Northwest Kentucky Hands out Home Improvement Grants

• Author: Monica Jackson
• Posted: 2023-12-03

Since the Coronavirus pandemic hit at the start of last year, there have been billions of dollars handed out in grants to all sorts of different individuals, professions and institutions in order to help people during these difficult times. The real estate market was an area that received a lot of grant money and also a lot of government money, but this money rarely went to individual homeowners. It typically went to real estate firms and other businesses that buy and sell homes. However, as of Friday, June 12, the Owensboro City Commissioners have approved community catalyst grants for homeowners to improve their homes in the area.

The basic gist of this grant program is that people whose homes are worth more money are able to draw more equity, can refinance their homes easier, and generally do not fall into poverty and dire straits as often as people whose homes are worth less. Therefore, it stands to reason that offering some homeowners grants to handle home improvements will help to greatly boost the value of these homes, and thus offer more equity to a broader range of people.

However, it's not only the homeowner individually who benefits from these sorts of grants. Think of all the different construction companies that will now be hired by homeowners in order to fix things up. This is also a huge boon for the economy. As for every dollar that's given in grant money to homeowners for home improvements, this is a dollar that has to be spent on home improvement. So whether it's just buying supplies at a local store, or hiring companies, this grant money is also helping to keep the local economy flourishing. Lawmakers view this sort of measure as a win-win for everyone involved.

One of the drawbacks here, of course, is that we're talking about a very generalized area that's very small. To date, only $300,000 of private funding has been put into the fund. If homeowners got $10,000 to do repairs, then only 30 homeowners would be able to receive these grants. To add to how minimal this program currently is, the city has only released around $120,000 of the money for the grants. With the $300,000 in private money, and allocated public funds of an additional $750,000, the fund theoretically has over a million dollars to date, yet has only made around 10% of that funding available.

This is generally the case with any grants. They end up with $5 billion in their coffers, with less than $1 billion released. The city planners end up in bigger houses every time, however. Though we will reserve judgment for how this grant program will work, as it was only announced on June 12.

The grants come with stipulations, as briefly mentioned above. Not only will recipients be obligated to put this money into home improvements, but the system is going to operate much like an HMO health insurance plan, whereby recipients can only use the money for "Northwest NRSA" projects, and there is a defined scope of what can and cannot be done.

Luckily for residents, there are only around 750 households in the area that could possibly apply in the first place, and many of those homes are in good standing. So, the commission does not expect that it will need to award more than a 100 grants, give or take, to help the community.

The Expected Payoff for the State

As touched on above, home improvements can create individual equity for the homeowner, while also serving as stimulus for local businesses and the economy. Though it's also the long-term ramifications that the commission hopes to enjoy here. A community that's entirely improved and upgraded is a community that attracts more home-buyers and better businesses, and this could cascade into a lot of prosperity for this particular community.

Some see how easy this is on a per-community basis, in terms of raising a few million dollars, and so they're shocked that more cities do not try these sorts of things. A city like New York, for instance, never turns money over to the hands of its homeowners but instead would allow government to retain entire control over the effort, which leads to those people ending up with new homes, and the supposed recipients not getting much of anything, as mentioned earlier.

Hopefully the community in Ownesboro City will flourish and thrive thanks to these homeowner grants.