MOUNT VERNON – The Knox County Recorder collected $398,607 in 2020 for the Ohio Housing Trust Fund, recorder John Lybarger told the Mount Vernon News.
The Trust Fund uses the money to provide affordable housing, emergency home repair, handicapped-accessibility modifications, and services related to housing and homelessness, the agency said. The money can also be used for rental assistance, housing counseling, rehabilitation and new construction.
Under Ohio law, half of the fees charged to record most real estate documents such as deeds, mortgages and plats goes to the Housing Trust Fund, Lybarger said. The other half of the fees goes to the county to fund the office of the Recorder. The county is allowed to keep 1% of the money it collects for the trust fund as an administrative fee.
Knox County organizations, such as the Kno-Ho-Co-Ashland Community Action Commission and the City of Mount Vernon, have received millions of dollars in grants from the Trust Fund in recent years to help the homeless, the Trust Fund said.
Collecting fees from the filing of legal documents provided a steady source of funding for the Trust Fund rather than the more unpredictable process of obtain yearly appropriations from the state legislature, Bill Faith, executive director of the Coalition on Homelessness and Housing in Ohio, told the News.
The trust fund receives approximately $50 million a year from the recording fees, and the grants help nonprofit groups' affordable housing development, Faith explained.
"If a nonprofit group is developing affordable housing, they get tax credits; they may get loans from a bank," he said. "But then they look for cash to put into the deal just to lower the cost and make the rents more affordable. That reduces the amount they need to borrow."
The grants also help nonprofit groups attract private investment dollars.
"They leverage about $9 for every dollar the Trust Fund puts in," Faith said. "They get $9 from other sources to make those kinds of projects work."
The Trust Fund also funds many other projects to help the homeless, such as homeless shelters, programs to get families out of shelters quickly and programs to prevent people from becoming homeless.
While the Trust Fund is valuable to Ohio, it is not enough, Faith said.
"We're actually looking for other ways to fund housing projects in addition to the Trust Fund," he said. "The Trust Fund doesn't meet the need, it just helps out."
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