By Pepper Fisher
SEQUIM – The Sequim City Council Monday approved a new ordinance that will allow City staff to apply for millions of dollars in state grants to help builders offset some of the costs of building low income housing.
The Connecting Housing to Infrastructure Program, or CHIP grants, will allow the city to waive some expensive fees normally charged to builders for connecting to water and sewer, as well as infrastructure. The grants will only apply to qualifying low-income housing units, such as Habitat For Humanity of Clallam County’s project, set to break ground this fall.
The first phase of that project will construct 52 units. If the CHIP grant comes through, and it is expected to, the defrayed cost to Habitat will be around $60,000, according to the City’s Executive Assistant Merrin Packer. She said that figure only represents the infrastructure and fee costs. Habitat may also accrue water and sewer costs that CHIP could cover, for an estimated total of a million dollars.
Again, the state Department of Commerce requires that the City adopt an ordinance before it can pursue CHIP grants. That new ordinance was approved and goes into effect 5 days after public notice is published in the newspaper.