Members of Housing Institute 6 including Todd, Meeker, Kandiyohi and Swift Counties. 

Swift County Housing and Redevelopment Authority was awarded a Federal Home Loan Bank Grant to expand their housing rehabilitation  program. Swift County HRA participated in MHP’s Housing Institute in 2019.

The grant, just shy of $500,000 will help Swift County expand its housing rehabilitation project. The fiunds will help low-income homeowners with much needed repairs and support county efforts to purchase and rehab a home in the county. 

Many rural HRAs and EDAs in Minnesota face dwindling federal financial resources and have staff resources that are stretched to capacity. This makes competing for scarce resources in complex development environments extremely challenging resulting in lack of ability to maintain aging housing stock or create new affordable housing opportunities to meet local needs.  

MHP’s Housing Institute uses a collaborative, team-based learning model supplemented with customized assistance including information and skills around the FHLB process. The Institutes also enhance community capacity by bringing together teams focused on creating and preserve affordable housing. The model builds local knowledge and capacity and provides opportunity to identify and leverage community resources.  

“We learned about the FHLB program during our participation in the Minnesota Housing Partnership’s Housing Institute in 2017-2018, and we were lucky to find we had a FHLB member bank in Swift County,” said Jennifer Frost, Executive Director, Swift County RDA.

“It’s been difficult to attract new housing development given the costs to build against our market rents and sales prices so we have really gone after rehab dollars to improve the homes we have. Increasing the quality of our housing stock provides more options for families looking to live in Swift County. More options can help businesses attract employees they need to our communities.”

Learn more about Swift County’s efforts here. Learn more about MHP’s Housing Institutes here.