With the region in the thick of a housing slump and foreclosure crisis, the city of Eden Prairie is looking to set up a transitional home – a place that could act as an anchor for a family on the brink of losing their stability.

This spring, the City Council approved a plan to use $260,000 in Community Development Block Grant funds for such a project. The federal grant money is available to go to another community group, which could then purchase property and run a transitional housing program.

Initially, the city was looking to work with Pax Christi Catholic Community on such a program, but that was ultimately not approved by the Archdiocese, according to Housing and Community Services Manager Molly Koivumaki.

Koivumaki noted that the grant agreements in place can readily be modified to work for a different sub-recipient, or group that could use the grant money. The next step is to find such a group and possibly look into if the city’s Housing and Redevelopment Authority could be used to purchase the property in the mean time.

If anything, there will be an accelerated process to get this done, she said.

“It’s part of our action plan that we have with HUD,” she added, speaking about the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development, which distributes funds for affordable housing.

Transitional home

According to the original staff report on the program, the program sets out to “assist families in developing a stable self-sufficient lifestyle.”

The agency running the transitional house would work with a family “to develop goals in education, employment, housing, budgeting and other areas related to self-sufficiency.”

According to Koivumaki, the idea is that they’d be “working with a family that we know can succeed.”

In an interview last spring, she noted that transitional housing is something that a family would likely use for two years or less. According to Koivumaki other transitional housing programs are not free living arrangements; families may pay a portion of rent and some utilities. But, the actual terms of the transitional house would likely be worked out by the organization that will run the program.