Home owners can apply now for program

Applications are open for the owner-occupied rehabilitation program.

Jay County Commissioners announced during their regular meeting that the $1 million project — it’s mainly funded through an Indiana of Community and Rural Affairs grant — opened to the public Tuesday.

The owner-occupied rehabilitation program is intended to help residents pay for home improvements. The work may include roof, water heating or heating ventilation and air conditioning unit replacements, electrical work or upgrades to make a home more accessible. Projects are limited to $25,000 per household.

Considered on a first-come, first-serve basis, applications must be submitted in-person and on paper. They are available in the Jay County Auditor’s Office at Jay County Courthouse in Portland, Dunkirk City Hall, Redkey Town Hall and community coordinator Nate Kimball’s office at the Community Resource Center in Portland. (Kimball has been heading work on launching the program.) A printable version is also available at jaycounty.net, but it must be turned in to one of the aforementioned sites to be considered.

Applications will be open through June 28.

“Those will (have the) time and date stamped on (them), so it will be first-come, first-serve, trying to make this as fair as we possibly can,” said commissioners president Chad Aker.

Applicants must make at or below a salary threshold to qualify. Those amounts are as follows: one-person household, $44,200; two-person household, $50,500; three-person household, $56,800; four-person household, $63,100; five-person household, $68,150; six-person household, $73,200; seven-person household, $78,250; eight-person household, $83,300. Forty or more households can be helped through the program.

“I will admit, after everything we’ve gone through, the application is relatively simple, and to me, it was fairly straightforward. I was totally surprised with that,” noted commissioner Rex Journay.

“It was a lot of work to get it that way,” added commissioner Brian McGalliard.

Jay County officials have been working with OCRA to launch the program for at least nine months. Originally, plans were for applications to open in fall 2023. State and federal documenting requirements pushed the date back several times until this spring.

The $1 million grant came as an incentive for Jay County’s participation in allocating its American Rescue Plan Act dollars through OCRA’s Hoosier Enduring Legacy Program (HELP). Jay County is contributing a match of about $90,000 of its American Rescue Plan Act funding toward the program. 

In related news from the commissioners’ meeting Tuesday, Bill Walters of East Central Indiana Regional Planning District noted consulting firm Kleinpeter Consulting Group — it has been contracted with the county to fulfill legal requirements for the project — informed him that the county can modify its agreement with OCRA so that costs for the state-required building inspections and radon testing are reimbursed through the program.

Walters pointed out his group — East Central Indiana Regional Planning District has a two-year contract with the county at $100,000 annually for Kimball’s services and other administrative support related to economic development projects as well as a roughly $6,800 annual membership fee for Jay County — has identified two potential candidates to serve as a building inspector and explained commissioners will need to put out a request for qualifications to formally hire an inspector.