By Joanne Bailey-Boorsma
joanne@wktv.org
The City of Wyoming is looking for its residents to tell them what to do over the next five years with more than $5 million in federal funds.
For the past couple of weeks, the city has been asking its residents to fill out a survey to help prioritize the needs they would like the federal funds to be directed toward.
“If you are interested in housing in your community, if you are interested in economic development, if you want to know and help inform the city on how it should spend $5 million or more in community development dollars and home dollars which is federal money which comes to the city, the survey needs you,” said City of Wyoming Director of Community Services Rebecca Rynbrandt.
Every five years, the city’s Community Development staff researches and analyzes the city’s neighborhoods related to areas of problems and needs concerning low-income concentrations, persons with special needs, housing and commercial structure deterioration, recreational requirements and other neighborhood issues. Following this analysis, the city’s Community Development Committee decides on a Comprehensive Housing and Community Development Strategy to guide the use of the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development (HUD) funds that come through the Community Development Block Grant (CDBG).
The survey’s main focus is getting citizen’s input on how the city should prioritize the the use of these federal dollars.
Rynbrandt said people call the city offices concerned about eviction, affordable housing and a homeowner who is not taking care of their property.
“They want to understand how the city cares about the community and invests in them and in their property,” she said. For more than 40 years, the CDBG funds have been used for housing rehabilitation loans that have zero or three precent interest.
“These funds are honestly not about the individual, even though impacts individuals,”Rynbrandt said. “These funds are about stabilizing neighborhoods and insuring the built in environment and the public services be they homeless, be they code enforcement, are captured and invested in to ensure that long term stability of the community is successful.”
Residents input from the survey will have a direct impact as the comments go into a plan to prioritize investments such as the program to help homeowners, who income qualify, upgrade their properties so they are code compliant and helped to rehouse those who are homeless.
“That child, who may be homeless and now has a stable environment, is no longer couch surfing,” Rynbrandt said. “So what does that mean for the long term? That child is better able to prepare to be successful and is able to go to school and have educational engagement.”
The city already has received about 1,000 survey responses. They are asking residents, if possible, to fill out the survey by Aug. 31. The survey will be up after that for a little while.
To fill out the survey, click here or visit the City of Wyoming’s Department of Parks and Recreation’s Facebook page. Due to COVID-19, the city is encouraging everyone to complete the survey online.
