Community Tools to Develop Housing

Jenny Nixon Author

10/03/2024 Added

9 Plays

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Extension Educator Jason Tuller discusses tools that communities can use to develop housing. Recorded 3/8/2023.

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[00:00:00.000]and Jason go ahead I was trying to press that leave meeting button when it said record but
[00:00:08.240]you know so anyway uh so my name is Jason Tuller and I'm a rural prosperity Nebraska educator
[00:00:15.940]in Thayer County Nebraska based in Hebron kind of south central Nebraska I cover a 10 county area
[00:00:24.040]from more or less from Crete to Minden and then south but previous to this I was the economic
[00:00:30.920]development director um for the city of Imperial um in western Nebraska so during that time we did
[00:00:39.340]some housing projects and so I'll just talk about those um and kind of the the projects that we did
[00:00:45.740]and how we did them although it's been a while and my memory is not as good as it used to be
[00:00:53.220]or maybe
[00:00:54.020]it was never very good but we'll talk about it and then we can go into some questions
[00:00:59.320]let me share my screen here
[00:01:01.980]so for those of you that aren't familiar with Imperial this is Imperial
[00:01:08.880]I guess that's not a good way to show
[00:01:13.340]but Imperial's here Colorado Kansas close to
[00:01:24.000]nowhere you really got to try to get to Imperial
[00:01:27.800]but we did some projects and just to give you an idea of about Imperial
[00:01:35.540]south here is industrial it's your grain elevators things like that
[00:01:42.040]there's some retail but also kind of ag related
[00:01:46.080]stuff on the edges of town we've got this big giant alien space
[00:01:53.980]spaceship is million-dollar homes this and this is Google Maps with pretty
[00:02:02.100]dated but there's a new million-dollar home here there's a new million-dollar
[00:02:06.540]home here young farmers who are a little bit competitive and so they built bigger
[00:02:16.040]houses than the other person did so this is a million-dollar home there's
[00:02:23.960]a hospital and then throughout the town there are just you know just normal
[00:02:32.740]houses but let me see but this is a trailer park okay this is one of our
[00:02:42.060]worst trailer parks it's not this full anymore we've done some some cleanup
[00:02:48.580]there but there's there's one here there's another one maybe that's
[00:02:53.940]it's hard to see from the sky but there were three trailer parks in
[00:03:00.020]town this is a bad one okay that was the good one I got confused on where it
[00:03:07.680]was this is the good one this is a bad one and there was another
[00:03:14.580]one right here and you can see how close they are so you have some extremely
[00:03:23.920]rich people in Imperial and some extremely poor this one is mostly is
[00:03:31.000]owned by a Hispanic man and houses mostly migrant workers so they work at
[00:03:40.560]generally at the potato plant so we have Frenchman Valley produce they have a
[00:03:45.340]potato plant there and potatoes that you'll find in the grocery store they
[00:03:50.960]used to be Imperial brand but they've changed brands now
[00:03:53.900]so when I started in Imperial this was a wheat field you can still see the rings
[00:04:02.820]around there that was the center pivot my very first day was a meeting with the
[00:04:08.640]City Council arguing on whether or not to pave this street they had decided to
[00:04:15.800]build the street because we had a developer coming in to build these
[00:04:19.760]houses and I half won the argument
[00:04:23.880]they paved and you can see it in this picture they paved to here the rest is
[00:04:29.380]ground I think they have paved it since I left but they wanted the rest gravel
[00:04:37.760]so they can continue to farm in the places that they hadn't sold that was
[00:04:42.260]kind of the argument that that I faced in City Council we had a developer come
[00:04:47.720]in and build these houses so these two four
[00:04:53.860]six eight ten houses are low-income housing and he used a combination of
[00:05:01.860]grant funds tax we use some TIF money on it we but the TIF money was used for the
[00:05:10.440]paving and utilities and he used oh shoot low-income housing tax credits on
[00:05:19.260]those and eight of those houses are low-income and
[00:05:23.840]two of those are regular rate rentals but it doesn't matter which ones so
[00:05:29.260]they're all high quality homes and then these four he built as spec homes
[00:05:35.540]as you can see in this picture this one sold quickly this one sold next and these two sold
[00:05:42.940]later but they were all sold very quickly much quicker than anybody in town thought they would
[00:05:48.960]sell and this is how this developer makes money is that
[00:05:53.820]he doesn't make a lot of money on these enough to do the you know keep them up but then he makes
[00:06:00.620]money on on the the side homes and this developer was Matt Thomas these 14 houses
[00:06:07.280]were as the smallest development he ever did and the smallest community he ever worked in was
[00:06:14.100]Imperial he since came back he built four more houses
[00:06:18.980]I think
[00:06:23.800]and we use a different program on those
[00:06:27.120]but so some of the problems you hit with with housing is infrastructure and infrastructure costs
[00:06:35.140]so we do use LB 840 money in Imperial some communities can use that some can't
[00:06:43.580]it depends how your LB 840 program is written we use TIF and TIF money in housing is pretty
[00:06:53.780]small so like right here Heather Estates was that first project we had an initial value of the land
[00:07:03.540]of $15,504 finished project value of $419,000 and then that's our TIF levy and how many years of TIF
[00:07:13.000]we had remaining once the project was finished so total project for TIF is almost $90,000
[00:07:23.760]and the utilities underneath it were significantly more than that we're talking a million dollars
[00:07:30.220]I cannot find that the old news articles that said how much it was and we did some other projects
[00:07:36.520]combining with this but the housing lots are not what make the TIF this is actually
[00:07:43.700]a mixed use development park and so this section south was industrial this is kind of more a
[00:07:53.740]section leaving this small part for housing. We did end up selling some of these lots over here
[00:08:01.500]you know built a building it burned down they had to rebuild because of insurance
[00:08:11.300]so that was an interesting process there. This Hayden Outdoors is actually right here
[00:08:19.580]but Farm Credit Services they built a three
[00:08:23.720]million dollar building right here and so that
[00:08:29.380]is significantly more TIF money okay so we're talking nine hundred thousand dollars of TIF
[00:08:38.540]but they had a 3.9 million dollar building permit is what their building permit was for
[00:08:45.660]and that's how I did these calculations and the problem is that TIF money doesn't go off
[00:08:53.700]building costs it goes off valuation and in rural Nebraska you get the farm credit services building
[00:09:02.140]and the valuation ended up at 1.6 million dollars so the valuation for property tax purposes and TIF
[00:09:11.780]is almost half of what they put into it less than half so that also happens with housing
[00:09:23.680]I was working when I was in Imperial I worked also with the West Central Nebraska Development
[00:09:30.980]District and we put a house in it's not going to show up is it down in Binkleman so we got some
[00:09:44.380]funding from a bank and and from some other sources and we put in a house in an infill lot in Binkleman
[00:09:53.660]and we bought a pre-manufactured home that was on sale and it was somebody that's somebody bought
[00:10:01.780]it had it built and then didn't take delivery of it and we got a lot donated the CRA that's in
[00:10:11.800]charge of TIF in that town did the utility work to get the lot ready to go I think they also did
[00:10:23.640]so we moved that house in it was at a we built it at a discount
[00:10:31.600]problem was Binkman hadn't had a new house built in that town for decades
[00:10:38.000]literally and so there were no comps the house sold immediately for cash to a couple from
[00:10:46.520]Colorado and so they didn't need an appraisal so there was no appraisal done
[00:10:53.620]but so the assessor did the did the valuation based off of the
[00:11:00.700]cash value that they paid which was at a discount and because we used TIFs and grants for it
[00:11:08.920]and so then the house became undervalued at the assessor's office so that if someone else
[00:11:17.440]would come to town and built a new house and needed a bank appraisal
[00:11:23.600]it would be undervalued because that comp is there now at an undervalue so that's a problem
[00:11:29.440]I see in rural Nebraska in housing is that when we do all these grants and give discounted housing
[00:11:36.820]well we're also undermining the valuation of our homes in those areas and we need to figure out a
[00:11:43.740]and I don't know how to do that so if anybody's got great ideas we'll take them but
[00:11:51.900]um
[00:11:53.580]so
[00:11:54.920]LB 840 we use for infrastructure um we use TIF and you know we got when I was there was when all
[00:12:05.340]the TIF brouhaha was going on and we got pulled in front of uh
[00:12:10.140]not we had to fill out a survey for the legislature to prove that our TIF projects were okay
[00:12:17.420]um other than filling out the form wrong because it was confusing um
[00:12:23.560]we were we did what we needed to do this land had been in the city limits for more than 40 years
[00:12:30.200]and unimproved so it qualified um as TIF um some other communities had different problems going on
[00:12:38.720]there but um so one of the things I learned when doing this project is that you have to have a plan
[00:12:45.920]and it has to be a long-term plan especially for utilities um these 14 houses
[00:12:53.540]um plus the the industrial uh building that went in here put imperial to the limit on electric
[00:13:06.380]utilities that was it um my utility director came in and said hey you've got to stop unless you got
[00:13:14.600]x number of dollars to spend on a new substation um so those are the things that you've got
[00:13:23.520]to kind of have those people involved in in housing projects um sewer capacity is another one
[00:13:30.940]um our sewer station is here and we have a secondary
[00:13:37.060]fourth pond dug here that we can't use or couldn't use at that time i don't know if
[00:13:45.320]they're using it now or not but we were at capacity at our sewer um so when you add in
[00:13:53.500]14 20 houses that puts some strain on on utilities that that may not be thought about on on the
[00:14:01.420]development development side um but we also use some of these things in here during the project
[00:14:10.800]to alleviate some problems in town imperial is very flat um it does kind of slope this direction
[00:14:21.120]so what we did
[00:14:23.480]to help alleviate some of those problems we put in you can see a little bit of water right there
[00:14:29.100]a um retention pond so the water flows in here gets retained for a little bit until it can go
[00:14:38.480]out here into the detention pond so it really helped with some of our um water overflow problems
[00:14:46.260]that we had um from streets and things like that but combining those things make the project a
[00:14:53.040]um more expensive on the front side but less expensive overall because you don't have to
[00:14:59.620]do a whole bunch of bidding for a whole bunch of products you just get it all done at the same time
[00:15:04.100]especially out in western nebraska where we've got to have bigger projects to get um to get bids
[00:15:11.340]you do too small of a project and then we'll come in and do a bid we did some other uh streets and
[00:15:18.260]repairs to make it worthwhile for them to come in and set up a cement shop in our community because
[00:15:23.000]there's not a cement plant that will do something that small or well okay there's not a cement plant
[00:15:30.500]that will do something that large when we did when we did these streets so um electrical sewer capacity
[00:15:39.560]housing grants have changed a lot since i worked um there so i don't want to go into a lot of detail
[00:15:45.820]because i don't know um but we did some low-income housing tax credits um our developer was matt thomas
[00:15:52.960]he does housing projects all over nebraska and when he was working with us he talked to me about
[00:16:01.040]why he doesn't leave nebraska and actually matt thomas lives in california but he learned how to do
[00:16:11.600]housing development in nebraska a guy took him under his wing and taught him the paperwork
[00:16:17.080]he doesn't want to leave nebraska because the paperwork is significantly different in other
[00:16:22.920]or in other states so he doesn't leave he continues to do housing projects in
[00:16:30.300]the state of nebraska because he knows how the how the grants work
[00:16:34.880]housing studies is something i want to go on mention you have to have one updated you have
[00:16:43.360]to keep it updated they show you the needs and they're required for the grants showing that you
[00:16:52.880]capacity to fill these um is important even in your community i had issues when we built these 14
[00:17:01.860]with the community pushing back and saying we don't need those houses um there's there's plenty
[00:17:07.440]of space and you're gonna you're gonna ruin the housing market well housing prices in imperial
[00:17:13.300]were very expensive at the time and they did not budge one bit when we built those houses
[00:17:19.660]what happened was uh
[00:17:22.840]and due to the fact that they're really low income they filled with single moms that were
[00:17:29.240]living in the basement of their parents um is really what happened and these houses sold to
[00:17:36.180]professionals so our police chief bought this one the ceo to the hospital bought this one
[00:17:43.020]um a gentleman who can't remember who bought that one but a gentleman who did uh he was a
[00:17:50.320]spray pilot i think he might
[00:17:52.800]to own
[00:17:53.100]the spray
[00:17:54.400]one so they filled up with with professional people um a couple of whom were new to the
[00:17:59.620]community um and and they sold really quick um i ended up having to leave letters at the local
[00:18:08.860]coffee shop um to explain how these low-income projects worked and to explain that no a local
[00:18:18.420]feedlot operator did not rent all of them for his employees that was just a rumor going around town
[00:18:24.700]and um that's not how these things work there are rules and they needed to be followed
[00:18:31.740]um another interesting thing that we did was and this is good for communities who
[00:18:41.780]don't have money for infrastructure um is infill so
[00:18:47.840]you
[00:18:48.400]have lots in your community that are empty and if you can get those sold or donated or
[00:18:56.220]given to your community they can be used for housing and this one let me see
[00:19:04.220]go to the grocery store okay so this house right here um you can see kind of how the
[00:19:18.380]and so we looked on the local gis and said okay who owns this and what came up was that a bank
[00:19:29.460]owned it and it was a large national bank and so i just wrote a letter to them asking
[00:19:36.000]what their plans were for the property if they would sell it anything like that and
[00:19:42.620]actually actually they wrote me back and said we don't own this
[00:19:48.360]and i say yeah you do you're paying taxes on it look and after a few back and forth they found out
[00:19:55.800]that they did own it they had never filled out the internal paperwork to put it on their books
[00:20:01.980]because it wasn't worth anything to them so i said they never even foreclosed on the guy
[00:20:09.800]that had the loan on it they had never filled out the paperwork for that
[00:20:14.120]so they go we'll waive all our rights to it if
[00:20:18.340]you can get that guy to sign a quick claim deed well luckily for us chase county fair time came
[00:20:25.320]along and he was in town and he came in and said well i don't want a piece of that that house is
[00:20:31.080]junk okay so he signed the quick claim deed over to the city uh we demolished it um put everything
[00:20:39.460]in the in the demolition pit and smoothed it out cleaned it up
[00:20:47.480]and put it up for sale well the neighbors bought it added an addition to their house
[00:20:53.800]big giant garage bigger than their house and so that went back on the tax rolls it wasn't a new
[00:21:01.100]house but that's the way you can do it another thing i did in in the community is that
[00:21:08.080]we owned the electrical system so we did all the billing so we knew when people moved out of town
[00:21:17.200]and shipped it to the city we did all the billing so we knew when people moved out of town and
[00:21:17.460]shut their electricity off and didn't have anybody living in the house so i wrote letters
[00:21:22.900]to the people who had buildings that weren't occupied and it wasn't super effective but i
[00:21:30.240]got two or three houses that got put on the market because i just wrote letters and saying
[00:21:34.320]hey we have a housing shortage in this community um you could sell the house if you wanted to
[00:21:39.480]and it got a couple houses on the market but a lot of times when you have um out of town land
[00:21:47.440]wards they one they forget i don't know how you would forget paying taxes and insurance and all
[00:21:54.000]that stuff but they do but they also assume that there's no market in your community in the smaller
[00:22:00.820]communities to sell their home and there is they could get rid of them if they wanted to so i
[00:22:07.560]reminded them we got a couple more houses sold um and occupied in that land um now i mentioned that
[00:22:17.420]news uh up here in this section in the trailer park and unfortunately what has happened in that
[00:22:30.220]trailer park is that we have used a nuisance program to clean it up and but that means that
[00:22:39.400]we have torn out and demolished a number of trailers in that in that trailer park
[00:22:47.400]which really significantly reduced the housing stock and really it's hard to find a trailer
[00:22:54.140]that's worth anything these days to bring into a community um they're just it's just not um
[00:23:00.800]and just don't make them anymore so that has hurt the community in that way but helped clean up the
[00:23:08.140]community um we have worked in the rest of the town as well to clean up properties um
[00:23:17.380]and that's a really powerful tool to one to get landlords especially landlords to clean up their
[00:23:27.360]property and to get them in a in a state that would be able to be sold in the future
[00:23:34.380]and make sure that they don't deteriorate more um
[00:23:39.100]so yeah so nuisance programs clean up your community
[00:23:47.360]they can be used to demolish structures as well
[00:23:50.900]work with empty lot holders to see if they'll either give or donate
[00:23:56.440]their lots to the city or someone else in order to get houses built and work with empty houses
[00:24:03.500]so i hope you guys have a lot of questions that are easy and that i can answer because that's
[00:24:10.820]about the end of what i've got to share today so a couple questions in the chat jason one
[00:24:17.340]um in your um the lb the project with the houses down in the south i guess southeast part of town
[00:24:25.840]did what what parts did lb you showed us what tiff paid for
[00:24:29.440]what parts did lb 840 pay for in that in that project
[00:24:33.440]so we use the lb 840 to fund significant portions of the um streets so that we didn't have to take
[00:24:45.240]out such big bonds
[00:24:47.320]um so that's that's really what we did we used it to to pay down the project so the bonds weren't so
[00:24:53.620]big so you put the lb 840 money into the street infrastructure yes you're saying yeah so
[00:25:02.040]and about what was it wasn't recaptured either from the developer or from
[00:25:08.240]yeah so as investment yeah as we because the the land was owned by the the lb 840 that's
[00:25:17.300]who bought the land so the lb 840 group was the the uh developer in essence um so as plots of land
[00:25:27.360]get sold that money came back um to the lb 840 fund so there is a way to recapture it but it's
[00:25:34.420]not quick and then you tell matt thomas he lives in california but there's a lot of uh
[00:25:41.620]product development work in nebraska is he with dana point the develop okay
[00:25:47.280]dana point development
[00:25:48.680]and he's still besides doing a project there in imperial embankment what other
[00:25:54.820]communities has he been doing developments and do you know uh north platte he's got several i
[00:26:00.800]think he did kind of a tri-city project in dawson county um some in gothenburg and lexington and
[00:26:09.000]and kozad um i think he's got yeah some in carney i just talked to him a couple weeks ago
[00:26:17.260]he's got a project in crete that he really wants to be finished with um so he you know
[00:26:25.520]the building inflation has has gotten to him too so but statewide right that's you i think you got
[00:26:35.300]through most of the chat questions others online on mute and go ahead and ask directly
[00:26:38.720]i have a question about
[00:26:47.240]the the leftover um infrastructure if you will when you pull all those trailers off of that
[00:26:54.760]trailer court is that a situation where if you were to redevelop that you're going to have to
[00:26:59.660]go in and pull up all that pvc that went to the plumbing to all those trailers and and redo all
[00:27:05.660]of that because that's the situation we're facing now even if we were able to get that a really
[00:27:11.740]badly depleted trailer court in town the property is
[00:27:17.220]it's not worth anything because of what that will cost
[00:27:20.980]so you're you think the ground in imperial is just sitting there empty as well yeah uh yeah
[00:27:28.120]well even even in this picture before we started really taking out trailers you know these lots
[00:27:33.960]are empty these lots are empty um i'm before i left these this row i think there were like two
[00:27:40.900]trailers left yeah our trailer court is probably four times the size of that with um
[00:27:47.200]about the same number of actual trailers left in it but what's underneath is is horrendous i mean
[00:27:53.100]not useful right so so you didn't have a plan in terms of redevelopment you were literally just
[00:28:01.340]doing this through the nuisance abatement program to clean it up okay because it's privately owned
[00:28:08.900]so right ours is too yeah um by an out-of-town landlord um who really was
[00:28:17.180]unresponsive and and we so before i came to imperial um the west central development district
[00:28:25.120]actually went because of this situation went into the state legislature and got it changed
[00:28:31.700]so that you could um do impound in place for trailers um for mobile homes and that's how we
[00:28:41.700]got a lot of them out because they were unoccupied and they were trash holes in
[00:28:47.160]roofs and floors etc and but they were able to rent them um because the migrant workers
[00:28:57.240]they were okay with it and it was something that you and i wouldn't live in but for them
[00:29:04.600]it was better than what they had lived in before um but we didn't want people living
[00:29:12.620]like that in our community if we could help it so we were trying to get people in better places
[00:29:17.140]um so or to get them fixed up and unfortunately the guy didn't want to put any money into it so
[00:29:25.940]we just tore the trailers out um but in our case you know these roads in here are gravel
[00:29:33.560]and for the at on the city side we have the infrastructure going to the
[00:29:40.880]into the trailer park so i think it would be a point of unhooking their
[00:29:47.120]utilities and just re-plumbing utilities to each home lot because you know you have one two
[00:29:56.300]three four home lots in here and so you just kind of leave the stuff in the ground unhook it from
[00:30:03.240]from what's there and that'd be my guess but my utility director says i think too simply sometimes
[00:30:14.080]so
[00:30:17.100]jason um i remember talking to dan o'neill from north platte one time who i think owns a quick
[00:30:26.140]stop in imperial and um and in several other western abrazza communities and um
[00:30:34.860]this isn't a wholesale answer but to housing but he told me that he builds
[00:30:43.060]a nice house for his managers everywhere he puts a quick
[00:30:47.080]stop and um it just uh struck me that that was a pretty a progressive uh thing for a
[00:30:58.180]a convenience store owner to do but be the same strategy could be undertaken by other
[00:31:07.340]potential business developers in rural communities who were interested in
[00:31:17.060]quality of life for their managers and adding to decent housing stock where they have their
[00:31:23.680]businesses yep that is correct and it reminds me of something that's happening in hebron
[00:31:31.220]um so in hebron we have you look this is highway 81 and it squiggles out and goes
[00:31:42.500]straight down the line until it gets to hebron and squiggles out and goes around
[00:31:47.040]yeah and on the old highway we have three hotels
[00:31:54.060]so let me see okay this hotel which is the good hotel this hotel it's not so good
[00:32:06.220]um more for yeah yeah and this hotel that was closed um
[00:32:17.020]which was really i think owned by the same people um and they had closed it um it was
[00:32:24.760]filled with weeds rankies bought it um for ranky pivots because they needed housing for their
[00:32:31.720]workers so they remodeled this into long-term housing for their workers um now this i may get
[00:32:41.160]this wrong because i'm still not exactly sure what place is which but we have
[00:32:47.000]two nursing homes in imperial or hebron um and i think this one was sold to a developer
[00:33:00.880]and he is turning this nursing home into apartments um so and i think he's doing it
[00:33:10.500]it's that developer from carney sean um i can't remember what his name is
[00:33:16.980]his name is off the top of my head but there is another one in
[00:33:22.100]patrick moore is the architect that's not it right okay that may be it may be um him
[00:33:32.380]maybe he's not it might be the architect on it um
[00:33:37.400]oh in campbell i have heard that i think it's campbell
[00:33:46.960]they also have an abandoned yep right there a nursing home that then it's no longer a nursing
[00:33:52.100]home that they're looking at turning into apartments so part of this um housing isn't
[00:34:00.020]always building new homes but using the infrastructure you have um i know curtis also did similar
[00:34:08.420]things with a nursing home that they they changed into a dorm room for ncta um that was 20 years ago
[00:34:16.940]um so it's not always about building but maybe uh changing things so that they seek the needs
[00:34:28.200]of the community at this point in time any other questions
[00:34:37.040]well jason thank you for your time and uh giving us a nice walkthrough from southern nebraska
[00:34:46.920]and uh the creative solutions not just for what you did in benjamin imperial but some other cases
[00:34:55.120]where they've transitioned for employee housing um with the nursing homes and the in the hotels as
[00:35:02.860]well um this will be recorded and jenny i'm not sure where she kind of puts these for future
[00:35:08.360]reference and i look forward to seeing you all um in person june 8th and 9th and valentine where
[00:35:16.900]we're having the connecting entrepreneurial communities conference and jason is busily
[00:35:22.840]working on the registration for that and will be shared in a week or two when it goes live
[00:35:30.760]anything else i'm missing from my extension colleagues or otherwise
[00:35:34.560]well thanks everyone and have a good day
[00:35:43.860]thank you
[00:35:46.880]Thank you.

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Community Tools to Develop Housing

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