Amid discussion over the past couple months about the availability of affordable housing, the Brown County planning and zoning office received an offer of help.
A representative from Herman & Kittle Properties, an Indianapolis-based developer of multifamily housing, emailed planning and zoning on Sept. 18. Mike Rodriguez had read about the Area Plan Commission possibly limiting tourist homes because of concern about the effect they could be having on the overall housing market.
Rodriguez asked the planning office if it had interest in discussing a potential housing development in Brown County.
It is interested, wrote Chris Ritzmann, the county planning director.
Jim Kemp, president of the Brown County Redevelopment Commission, immediately set up a meeting with Rodriguez. Ritzmann also reached out to help answer any questions Herman & Kittle might have about zoning and development standards. Kemp met with the developer in late September and explained his desire to see some new affordable housing in Bean Blossom or Helmsburg.
“I’m still looking into these locations, but given a cursory look, it appears neither location has many amenities,” Rodriguez wrote to Ritzmann in a follow-up email on Oct. 5. “Typically, the Indiana Housing & Community Development Authority, the agency responsible for distributing these tax credits, really likes to see new development in areas with established amenities (grocery stores, retail, pharmacy, libraries, etc.).”
Helmsburg and Bean Blossom don’t have much in the way of amenities.
“In looking at these two sites, I don’t think the retail amenities exist to score this application high enough to be competitive,” he wrote.
He added that he could probably get something going in Nashville, but building in the outlying communities would be “difficult.”
“I will continue taking a look to see if we can work something out, but that was my initial thoughts in taking a look at the area,” Rodriguez wrote to Ritzmann.
What Herman & Kittle was looking for was five acres to build a 60-unit apartment building, Kemp said. Housing is a part of the redevelopment commission’s 2028 Bean Blossom-Helmsburg Revitalization concept, so it made sense to focus on that area, he said.
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Rodriguez returned to the county in mid-November to look at six other potential housing development sites nearer to Nashville with Ritzmann. Two of them were “really interesting,” Rodriguez said. However, he hadn’t talked to the owners of either land parcel, so he didn’t know if building there would actually be possible.
He planned to do some more research and follow up with county leaders after Thanksgiving.
One of the tools developers have to build affordable housing, such as apartments, is to use tax credits, which are distributed by the state and federal governments on a points-based application system.
Developers in Indiana apply to the Indiana Housing and Community Development Authority to try to get a share of tax credits. If they are successful, they can sell interest in their projects to companies that are looking to save on their taxes. This process offsets the cost of the project for the developer.
RealAmerica, a different property development company, built Willow Manor and Hawthorne Hills senior apartment buildings in Nashville and Forest Hills family apartments in Gnaw Bone using a similar process.
“They (the Indiana Housing and Community Development Authority) really like to see really infill sites that are a short commute, close to grocery stores, schools, post offices, things like that,” Rodriguez said. “With Bean Blossom you only have, like, a Dollar General and a church. … But in Nashville or outside of Nashville, as long as it’s within a mile or a mile and a half of the downtown core, we thought that would be favorable.”
The reasoning is that some people don’t have cars and need to be able to get what they need for daily living on their own power. Herman & Kittle has done some developments in rural Indiana communities, such as Clinton and Hartford City, but they’re not like Bean Blossom or Helmsburg in terms of geography or population, he said.
Even though RealAmerica was able to make building in Gnaw Bone work in 2010-11, that doesn’t mean that another developer could through tax credit financing because “every two years, they change the scorebook,” Rodriguez said.
Brad Meadows, communications director for the IHCDA, confirmed that “’desirable sites’ is a scoring category for the 2018-2019 Qualified Action Plan, and the tax credits are very competitive. If a project isn’t able to pick up points in this category, it may be at a competitive disadvantage,” he wrote.
There are other ways for developers to finance a low-income or workforce-type family housing development in a rural area through the IHCDA besides this program, Meadows added.
Before the IHCDA could help, though, the site would need to have water, sewer, electric and/or gas service, he wrote.
Helmsburg and Nashville have sewers in a limited area but no current plans or funding to expand them to undeveloped parcels. Bean Blossom has no sewers, but the Brown County Regional Sewer District board is working on a grant application to build them. Besides Gnaw Bone, there are no other public sewers in Brown County.
Kemp said that instead of running out and finding someone to build apartments or anything else right now, he’d like to see the county come together and decide “what do we want our county to look like?” Forming a long-term plan for what’s best for us would be a better move than seeing what we can get right now, he said.
Several of those planning efforts are under way, including one specifically about the housing market.
“Let’s take it 30 years from now. … You’re still here. You’ve got grandchildren. The real issue is, what are we doing today to make certain our county is sustainable and we’re headed off into a sustainable direction that benefits everyone?” he said. “So, let’s first begin with the end in mind, and look down the road 30 years and back up to where we are today, and make certain that the decisions we are making today are in alignment with what we want to create for ourselves long-term.”
