By COLE REIF
Great Bend Post
With a pursuit to develop more housing, the Great Bend City Council received a lesson in Rural Housing Incentive Districts (RHID) at Monday’s work session.
Mollea Wainscott with the Dodge City Ford County Development Corporation gave the council information on how the RHID could work for the Amber Meadows subdivision in Great Bend, just north of Veterans Memorial Park.
The Dodge City area has been using the RHID since 2009, and Wainscott estimated thousands of homes have been developed because of the incentive program.
The RHID captures the incremental increase in a housing development to pay off
the infrastructure costs for 25 years, such as streets, curbs, water and sewer.
Then that cost is not turned over to the homeowner. All taxing entities forgo
the taxes on the new homes for up to 25 years or until the public
infrastructure is paid off. Wainscott said this provides a financing tool for
cities and developers to address housing shortages.
"Our need is all over the board for multi-family, single-family, low-income to high income," said Wainscott. "We allow our developers to build whatever they want to build. We don't have any regulations on it has fall in between a certain price point."
Great Bend Economic Development Director Sara Arnberger said a housing study showed Great Bend was need of housing between $180,000 and $330,000.
Justin Joiner, with Joiner Construction, mentioned their business is interested
in creating housing in the Amber Meadows subdivision.
The developer usually petitions the city for general obligation bonds. The city would then put the infrastructure in for the developer.
If approved, the City of Great Bend would put the infrastructure in and Joiner Construction would have to pay the city between 25-35% of the infrastructure costs up front. Once Joiner builds 25-35% of the homes, the city gives the upfront costs back to the developer.
There are approximately
60 vacant lots in Amber Meadows owned by the city, and councilmember Alan
Moeder felt this was a good plan to create housing.
"Property tax will still be paid, but the property tax will go back to pay the bond," said Moeder. "The plus out of this is we get housing and we have jobs for people to build the housing. We're short of housing, so this to me is a no-brainer."
Great Bend will look at the next steps to getting an RHID in place at Amber
Meadows.