Press Releases
State Housing Authority Wins HUD Awards - 6/30/1998
The South Carolina State Housing Finance and Development Authority has just been selected by the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development to receive its John J. Gunther Blue Ribbon "Best Practices" Award for 1998. The Gunther Awards honor state and local governments that do the best job administering HUD-funded programs to expand the supply of affordable housing, create jobs, strengthen local economies, fight housing discrimination, reduce homelessness, increase homeownership, and accomplish other goals to improve life in America's communities.
The State Housing Authority was honored for three affordable housing programs under its HOME Investment Partnerships Program, designed to promote partnerships between federal, state, and local governments and nonprofit and for-profit sponsors of affordable housing. The Program has been operational in South Carolina since 1992, with an average of $9 million allocated each year.
Two HOME projects were cited in the Affordable Housing category: The Hearth Corporation Homeownership Project and the Authority's popular "Stepping HOME" Program. The Hearth
Corporation, a nonprofit Community Housing Development Organization founded by Telamon, uses HOME Program funds to leverage additional resources in order to create homeownership opportunities over a multi-county, primarily rural area. HOME funds are used to rehabilitate homes being purchased through the U.S. Department of Agriculture, Rural Housing Services Division, and to provide homebuyer counseling services to families identified as prospective buyers. Getting its start in the Pee Dee counties of Marion and Dillon, the project is now in rural areas across the state and, through last December, had helped twenty-two families become homeowners. Two of the families assisted were formerly seasonal farmworkers who now have permanent housing through Hearth as well as permanent employment through Telamon.
Stepping HOME is a single family homeownership assistance loan program targeted to Section 8 Rental Assistance tenant households statewide. The program offers mortgage loans at 3 percent interest only after prospective homebuyers have completed several "steps" in financial and home maintenance counseling. The program was originally financed with $1 million in HOME funds, but the Authority has since dedicated additional monies in non-HUD funds to continue and ensure the program's success.
The State Housing Authority and the City of Union share jointly in the Gunther Best Practices Award in the category of Historic Preservation for Fairforest, Phases I - IV. This four-phase affordable housing and downtown revitalization project was cited by HUD as "a model of public-private partnership for historic preservation." The Fairforest project included the restoration of the beautiful and historic Fairforest Hotel and two attached buildings to provide 41 units of affordable housing for seniors, the rehabilitation of five downtown warehouse buildings (formerly known as "Poverty Flats") to create another 15 affordable rental units, street reconstruction with lighting, sidewalks, utilities, and landscaping, and rebuilding yet another downtown structure to produce 9 more units of rental housing. The Fairforest project combines historic preservation, affordable housing, and downtown revitalization efforts. The properties themselves are unique and required innovative project design in order to blend preservation efforts with the conversion of other purpose original structures to housing units. The Authority also awarded Tax Credits and Housing Trust Fund monies to this project.
The three Authority programs were nominated by the HUD Field Office. "Winners of these awards are doing an excellent job working in partnership with HUD," said HUD Secretary Andrew Cuomo. "They can serve as national models." Cuomo said that HUD will study the best local programs to see if their successes can be used to inspire improvements in HUD programs on the national level.
For more information on these and other affordable housing programs, call the Authority's Columbia offices, (803) 734-2000. Hearing or speech-impaired persons may use the TTY line, (803) 734-2369. The South Carolina State Housing Finance and Development Authority is an independent agency of state government and operates at no expense to the taxpayers of the state.
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