By BRENT MARTIN
St. Joseph Post
Four St. Joseph women, all professionals in their field, hope to resurrect vacant housing and introduce residents to home buying as they push the recently formed Housing Improvement Initiative.
One of them, Ashley Albers, Vice President of Human Resources for Nor-Am Cold Storage, says the initiative isn’t just focusing on rehabilitating houses left vacant, but also educating employees of Nor-Am and Lifeline Foods on the ins and outs of buying and owning a home, some of whom have never even thought about owning before.
“And that’s kind of the response we got from our employees was, I didn’t think that was an option for me. No one in my family has ever bought a house before. We’ve just always been renters. Is that even an option?” Albers tells host Barry Birr on the KFEQ Hotline. “That’s been really kind of heartwarming to talk to people that never thought they had that choice.”
At present, the educational courses are offered to employees of Nor-Am and Lifeline, but Albers says the group would like to expand the courses to others.
Albers recalls a conversation she had with someone getting ready to complete the course.
“One of them said I have my eye on a house over in this neighborhood. I’m not ready for probably the next six months, but I’m going to buy a house in the next six to 12 months,” Albers says. “And he had been renting for seven years and had no idea that he even had that as an option.”
Albers says she along with Sarah Weaver, a commercial real estate agent, and Lifeline Foods CFO Michelle Clark, and Buchanan County Auditor Tara Horn began talking last spring about how St. Joseph could expand short-term rentals for the bicyclists coming to St. Joseph to ride the newly created River Bluff Trails Park. Albers says the four considered how to get their hands on some of the dilapidated houses in the city, fix them up, and create new short-term rental units.
That conversation snowballed and the Housing Improvement Initiative was formed.
The initiative, a nonprofit, has two main goals. One is to acquire rundown property with potential and upgrade them for resell. The second is to educate life-long renters on how they can become home owners. Together those goals will work to increase the housing stock in St. Joseph as well as get residents more vested in the community through home ownership.
The group will acquire property through a number of avenues, including the Buchanan County property tax sale and use of the Missouri Abandoned Housing Act. It will educate would-be homeowners through an intense training course that teaches the basics of buying a home as well as the budgeting needed to keep up with mortgage payments and maintenance.
Weaver tells Birr the group began by surveying what St. Joseph properties might fit their criteria.
“So, if there are homes in this community that have been vacant for six year, 10 years, 12 years and they’re not paying their property taxes, there’s obviously property maintenance that has been deferred, those are the ones we have identified as properties that we would really like to acquire and work on putting back onto the tax roll and instilling pride of ownership back in that neighborhood, too,” Weaver says.
The Housing Improvement Initiative is working with public officials as well as representatives in the banking, real estate, and insurance industries.