Bremen asks MCEDC about housing aid options

During this part of the presentation, town attorney Tony Wagner asked if the MCEDC could help the town at all with the money that is necessary to bring more housing to Bremen. “We have a project that may start up just south of town. We would annex it,” he explained.

He went on to explain that the town is considering applying for a state grant, which Warsaw recently won, to help them with the endeavor. During the grant application process, Warsaw had a local and regional housing study done, which Wagner believes might be necessary for Bremen, should they decide to pursue this course of action, especially since nothing like it has been done in the county since 2018 or 2019. 

“Basically, what they did was they got one of the manufacturers over there, an orthopedics, put up $1 million and then the state put up $1 million. And then they used that to essentially help provide down payment assistance for employers to get their workers living in their community,” he described. “I’m looking at this program and wondering, could we do something on a smaller scale?” He suggested to Walls that perhaps local employers would be willing to donate funds to an account for the purpose.

Walls pointed out that with the housing market at the moment, even $5,000 worth of down payment assistance would not be helpful for home owners, administrators, or the employers supplying the funds. “But if we could leverage it so that it was a meaningful amount of money, to really impact and to really push people to really buy houses here; but with that, though, also comes the houses,” she said. To which, Wagner suggested using the housing TIF to fund housing construction.