(Denisville) Today, the Board of Directors of the Iowa Finance Authority (IFA) stated that 27 Local Housing Trust Funds will receive grants worth a total of more than $12.5 million to help with local housing projects. The grants are given out by the Local Housing Trust Fund program, and they are meant to help 2,636 people in all 99 Iowa counties.
Debi Durham, director of the IFA, said, “The 2025 Local Housing Trust Fund grant awards are the largest investment ever made through the program in a single year.” “These grants will help housing programs give thousands of Iowans safe, affordable homes. This will have long-lasting benefits for communities across the state for years to come.”
“The State Housing Trust Fund is a very important resource,” said Ted Kourousis, who runs the Northwest Iowa Regional Housing Trust Fund. “With these funds, we can meet local housing needs, such as helping people who are homeless, helping first-time homebuyers, fixing up our area’s older homes to keep them in good shape, or dealing with urgent housing problems like the flooding our region experienced this spring.”
The grant money will go to a variety of projects that will build or preserve homes for low-income families with a wide range of housing needs. This includes building and maintaining homes, helping people who are homeless, helping with rent, helping people buy their own homes, building up the skills of local housing groups, and other actions that directly meet the needs of people in the area who need housing.
The Iowa Legislature set up the State Housing Trust Fund in 2003. The awards given today will bring in an extra $4 million in other funding, which is $.32 for every dollar of program funding from the Local Housing Trust Fund. The State Housing Trust Fund has helped more than 40,700 Iowa families find reasonable housing with $136.3 million since it started. This was made possible by nearly $187 million in other funding sources.
Two programs run by the State Housing Trust Fund help make sure that Iowans have safe, decent, and cheap housing. At least 60% of the SHTF money goes to the Local Housing Trust Fund Program, which gives grants to groups that IFA has approved as Local Housing Trust Funds.
The rest of the money goes to the Project-Based Housing Program, which helps build single-family and multifamily homes that are inexpensive. Both projects are run by IFA, which also helps housing-related groups with technical issues.
