Housing Rehabilitation Program

The City of Wyoming's housing rehabilitation program is one of many Success Stories that have been locally nominated for recognition in celebration of CDBG's 30th Anniversary.

Success Story Details

Success Story Description

The City of Wyoming operates two CDBG-funded homeowner housing rehabilitation programs. Both have a $15,000 loan limit. For moderate-income families, the loan is for 15 years, at three-percent interest. For low-income families, the loan is interest free, with 10% of the loan amount forgiven per year for the first five years of the loan, with the remaining 50% due upon the sale of the property. Over 28 years, over 1,000 loans have been made, totaling $11.3 million, averaging about 36 loans per year, with only four defaults to date. This CDBG loan program, coupled with an estimated 3:1 multiplier for private non-CDBG homeowner housing improvements (keeping up with the neighbors), is the primary reason there are no blighted areas in Wyoming. A staff of 2.5 people administers the program. The program is unique in that the staff handles all aspects of the program—application intake, contractor qualifying, specifications writing, job bidding, loan approval, lead based paint risk assessment and clearance, monitoring of contractor work and final inspection, loan closing and loan servicing.

Since the CDBG housing rehabilitation loan program was one of the first such programs, City Staff had to also be innovative in the documenting portion of the loan program. A streamlined computer database and form-generation program was developed (and refined on numerous occasions) to simplify the entire process from applicant intake to loan payment tracking with minimal human effort. The program not only produces numerous forms related to loan closing and construction aspects of the rehabilitation phase of each case, but also continues during the loan servicing phase to track loan payments, create late loan letters and produce late loan lists. Writing of the rehabilitation specifications was also streamlined. The Microsoft^® Word AutoText feature was used to create 50 stock work specification paragraphs, with few "write-ins" necessary, saving staff time and allowing contractors to quickly become familiar with their work requirements.

In 2001, the City of Wyoming received an "Innovative Initiatives" award from the Grand Rapids HUD office for this long-running program.