SEDP opens home repair grants; Corunna sign-up day Sept. 17

If your roof is failing or your furnace won't make it through another winter, Shiawassee County has money to help pay for the fix. The Shiawassee Economic Development Partnership announced Sept. 9 that its Homeowner Rehabilitation Grant program is officially taking applications, and it named three days and three places where staff will sit down with homeowners and walk them through the paperwork.

The program will pay for repairs including, but not limited to, roofing, furnaces, water heaters and ADA accessibility work, according to the SEDP announcement. Mobile homes are not eligible.

The first application assistance day is Thursday, Sept. 17, at the SEDP office at 201 N. Shiawassee St. in Corunna. The second is Oct. 13 at 215 W. Clinton St. in Durand. The third is Nov. 9 at 2770 Ellsworth Road in Perry. Each day has its own online pre-application portal, and SEDP said program staff will contact applicants after a pre-application is submitted to set an appointment to review it.

For anyone who would rather not fill out a form online or upload documents to a Google Form, SEDP said homeowners can bring their paperwork to the third floor of its Corunna office on Sept. 14 and Sept. 15, from 9 a.m. to noon and 1 p.m. to 4:30 p.m. both days. Questions go to [email protected].

The eligibility rules are strict. SEDP said a homeowner must own the property with a warranty deed, be current on the mortgage and taxes, have water and electric service turned on, carry homeowners' insurance for the replacement value of the home, and have no reverse mortgage on the property. Household income must also fall below published limits — the announcement includes an income table, but the figures did not come through in the version of the release the Current obtained, so the desk has asked SEDP for the dollar limits by household size.

Several other basics are not in the announcement: how much a single household can receive, where the money comes from, whether the grant carries a lien or repayment condition if the home is sold, and how many homes the program expects to repair. The Current has those questions out to SEDP.

Housing has been a running piece of SEDP's work in the county. The Current reported in August that the partnership marked the groundbreaking of 10 single-family homes at Crestview Heights in Corunna on July 20, two of them reserved for households earning up to 120% of Area Median Income. This program works the other direction — keeping people in houses they already own.

What happens next: pre-applications are open now through the portals linked to each assistance day, with in-person document drop-off at the Corunna office Sept. 14 and 15 and the first assistance day Sept. 17. The Current will publish the income limits and the grant cap when SEDP provides them.