Anoka County expects $2.5 million grant for foreclosure aid

With foreclosures in Anoka County having tripled in two years, officials expressed guarded optimism that the county will receive $2.5 million in assistance this week from the Minnesota Housing Finance Agency.

The grant, expected to be announced Thursday, comes on the heels of $2.38 million in federal funding, part of Housing and Urban Development's Neighborhood Stabilization Program. The one-time, special allocation program uses Community Development Block Grant funds.

The nearly $5 million in combined aid will allow the county to acquire and redevelop foreclosed properties that might otherwise be abandoned or simply deteriorate.

A November 2008 map of the county's most troubled neighborhoods shows that few areas are immune to this suffocating economy. In northern Anoka County, nearly half of St. Francis and much of Bethel have been plagued by foreclosures. So have neighborhoods in Coon Rapids and Blaine, Anoka and Fridley, and much of Columbia Heights and Hilltop.

"In St. Francis, there's a high level of recent development, in Columbia Heights you see three foreclosures on a block and there are foreclosures in Andover," said Kate Thunstrom, the county's neighborhood stabilization director. "The foreclosures may not seem to have much in common, from neighborhood to neighborhood, city to city. But they all reflect how quickly hard times have hit."

"It's not just poor neighborhoods," said Karen Skepper, Anoka County's community development manager. Many of the foreclosures are the result of refinancing to a point beyond the worth of a home.

"People use their house as an ATM card," Skepper said. "You can use the house as equity so many times."

AAA = Perfect grades

The expected state housing grant comes on the heels of Anoka County's AAA credit rating from Standard & Poor's earlier this month. The county is one of only 49 nationwide to have been awarded this prestigious rating, and only one of five counties in Minnesota, Ralph McGinley, Oppenheimer & Co. senior vice president, told the County Board on Tuesday. Other Minnesota counties with AAA ratings are Hennepin, Ramsey, Washington and Olmsted.

"It's very rare air this AAA rating puts you in," McGinley, a one-time Anoka County administrator, told the board. He said only one county in Ohio received a AAA rating, and only two in Illinois.

The rating will prove indispensable when the county chooses to sell bonds or borrow, officials said. The savings will be felt by taxpayers when the county invests in large capital projects, said Commissioner Rhonda Sivarajah.

"When I look at all these A's, it reminds me of a report card," County Board Chairman Dennis Berg said proudly. (Commissioner Dan Erhart joked that none of his report cards ever looked so good. Commissioner Scott LeDoux seconded the notion, adding, "I was my freshman class president three years in a row.")

The construction of a western extension of Hwy. 610 toward completion at Interstate 94 and the widening of Hwy. 10 near Seventh Avenue in Anoka were among the preliminary priorities identified by the board for economic stimulus funding.

Berg warned that he did not see stimulus funding as a cure-all, saying, "We're a long way to being out of the woods."

Erhart noted that the $70 million promised in federal funding for the Northstar commuter rail line "is there; we're in the bill." And he said another $475,000 in federal funding is expected for the proposed Northern Lights Express passenger rail line from Minneapolis to Duluth.

"The stimulus package gives us some confidence," Erhart said.

A program spared

The demanding, one-year, no-nonsense program -- the only such county-run program in Minnesota - apparently will receive the $200,000 to $500,000 in funding needed to keep the program going. Judge Jenny Walker Jasper said necessary funding will be committed to the program that has yielded startling results -- a 60 percent completion rate. Ninety-eight percent of participants' drug tests have been negative.

The program, looked upon as a model for other counties, was in danger of vanishing this summer, a victim of budget cuts. A three-year grant from the Minnesota Department of Public Safety was to run out June 30.