By MATT PIKE
St. Joseph Post
A local group is working to provide affordable housing to those searching to become homeowners in St. Joseph.
Ashley Albers of the Housing Improvement Initiative says the group also provides education for those looking to purchase their first home.
"Just to help people who are maybe generational renters or who have never thought that owning a home was something that was in the cards for them," Albers tells host of the KFEQ Hotline Barry Birr. "That they can learn what it takes, what the process looks like, what kind of paperwork they need to have together, and just to know what this big scary process really is when it's broken down to them in small chunks."
Albers says the group finished its first courses last fall and will move into this year hoping to expand courses.
Sarah Weaver, with the Housing Improvement Initiative, says a big driving factor of the group is making St. Joseph a thriving, robust community, but it is aware that housing is a huge issue.
"Across the board, pretty much every category that you're looking at there's room to grow and improve in that," Weaver explains. "So, I think just us kind of driving around and seeing the need of how can we revitalize some of these neighborhoods."
Weaver says the group hopes to change the community by providing affordable housing, working one house at a time to help improve the city.
Albers says currently the group is constructing two homes, but there are several other projects in the works.
"We own an empty lot that we're looking at options to putting something onto, there's a slab there now, " Albers says. "And then we also acquired two properties through the tax sale this year, but obviously there's a waiting period before you can do anything with those tax sale properties, so they're kind of like halfers we don't really count them as projects quite yet because we can't really touch them."
If you know of a house that you believe to be vacant, you can report it to the group on its website housingimprovementinitiative.com