City waives fees for Habitat for Humanity

He also shared information about Habitat for Humanity which provides homes for people in need of shelter.

The Manhattan-area branch of the national organization builds in Potawatomi and Riley Counties.

“We believe that everyone deserves a decent place to live,” Brewer said. “That is a simple idea — a little harder to bring to fruition — and when we think about housing system definitions we think about affordability, we think about basic life safety and we are trying to introduce the idea of decency as a metric for understanding suitability of housing.”

He said the focus was on three different types of house — the actual houses Habitat builds and the people in them, the housing system and housing policy.

“Our solutions come from the neighborhoods in which we work and then we fit those solutions that emerge in the neighborhood into a framework that Habitat for Humanity International sets out,” Brewer said.

He said Habitat for Humanity volunteers assess the neighborhoods they work in to determine what’s going right in those neighborhoods and what needs improvement.

“In many communities — and I would say this is especially true in Junction City — we have a lot of housing stock,” Brewer said. “We love the way it looks and we love our neighborhoods, but those houses are in need of repair services.”

Habitat, in addition to building homes, also does community improvement projects, writes and services mortgages and conducts repairs on residences, including accessibility repairs. Habitat works in conjunction with many community organizations, including Fort Riley’s Home Builders Institute which helps soldiers who are transitioning from the Army join the construction field.

People who get homes through Habitat are typically within the 80 percent median income, Brewer said.

Habitat looks for people who are low income but financially stable and not carrying an excessive amount of debt.

Brewer said it was customary for the organization to request cities to waive fees for projects to allow those cities to participate in community improvements. Not all cities agree to waive the fees for Habitat, but many do according to City Manager Allen Dinkle.

“I think this is tremendous,” Mayor Pat Landes said. “To be able to provide housing and get buy-in from everyone I think is tremendous. We have so many homes that have come up for demolition and we’d like to not see that happen. We lose a house, we’re losing money too.”

The city commission voted unanimously to waive building permit fees for Habitat for Humanity.