What great news Mesabi Metallics in Nashwauk is going to finally fulfill the promise of a thousand construction jobs and hundreds of permanent jobs with its ‘green steel’ pellet production ramping up! This on top of the promised business expansions promising many hundreds of jobs in the area with ASV, the old Magnetation plant, and the strand board plant in Cohasset.
Now all we need is affordable housing! The city of Grand Rapids has been a leader in supporting new housing construction but they can only do so much. We have a State-wide and decade-long lack of new construction along with current sky-high interest rates. The State legislature needs to dump a billion or two dollars in the half-century old Minnesota Housing Finance Agency out of the $17.6 billion historic budget surplus to help us out.
The MHFA could really make homes affordable for Minnesotans by granting mortgages (maybe under a certain income cap and with a good credit score) that would bundle the down payment and closing costs into a balloon payment that would be due at end of the twenty or thirty year fixed rate mortgage—or a sale of the home that would be interest free or low interest.
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This funding of the MHFA home mortgages would not only relieve stress on the ever-increasing rents of the rental market but build massive equity and retain wealth in Minnesota with the home-owner’s property income tax exemption that would otherwise fly off to the Federal Government. Monies would return to the MHFA at the end of the mortgage term.
The US Department of Agriculture also has an under-utilized ‘Direct Home Loan Program’ that does something similar. You don’t have to be impoverished to utilize it! You just have to live in a ‘rural community’ which is defined as a population of 35,000 people or less and you can get a no down payment mortgage with a good credit score. If you are impoverished then maybe you would qualify for a one percent loan for up to $40,000 of the principle.
Local legislators and municipalities could lobby for MHFA funding but they could also act locally to prepare the ground work. Perhaps the least expensive entry point into the new housing market would be modular homes. Already in Minnesota there are modular home parks that are not owned by a big corporation but are co-ops or jointly owned by the modular home owners who would not only own their modular home but own the piece of ground it stands on so that the homeowner could easily sell their home when it comes time for them to upgrade to something else. (1)
Municipalities could look for space available for electricity and water hook up and also request funding from the MHFA for modular home parks. We know how much heating costs set us back in Northern Minnesota and air-tight insulated modular homes can save huge amounts on heating bills.
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