Inter-Lakes Community Action Partnership provided a services update to the Brookings County Commission at Tuesday’s meeting — including an estimate that 13% of the county’s 30,000-plus residents reported incomes below the poverty line.
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BROOKINGS — Inter-Lakes Community Action Partnership provided a services update to the Brookings County Commission at Tuesday’s meeting — including an estimate that 13% of the county’s 30,000-plus residents reported incomes below the poverty line.
Highlights from an ICAP document include these Brookings County numbers:
“(It’s) important to note (that) only two homes were weatherized; however, we did get a tremendous increase in funding for that program — about $5 million over the next five years, so you’ll see a huge uptick in with program in the next five years,” ICAP CEO Eric Kunzweiler told commissioners during his presentation.
That news led to a question from Commissioner Ryan Krogman about ICAP, which currently has a roughly $22 million budget this year, funding in general.
“How is funding looking? … Obviously, a lot of it is federal and you’re just sometimes — when I was on the board it was always like, ‘Are we going to get our funding? Are we not going to get our funding? How many things can we do?’ Is that getting better?” he asked.
“With COVID, we saw a huge increase in funding for a variety of different reasons — mainly emergency rental assistance, which we helped a lot of families up here in Brookings County with as well,” Kunzweiler said. “Our core funding source is the Community Services Block Grant. The last couple years we’ve been very fortunate — there was some money that was held back from the Janklow era when he was the governor, that was actually released to us the last two years, so it doubled our funding the last couple of years.”
He continued, “However, we’re going back to three-years-ago funding now with that (CSBG). That’s our core funding source. It’s about a million dollars a year. … It’s federal funds, but it’s very flexible. We can do a lot of different things with that funding, which lets us leverage (other) programs.”
ICAP’s weatherization program drew a question as well, this time from Commissioner Larry Jensen. Kunzweiler said ICAP has a crew that can go in and audit a home in order to make it more energy efficient, whether it’s windows, insulation, siding, shingles, that sort of thing. There’s also an in-house home rehabilitation program which can work hand-in-hand with the weatherization efforts.
ICAP’s mutual self-help housing program, Kunzweiler added, has built over 200 homes, with most of them in Brookings. ICAP hires a construction supervisor, and that person helps four to seven families at a time build their own homes. When those families are done, they have $30,000 to $60,000 in equity in their new homes.
“It’s a great program up here,” he noted.
In closing, Kunzweiler thanked commissioners for the American Rescue Plan Act funds that were allocated in the past to help ICAP acquire and rehabilitate its main office in Madison, which it fully moved into nine months ago.
“Really appreciate that as well, and your continued support with your funding to support our community service worker here in Brookings,” Kunzweiler said. “That’s our front-line worker that does case management with families and steers them in whatever direction we need to help them out.”
In other business on Tuesday morning:
— Contact Mondell Keck at mkeck@brookingsregister.com.