Officials discuss CHIP funding

County plans to request $1M

Lorain County plans to request $1 million in funding from the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development, according to a public hearing at the commissioners’ April 25 meeting.

Don Romancak, community development director of the county, said the funding would be administered through the Community Housing Impact and Preservation Program, or CHIP, and would include both HOME funding as well as Community Development Block Grants, or CDBGs. He said HOME funds are “targeted strictly” for bringing houses up to code and tenant-based rental assistance and CDBGs are used for home repairs.

He said the county plans to partner with Oberlin and Sheffield Lake to receive the funds. If the county had applied for the funding alone, it would only be able to apply for $400,000, whereas each city would be able to apply for up to $300,000 apiece for fiscal year 2018.

Romancak said the county is able to apply for the funds every other year and has reached an agreement with the state that Lorain County will be the lead in applying.

He said there is no guarantee the county will receive the money due to the competitive nature of the program, but if the county does receive the funds, it will be administered over 26 months, beginning Sept. 1, 2018, and ending Oct. 31, 2020.

“We anticipate we would accept applications beginning in November and our first dollars spent would be committed in December, probably January,” Romancak said.

He explained the funds will be used for four different kinds of projects — private owner-occupied rehabilitation, home repair, tenant based rental assistance and rental repair.

• Private owner-occupied housing: “That’s where we take a house and completely rehab it so when we leave it meets code,” Romancak explained. The county is seeking $573,000 in HOME funds for this program which will help a minimum of 15 units, five in the county, five in Oberlin in five in Sheffield Lake.

• Home repair: “Where we do one or two simple repairs, we replace a furnace or do a roof,” Romancak said. The county is seeking $264,000 for 23 units, nine in the county, seven in Oberlin and seven in Sheffield Lake.

• Rental repair: “We are looking to, perhaps, work with a non-profit that owns homes that are made available for rent to low income people or families,” Romancak

said. The county is seeking $28,000 for three units, one in the county, one in Oberlin and one in Sheffield Lake.

• Tenant based rental assistance: “We’ll partner with Lorain Metropolitan Housing Authority,” Romancak said. “This is something that we’ve been doing for years and has been very successful in getting people get into that housing, typically, with either a security deposit or utility deposits, these kinds of things.” The county is seeking $15,000 in HOME funds for 15 units, five in the county, five in Oberlin and five in Sheffield Lake.

Applications will be accepted for homes anywhere in the county except Lorain and Elyria, which Romancak said receives money directly from the federal government in these programs. Vermilion is also excluded because it has partnered with Erie County.

Commissioner Matt Lundy called for local contractors to be hired to do the work as a measure to keep this money local.

Romancak said the consulting group the county used this year to formulate the programs will help to expand the county’s list of contractors because they’ve previously worked with Erie County.

“Let me make this crystal clear: I’m not interested in Erie County contractors,” Lorain County Administrator James Cordes said. “If I see an abundance of them, I’m not going to be a happy person.”

Romancak mentioned the state’s adoption of a federal standard stating any contractor who works for the program must be certified to deal with leadbased paint has hindered local contractors from taking part.

“One of the things that drives us nuts is how we can’t get a roofer,” he said. “There aren’t many roofers that are interested in leadbased paint certification because they don’t touch leadbased paint in 99.9 percent of the projects they touch.”

Cordes offered to sponsor the lead-based paint certification

training.

“We have the funds to put into this to put on a free day for employers that want to send their employees,” he said. “The partnership is they would have to pay the employees, we would pay for the training.

“Anything we can do to improve the depth of work that’s being done in Lorain County.”

In other news, Cordes and Romancak spoke about a preapplication the county is making in partnership with North Ridgeville.

“What we were proposing to do is to use existing infrastructure, such as our water treatment plants and wastewater treatment plants, where you have a natural flow of water, and install small generators that would be able to produce electricity to make our plants and that key infrastructure more resilient, reduce their operating costs and then provide environmental benefits,” Romancak said.

Cordes said the system would work similar to a hybrid car, which generates power through braking and other processes and feeds it back into the vehicle.

“We’re looking at discharge of all of this water product at a very rapid rate and not using that generated energy to recapture that generated energy and power back into the system.

“I don’t know if there’s anyone around here doing that,” Cordes said.

The grant would be for $750,000, and if the preapplication — just a cover letter and three pages — is approved, the county will be free to apply for the grant.