training through a partnership with local organizations like Love Chapel and receive rental assistance.

The street social worker program has already been piloted due to council’s April appropriation, which got the homelessness initiative off the ground. The program is designed to “meet people who are homeless where they are” and creates “trust-based relationships in trying to get people into permanent housing.”

The largest portion of homelessness initiative funding of $300,000 would go towards some type of supportive housing, according to city officials.

During a community input session organized by United Way regarding the homelessness initiative in late November, Felipe Martinez, pastor of First Presbyterian Church, said there may be more information to come about supportive housing next year.

According to the pastor, the housing committee at First Presbyterian Church has partnered with “an experienced non-profit developer” who will lead a team, including community partners, and apply for funds from the Indiana Housing and Community Development Authority (IHCDA) to help with financing of a potential supportive housing facility.

If funds are ultimately approved, it would mean the creation of permanent supportive housing units in Columbus “in the next couple of years,” Martinez said.

The remaining two agreements involve strategies for increasing affordable housing, and had been identified as potentially useful by RDG Planning & Design, who recently conducted the city’s first housing study in 12 years.

An agreement with the Administrative Resources association (ARa) will fund two affordable housing programs.

One is an incentive program to help finance more affordable housing projects that use federal grant or tax credit funding.

“A good example would be allocating these kind of dollars to help a Thrive Alliance,” according to Eric Frey, executive director or administration. “The goal would be, when there’s a gap for affordable housing projects where you have maybe tax credits, home grants, this would be the supplemental funding that would be available to them to fill that gap.”

The other ARa-led program would be an expanded owner-occupied rehab (OOR) program. The city already has a Community Development Block Grant owner-occupied rehab program, but there’s a limitation on the income of eligible individual households at 80% of area median-income (AMI) and below, which is about $72,000.

“(This program) would expand that with these ARP dollars, allowing it to go up to 120% of AMI, which we’re finding is a real gap, especially when we start looking at seniors,” according to Frey.

The program would fund accessibility improvements, along with interior and exterior upgrades, according to city officials. Each ARa program could receive up to $500,000.

The final agreement is with the Columbus Housing Finance Corporation (CHFC), a 501(c)(3) arm of the Columbus Housing Authority (CHA), for an amount not to exceed $500,000.

The agreement outlines how the city will provide funding for the purchase, renovation and demolition of blighted homes and look to partner with the CHA in order to try to activate some of their Section 8 vouchers. It also provides funds for the purchase of vacant infill lots and for the construction of new single-family homes.

CHA will work with community development to find and acquire sites to expand CHA’s scatter sites under Section 8, according to the agreement. Scatter sites refer to public housing that is spread across a city, instead of being centrally located.

“In the grand scheme of things they can target that lowest income housing need by using these funds to also acquire properties that are blighted. So it’s kind of a double-benefit,” Frey said. “And we know with the housing authority, they will be maintained as affordable for the duration of their ownership.”