The cities of LaFayette and Rossville, Georgia, have been selected to participate in the Georgia Initiative for Community Housing.
The program is a part of the Georgia Department of Community Affairs and offers communities a three-year collaboration and technical assistance related to housing and community development.
The goal of the program is to help communities create and launch a locally-based plan to meet their specific housing needs.
The two Walker County communities will join four other communities – Adel, Statesboro, Hartwell and Ocilla – in 2020 to take part in the program.
The program allows communities to work together on a strategy to improve and revitalize the housing markets in the area.
Since its inception in 2005, 70 Georgia communities have benefited from the program, according to the Georgia Department of Community Affairs.
The highly competitive program usually awards five communities around the state, but the combination of LaFayette and Rossville represented one of the first joint applications.
The Georgia Initiative for Community Housing will guide a housing committee team of about 25 people in both cities through the three-year program.
Rossville plans to focus on home ownership, stricter regulations to hold slumlord and blighted property owners accountable, downtown residential development and other areas.
A partnership with Georgia Tech’s Enterprise Innovation Institute earlier this year showed there was a significant discrepancy between owner-occupied and rental property in Rossville.
According to the institute, nearly 46% of all housing units were listed as rentals.
Contact Patrick Filbin at pfilbin@timesfreepress.com or 423-757-6476. Follow him on Twitter @PatrickFilbin.