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County committee hears community development report highlighting $850,000 Heart and Homestead round and NextGen housing progress
Summary
Community Development staff told the Land Use & Planning Committee the Heart and Homestead program will open April 7 with funding for 42 incentives totaling $850,000; since launch the program has awarded nearly $3 million to 151 recipients. Staff also reported NextGen housing has funded 185 units since 2021, with 43% of buyers relocating from outside Washington County.
Deb Silski, a community development staff member, told the Washington County Land Use & Planning Committee that the Heart and Homestead program will open its next round on April 7 at 10:00 a.m. and that the county has funding available to support 42 incentives totaling $850,000 for this round. “We have enough funding for 42 more incentives um at $850,000,” Silski said.
Silski said demand has been strong: the department maintains a notification list of more than 300 people and the last round filled in about an hour. Since the program’s launch, she said, the county has awarded almost $3 million to 151 recipients; those recipients have volunteered more than 16,000 hours with partner nonprofit agencies and donated more than $100,000 back to participating agencies.
Why this matters: county staff framed the program as both a preservation and workforce‑attraction tool, noting 34% of recipients moved into Washington County from outside the county after participating. “It is definitely being impactful to our communities,” Silski said, linking the incentives to volunteer placements with local nonprofits.
In the same update, Silski reviewed NextGen housing outcomes. Since the program began in 2021, staff said, it has funded 185 units across five sites; 65 units have closed and staff reported that 43% of those buyers came from outside Washington County. Silski and senior municipal planner Hannah Kekisen also noted that shared planning services with the towns of Richfield, Jackson and Addison have produced municipal cost savings (Kekisen’s work was cited as delivering more than $70,000 in savings for municipalities that used the county’s planning service).
Committee members asked operational questions. Supervisor Mary asked whether partner agencies are recruited or self‑select; Silski said both: staff initially recruited organizations, and many partners now request inclusion after seeing program benefits. Silski described an online portal partners use to verify volunteer hours and said partner agencies retain responsibility for recordkeeping and verification. “This whole process is all automated…there’s still oversight and we do an audit,” she said.
The committee did not take formal action on the report; staff invited members to request additional detail and said materials in the packet provide more metrics and program documentation.
