The City of Jefferson was highlighted at a statewide conference last week due to a recent designation.

Jefferson was one of 11 communities that were named to the first-ever Iowa Thriving Communities and part of the honor was an invitation to the Housing Iowa Conference in Cedar Rapids. The Iowa Thriving Communities doesn’t give recipients funding, but other advantages such as “bonus” points toward Workforce Housing Tax Credits and Low-Income Housing Tax Credit projects.

Jefferson Matters Executive Director Matt Wetrich says the four-day conference had the largest amount of attendees ever. He points out that made the City of Jefferson and Greene County Development Corporation representatives excited because they also split the cost to have a vendor booth.

“And we kind of thought that was the right thing to do for being one of the designees and having a presence there, and an extra opportunity to reach out to developers.”    

Wetrich notes another highlight of the conference was one of the breakout sessions where housing developers could attend to hear each of the 11 Iowa Thriving Communities give a presentation.“I think the general idea was that the people that came and to listen to that were interested to hear what these 11 communities were really up to, like, ‘Why did you get this designation?’ And, ‘Might I be interested in coming to your community to invest, to develop (housing)?’” 

Wetrich adds Chris Deal was their presenter and he felt it couldn’t have gone better. He hopes with this kind of exposure, more developers will seek to build housing in Jefferson.