The city is moving ahead with donating a vacant property to a non-profit in order to establish affordable housing.
The Columbus Board of Works has approved a resolution to transfer property at 1320 Pearl St. to the Southern Indiana Housing and Community Development Corp.
The board previously voted in December to donate this same property to the SIHCDC. The purpose of the additional resolution is to give the mayor a way to sign the quit-claim deed and to make it clear why the property is being transferred, said Assistant Community Development Director Robin Hilber.
She wrote in a previous memo to the board that there used to be a two-story house at 1320 Pearl St., but it suffered “irreparable fire damage” in early 2021 and was condemned. The property was then quit-claimed to the city, and the structure was demolished.
Hilber said the SIHCDC plans to use the site to build affordable housing for the Lincoln Central Neighborhood Homebuyer Program next year.
“This will be our fifth property,” she said. “It was one that the C4 program considered last year, but it’s at one of those long, narrow properties. And so this year, they’ve spent it coming up with a new design. Instead of a one-level, they now have a two-level house.”
The homebuyer program is a collaborative effort between several partners, including the SIHCDC and the Bartholomew Consolidated School Corp.’s C4 Building Trades Program Corp. (Barcon Vocational Builder, Inc.).
The SIHCDC acts as the developer for the homebuyer program, SIHCDC executive director Eric Frey said in a previous interview. C4 handles construction of housing that is both affordable and of good quality. The Lincoln-Central Neighborhood Family Center, in conjunction with other partners, provides resources to prospective buyers as they go through the application and homebuying process. Houses in the program are sold to first-time homebuyers with low to moderate income.
