Highlands Residential Services has received two key grant extensions from the Tennessee Housing Development Agency to keep the RedBud Village development moving.
Highlands Residential Services Executive Director Chris Cassetty said they received 12-month extensions for both grants that totaled an estimated $4 million. Though receiving the extensions was crucial, Cassetty said there is still more work to do.
“We still need one more piece of funding to make that project a go, but we certainly feel much better,” Cassetty said. “THDA has been a wonderful partner, and we were confident that they were going to give us the extensions, but we certainly feel better now that we do have those.”
Construction had stopped on the project as HRS was waiting to hear back about the extensions. Cassetty said that construction will continue once more funding is secured.
“We want to find that last piece of the funding puzzle before work beings again,” Cassetty said. “So that may be a few months, but we are hopeful that we are gonna be able to do that and certainly hopeful that work will start back very soon.”
Cassetty said HRS needs an estimated $1 million for the project. Cassetty said HRS is looking at other grants they can pursue to mkae up the difference.
“There is at least one more THDA grant that we might be eligible for, and I talked with THDA folks in Nashville on Tuesday when we were there,” Cassetty said. “There is also the Federal Loan Home Bank that we applied for last year and did not get. But we would be eligible to apply again this year, and the thinking there might very well be that we understand where we missed out last year, and can we make those points up or not.”
Cassety said he is confident that HRS will be able to secure the remaining funding.
“I certainly think that we will have all the funding in place and we will have construction going back again by certainly this fall and maybe even by the time we get to good spring, summer weather,” Cassetty said.
RedBud Village is a 20-unit housing development designed to house people who are homeless or on the verge of becoming homeless.