The $250,000 Community Development Block Grant will provide construction assistance for a planned subdivision in Efland made up of houses built by Habitat for Humanity.
Commissioner Barry Jacobs said the subdivision, Richmond Hills, would provide housing relief to lower-income families in northern Orange County.
"The project provides much-needed affordable housing in a part of the county where, for the most part, the affordable housing is in the form of mobile homes," Jacobs said. "The subdivision will be in a nice community near a school."
Susan Levy, executive director of Habitat for Humanity of Orange County, said Richmond Hills will provide first-time home ownership opportunities to 25 low-income families.
Levy said the CDBG grant will provide funding for water and sewer services and streets. To receive the funds, Habitat for Humanity entered into a development agreement with the county. "The agreement means that we are committed to building 25 homes," she said.
Habitat for Humanity must sell those homes to families whose income is less than 80 percent of the area median household income at the time of the sale, according to the development agreement. Eighty percent is the income eligibility level required by the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development, Levy said.
"In Richmond Hills, we would probably not go up to 80 percent," she said. "Typically, for Habitat it's 50 percent of the median, although in this case we're trying to have a little flexibility so that there is economic diversity in the community."
Project construction will begin in spring 2001, said Tara Fikes, director of the county's Housing and Community Development Department. The Housing and Community Development Department is the county's CDBG project administrator, she said. "Hopefully, we'll get started in March," Fikes said.
Final arrangements for project funding were completed when the commissioners authorized the board's chairman to sign agreements with the state and Habitat for Humanity during the regular business meeting Jan. 17. "We signed an agreement saying that we'll do what we said we'd do when we initially applied for the grant," Fikes said.
