Blount nonprofit building homes with $800,000 grant

Close to $1 million in grant funds are flowing into affordable housing in Blount County. A Blount County nonprofit recently won over $800,000 to build four new homes, and the organization’s leadership say that those homes are the beginning of a broader project.

The Tennessee Housing Development Agency earlier this year awarded Foothills Community Development Corporation $813,000 through its HOME grant to support new construction. The money stems from the federal Department of Housing and Urban Development. THDA Community Outreach Liaison Katie Moore presented the check to FCDC staff Tuesday, July 2.

Once the four homes are constructed and sold, FCDC will use the proceeds to build again. The idea, FCDC Executive Director Bobby Eason said, is that after FCDC builds a home and sells it, “We recapture some of that (grant) money. If we apply for the funds once, we use the money twice. So, by extension, there’ll be eight homes constructed over the course of a few years.”

Eason acknowledged in a June interview with The Daily Times that the funding alone isn’t enough to solve what’s proven to be a serious housing crunch stretching across much of the East Tennessee region. But it represents some real progress, he commented. “The real impact is: If we get these funds, move the money, spend it, are successful with it, then that leverages into more. We can have multiple home grants going to the program at any given time,” he explained.

“That’s a big chunk of money. We can do a lot of good with it,” he said.

Building

“If you get two or three home grants at different points throughout the program, then you’re really starting to build some volume,” Eason said.

Some of the new houses will be built on land FCDC owns in the Heritage Crossing neighborhood. Others will be built on Martha Neoma Street in Maryville, Eason said. Each home will be designed for one family’s use.

Through the summer, FCDC staff will work on contracts and environmental reviews for the new homes. Eason said in June he hoped that the houses would be nearly finished within nine months.

There’s a popular understanding of affordable housing, and then there are legal metrics underlying the definition, he noted. At times, the popular understanding can lead to misconceptions about who needs affordable housing and how much of the population needs it. Average mortgage payments for people in one of FCDC’s home ownership programs run between $800-$1,000 monthly, Eason told the newspaper last year.

And the first of the homes FCDC has built in recent years — which was part of a program involving the U.S. Department of Agriculture, which backed the mortgage for the house — sold for $315,000, according to public property records.

Housing crunch

As of July 2023, U.S. Census Bureau data reflected 63,076 individual housing units in Blount County, an area with a population that then registered at 141,456. It’s a situation that some in Blount’s affordable housing space have attributed to low housing inventory.

Across the U.S. and in Tennessee, the problem is also characterized by rising prices. A May 2024 Market Pulse report from East Tennessee REALTORS, a real estate trade association, indicates that average home prices — now $365,000 — jumped by 8.96% over the past year.

Moore told the newspaper after the check presentation that the issues facing Blount County are mirrored throughout the region. With rising populations, she noted, pressure increases.

“It’s truly what faces all. It’s the expense of home ownership. What was more affordable a few years ago, even if it still wasn’t truly affordable, is out of reach now. Programs like this that can help folks, that can keep costs down, they’re essential,” she said.

Some recent state legislation is meant to ease regulatory burdens on builders, who are then meant to pass their savings along to buyers. State Rep. Jerome Moon, who attended the check presentation Tuesday, told the newspaper that the new laws range from relaxing sprinkler requirements for some multi-family housing to changing the number of stairways required in new construction, under specific circumstances.

The problem is a traditional economic puzzle, Moon noted. “The demand is still greater than supply,” he said.