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Berrien County holds public hearing on CDBG ‘‘program income’’ emergency home-repair assistance
Summary
County staff described eligibility and limits of a small ‘‘program income’’ fund from recycled Community Development Block Grant investments that the county uses for emergency home repairs for low- and moderate-income homeowners outside Benton Harbor and Niles.
Berrien County commissioners convened a public hearing during their regular meeting to review use of Community Development Block Grant (CDBG) “program income” for emergency homeowner repairs, county staff said.
County housing staff member Katie Montoya described the program’s purpose and limits, telling commissioners the funds are recycled repayments from previous CDBG-assisted home repairs and are earmarked for urgent threats to health and safety in owner-occupied homes outside the cities of Benton Harbor and Niles.
Montoya said the county uses the funds for immediate repairs such as roof and plumbing work, septic replacement, furnace or heating-system replacement, and accessibility improvements such as ramps. She said the county applies HUD’s Part 5 annual gross-income definition to determine eligibility and limits households to 80% of area median income based on household size. Montoya said a single-person household making “about $48,000” gross would likely qualify under that test, and she noted that figure was an approximate threshold used in her explanation.
Under the program as described at the hearing, projects costing $2,500 or less are paid as grants; projects above $2,500 are secured by a mortgage or lien. Montoya said 50% of a mortgage investment is forgiven after five years; the remaining amount is repaid when the property is sold or transferred and then returned to the county to be recycled into the program. She said the county had $42,835 in program-income funds available this year and that since February 2023 it had reinvested $80,636 to assist 10 households. Montoya estimated the current funding could assist four to five homes.
Commissioners pressed staff on whether the county could target the emergency funds to specific neighborhoods. Montoya said state guidance from the Michigan State Housing Development Authority (MSHDA) and the structure of program income require the county to reserve those dollars for emergency repairs; if the county did not use the funds as program income for emergencies it might have to return them to the state, she said. She added that other county and land-bank resources have been used for non-emergency repairs, and she listed an additional $472,000 in recent CDBG funding and $300,000 received by the land bank as other, non-program-income resources available for broader housing repairs.
The public hearing was opened and closed by formal motions of the board; commissioners then returned to the regular session and committee work.
The county staff presentation, eligibility criteria and funding limits were described at the hearing; no new ordinance, rule or county-wide funding commitment was adopted at the meeting.
