HCHD receives lot from City of Humboldt

By: Donovan W. Mann – [email protected]

Humboldt, IA – the city has granted a lot to Humboldt County Housing Development for a single family home.

On Monday, March 2, The Humboldt City Council approved the sale of property locally known as 901 Taft Street North to the Humboldt County Housing Development. City Administrator Travis Geodken says “they want to partner with the city to utilize tiff (low moderate income) funds”.

He says that Humboldt County Housing wants to use an online program known as Rural Housing 360 to build a single family home. “It’s a state initiative were people can go essentially online and basically buy your house online” Goedken says. While Humboldt is partnered in this program there has yet to be a house built through it.

Humboldt County Housing is the second to have received the deed for 901 Taft from the city in the past couple years. According to Goedken a couple years ago Habitat for Humanity issued a request for proposal (RFP) when the city first claimed the property. However, Habitat failed to demolition the current house that stands there in a timely manner and were required to deed the property back to the city.

This time around the city received two RFPs and accepted the offer from Humboldt County Housing to purchase the lot of $1. They are required to follow through with removing the old building and building the single family home in its place.

The second offer was from an individual with neighboring property who wished to acquire 20 square feet over the property line and has requested that the city ask Humboldt County Housing if they were willing to allow him to purchase that specific area of land.

At this time there is no official time table for when Humboldt County Housing plans to demo the current building and have the new home built.