MOULTRIE – The absence of city and county representatives was noticed at the Archway Partnership Housing Work Group meeting held last Wednesday.

During the meeting, Vice Chair of NAMI Moultrie Lynn Wilson said, “I have a question. I’m not familiar with everyone in the room and I want to ask this question first. Is there anyone in this room, right now, representing the city or county?”

No one spoke up and said that they were but a couple of people said that there were no representatives from either agency.

“Well, that’s the problem, getting them to the table and who. Because they’re not coming,” said United Way Executive Director Caroline Horne. “We asked them.”

Then Wilson said, “Nothing that we can do or plan will work if the city or the county or both are not at the table.”

Colquitt County Archway Professional Sara Hand said, in January, there would be a Housing Summit and both entities would be invited to it.

“But, the other piece of that is what can the group do that doesn’t require them,” she said.

She went on to say that, at the summit, there would be UGA faculty that specialize in housing. She also said there were some other things that the non-profits in the community could do.

Department of Community Affairs programs

The guest speaker for last week’s meeting was Heather Sharpe, the Region 10 representative of the Department of Community Affairs.

“The Department of Community Affairs has a little over 70 programs, on any given year, that are sort of housed within our agency,” she said.

She went on to say that some of them were funding programs, some of them were incentive programs and some of them were partnership programs. She said that there were also programs that support local government. 

During the meeting, Sharpe focused only on the DCA programs that specifically deal with housing.

“So, the first thing I want to talk about is rental assistance because that’s what everyone seems to call us about,” she said and added that it’s what they have become known for.

The DCA’s primary means of rental assistance, she said, was through the Housing Choice Voucher Program, formerly called Section 8.

With this program, she said, a potential tenant received a voucher and then would look for a land-lord that was willing to accept it as either payment or partial payment. Individuals have to apply to be on a wait list to get a voucher and then they are chosen in a lottery where a name is pulled whenever a voucher becomes available.

“One of the things we desperately need or is needed, I should say, is we need more landlords in this program,” Sharpe said.

One of the resources that DCA has is the website georgiahousingsearch.org, which lists rental properties and offers a variety of different ways to search the database.

She moved on to programs that were for first home ownership, which included the Georgia Dream Program. This program offers downpayment assistance at different levels.

“This is aimed at first-time home buyers. We call ‘first time home buyers’ people who haven’t owned a home in more than three years,” she said.

Sharpe said that the DCA also oversaw a number of programs for what they called their “special populations,” which are for their homeless and special needs housing.

“One of them is our Emergency Solutions Grant Program. That’s used for funding shelter, rapid rehousing of individuals or homeless,” she said, adding that it wasn’t a direct fund to the individuals but to organizations doing emergency outreach.

She also said that the DCA has a Homeless Management Information System.

“It’s really hard to track homeless individuals,” she said. “You’re probably aware of that.”

She said they do have a methodology and they do work with communities to document the homeless as best they can.

The Reentry Partnership Housing Program helps individuals who are transitioning out of incarceration, she said, and she also mentioned the federally funded HUD 811 program.

As far as housing development, Sharpe said, the DCA primarily assisted communities with that in two ways: the Housing Tax Credit Program and the Community Home Investment Program.

The Housing Tax Credit Program encourages private investors to build or rehabilitate low-income rental housing.

“You have housing tax credit properties in your community already. They’re under the purview of our program for a certain amount of time and we oversee what’s going on with those units,” Sharpe said.

The Community Home Investment Program awards grants to city and county governments, public authorities and non-profits to build or renovate affordable homes to sell to homebuyers. She encouraged the group to look at the program and work with the local governments to apply for it.

She also told the group about a federally funded, temporary program called the Home American Rescue Plan. She said it was for building either rental housing or a non-congregate shelter, which is a family unit that had its own bedroom and bathroom behind a locked door instead of one big room with bunk beds.

This was targeted to individuals that are homeless, at risk of homelessness or fleeing domestic violence.

“It that’s something you’re interested in, I can get you in touch with the team that oversees that program,” she said.

Local government funding programs

She then talked about local government funding and the DCA’s community development block grants. The most well-known, Sharpe said, was the annual competitive round where local governments apply for funding to support activities like infrastructure development with a housing component.

“There are a couple of national objectives. One of those is the elimination of urban blight. One of those is assisting low to moderate income individuals with job creation or safe, affordable housing,” she said.

She told the group that meeting like they were doing was a way that they could talk about how to put a plan into place to address the homeless issue.

She also said that homelessness could be defined in different ways from living on the street to couch surfing or staying somewhere that’s not intended for permanent housing.

“And those are all issues that you’re probably facing in your community,” she said and added that the programs she had just talked about could help them address those issues.

Horne motioned to a slide that was being shown. “This funding right here, I know our community receives it,” she said.

Then Horne asked if they had to be a city or a county to apply for the funds and Sharpe responded that funding was available to an eligible applicant.

“Some cases, it’s a unit of government and/or another organization,” she said, motioning to the slide. “For this particular funding, this is federal funding. The federal government tells us how we can do it.”

She said that it was only available to a municipality or a unit of government like a county.

“Now how do we talk our county into letting us use it for other than roads and bridges?” Horne asked and Sharpe responded, “That’s a good question.”

Sharpe went on to say that, for each program, they needed to know who was eligible to apply. She said they needed to come together and talk about what their plan was, what’s out there to help and who has access to it.

“Just because the local government has access to it doesn’t mean you can’t partner with them and do something,” she said.

However, she did agree that they needed to have everyone at the table from the community’s leadership which included the local government.

“You’re going to have to have support from you local government to access some of these programs,” Sharpe said.

City and County Comprehensive Plan

Then, Sharpe asked the participants if they were involved with their local comprehensive planning process and no one spoke up. She also asked them if they knew where to access the plan and got the same response.

She told them that both the city and the county were required, by law, to turn in a comprehensive plan that has to go through a certain type of planning process and then give an update to the state at regular intervals.

“So you ask, ‘How do we convince them to spend the money on something else?’ You show up to the meeting when they’re doing the planning and you tell them it’s important,” she said.

She told the group that the comprehensive plans were available on the DCA’s website and Hand told the group that she could send the plans out to them.

Sharpe encouraged the group to read the plan and look at what the city and county said their plans were for the next five or ten years because those were their priorities.

She said that, in the planning process, the city and county could look at what the community says is a priority, then put it as a priority in the plan and then, they can ask for the funds to achieve it.

Hand told the group that she had been looking at the plan and had pulled out a list of implementation activities that were identified for all the municipalities, including Moultrie and the county, that were related to housing. She said that there were about 25 or 30 and they were not necessarily building more housing.

She then said that it would be discussed in more detail at the January Housing Summit. She also said that she would send the invitation to the summit to the group and they could forward it to any elected officials they thought needed to be there. She said that she would reach out to County Administrator Chas Cannon and encourage him to send a representative.

“The planning person for the City and the County are on the list already for this. So, they’ll also get the invitation,” Hand said.

Wilson said, “It’s not like they’re unaware. Me, I just have a personal interest. I’ve already met with Chas. I met with Pete Dillard. I met with Amy Johnson. They’re aware there’s a need. So, if they can’t be here, they need to send someone to represent them.”