MASON CITY — The regional administrator for the Department of Housing and Urban Development was in Mason City on Monday to tour a few HUD assisted properties.
Joe Mitchell was recently appointed to the Region 7 position that covers the states of Iowa, Kansas, Missouri and Nebraska. He says President Trump and the HUD Secretary Turner want to make sure that HUD is not only reaching urban communities but also rural and suburban communities as well. “A lot of times when you think about HUD, you think about the larger cities like Des Moines or Minneapolis, Chicago, Omaha when you think about the Midwest, and the secretary and the president have been clear. They want to make sure that smaller communities in places like Cerro Gordo County are taken care of. Cerro Gordo County went big for the president in November, so he has a mandate to make sure that people across the spectrum and different backgrounds and demographics have affordable housing.”
Mitchell says when you are building things in rural communities, that means things are growing, jobs are there, and people with income and wages are going up. He says HUD needs to make sure the relationship between the agency and rural communities is improving. “I talk to so many rural communities and they don’t have the resources, they don’t have the manpower to get through all the red tape and the bureaucracy that HUD has historically had on things like Community Development Block Grants and anything with community development planning and these funds that are available out there. So we want to make sure that there’s somebody here in the state that can help these smaller communities get through that red tape, get through that compliance, get these funds, and be able to build things.”
Mitchell was accompanied on the tour by Mason City city officials.
