Women start nonprofit to rehab local housing

The founders, four women across different fields of work in St. Joseph, are determined to make a change and hopefully spark inspiration in others to help reclaim the numerous abandoned homes around town. One of the women said the idea for the nonprofit came from a conversation among friends reflecting on their neighborhood.

“We thought, people are going to come to this town and there aren’t places for them to stay, so we started talking about how you could acquire some of the smaller houses that need some work over in that area of town for short-term rentals,” HII founding member Ashley Albers said. “But as we started talking through that, the conversation evolved into if we were going to do it for short-term rentals, why wouldn’t we do this to bring homeowners back into these communities and back into these neighborhoods?”

In addition to Albers, who is vice president of human resources for Nor-Am Cold Storage, the team includes CEO of Lifeline Foods Michelle Clark, Buchanan County Auditor and local real estate agent Tara Horn and Sarah Weaver, a commercial real estate agent for BHHS Stein & Summers Real Estate.

With an “If not us, then who?” attitude, the team set out to find properties to put their mission in motion. Their first effort was through postcards, locating properties that were dilapidated or looked abandoned, and tracking down owners to inquire about taking those homes off their hands. Albers said they were surprised by a successful return rate through that process. They found another home, one that had sat vacant for about 10 years, through Adopt-A-Block Day.

Albers characterized the properties the group is targeting as just needing “a little love” to make them attractive to people interested in purchasing a first home. The women are focusing on fixing the bigger things that would scare people away, including foundation, flooring, lighting and other light renovation projects.

“Our goal is to build communities and to revitalize our neighborhoods, so we started with the house up on (417) A Street, and we’ve decided as we’ve gotten into this project, we kind of narrowed our focus,” Albers said. “We are now targeting a neighborhood, and saying, ‘OK, we are going to work in this nine-block radius’ until somebody else comes along and says, ‘Hey, you’re done.’”

That area of focus is between Ninth and 13th streets, and Garfield and Pacific streets moving forward. Part of the goal, Albers said, is to encourage more young people to live and work in St. Joseph rather than just commuting to the city each morning.

The group is focusing on improving the city’s appearance rather than profit, she said.

“We acquired our first project and the goal is that as we do a project, we sell it for a slight profit, 10% to 15%, nothing exorbitant, and then we put all of the funding back into our fund rinse and repeat it for the next project,” Albers said. “Nobody on our board takes any salary. There’s no fees that were being paid. The only overhead that we have besides housing expenses is the slight admin fee that we get at the Community Foundation of Northwest Missouri, where our fund is housed and we are a registered 501©(3).”

The group was fortunate to have started at a time when there was some ARPA funding available through the Urban Homesteading grants in St. Joseph. HII has been approved on its first property to partner with the city and has been conditionally approved for a second home. Those grants will match 50% of what the nonprofit puts into a project, up to $50,000.

“We’ve been able to take advantage of them (ARPA funds), and the great thing about our program is that when we are able to offset the cost of the rehab with this $50,000, we can do a little extra to make the house more appealing,” Albers said. “Traditionally, we might have been having to mark the house up higher or take a loss on that, but because of that $50,000, we can keep the house affordable for first-time homebuyers and get them into the community, and I think that’s what’s really important.”

Albers said those who have heard about the initiative are excited for the women, but some have asked what incentivizes the group to take on such a huge task.

“There’s nothing really in it for us besides seeing our community grow and be the kind of town that I want my kids to come back to after they grow up and they want to start a family,” Albers said. “There’s a lot of momentum in our town right now, and we are just one more piece of that momentum. So if we can all get working together, like we like to say ‘High tide raises all ships.’”

Donations can be made on the group’s website at housingimprovementinitiative.com. Residents are encouraged to report or share details about abandoned properties in their area for the group to look into.