Greene County Development Corporation is working on a new program to incentivize housing developers to build in the county.

GCDC Executive Director Ken Paxton says the Housing Trust Fund is a resource that came out of the Vision 2020 projects where they would work for private companies and other organizations to establish an account to draw funding from for housing developers.

“As it turns out now our appraisals are usually lower than the cost of the project. So we have to find some way to get a developer to come out of Des Moines or come out of Cedar Rapids and come to a rural community to develop a housing project. This Housing Trust Fund would provide those kinds of funds on interest free loans to incentivize people and this is something that should differentiate us from a lot of other rural communities.”

GCDC President Sid Jones recently told the County Board of Supervisors that they are working on putting operational agreements in place, the entities have been identified and the money is put together. Paxton adds that there has been interest from developers in several projects including the current middle school building in Jefferson. The facility will become vacant once the current high school is renovated into the middle school by the 2020 school year as part of the $35.48 million Greene County School District project.