CLYDE – The City of Clyde will receive a $602,000 Welcome Home Ohio Program grant for the construction of six homes.
“That’s big. That will enable us to build some affordable housing on some of our municipal owned lots, where we’ve taken abandoned homes down and taken possession of the property,” Clyde Mayor Doug McCauley said. “The Welcome Home Ohio grant is really big because we need housing in this community. We need not just subsidized housing, but affordable housing.”
The grant comes from the Ohio Department of Development.
Gov. Mike DeWine and Ohio Department of Development Director Lydia Mihalik announced $27 million in grants May 29 for Ohio for communities in 57 counties as part of the latest round of the grant program.
The grants are meant to expand access to safe, affordable housing.
“We’ve been chasing that for the last couple of years. We were successful this year. We’ve had a lot of letters of support,” McCauley said. “With Whirlpool expanding and adding employees, you need places to live that is on that pay scale. Building a $300 per square foot home is not realistic at that pay scale.”
McCauley estimates that as much as 60% of Whirlpool employees commute from outside the city limits to go to work.
“This is going to enable us, over the next year or two, to get six affordable homes built,” McCauley said.
He said the model for their program is the City of Sandusky, where they have been putting in modular homes.
“Over the last couple of years they have been building these modular homes that are really quite attractive,” McCauley said. “This grant will help to subsidize the purchase of these homes. There’s a whole set of criteria that goes with that, with financial literacy of course being a major one. This will allow people to get into a home and not just a rental.”
The WHO grant funds can only be used to buy qualifying residential property at foreclosure sales, the rehabilitation or construction of qualifying property and up to $2,000 of each grant may be used to fund the financial literacy counseling requirement.
Funding for the program was passed by the Ohio General Assembly in the state’s biennium budget bill and signed by Governor DeWine last year.
“Whether it’s supporting workforce needs, attracting new residents to Ohio or helping longtime residents stay in the communities they love, housing matters,” DeWine said. “The projects we support through Welcome Home Ohio create safe and affordable housing options for families today, while building momentum for future generations to live their very best lives.”
Contact Roger LaPointe at 419-332-2674.
This article originally appeared on Fremont News-Messenger: Clyde awarded $602,000 housing grant
Reporting by Roger LaPointe, Fremont News-Messenger / Fremont News-Messenger
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