The Conroe City Council has selected a company to rebuild four residents’ homes as part of the city’s federally funded Community Development Block Grant program.
Nancy Mikeska, assistant city administrator and director of community development, said Navasota-based Quality Works Construction, Inc was the low bidder for the project at $807,000.
“This is not city money,” Mikeska said during Wednesday’s council workshop meeting. “These are grant funds. The contracts are between the contractor and the homeowner. We are just the facilitator.”
In September, several council members and city officials toured the homes of the residents selected for the program.
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“Ms. Mikeska (and the CDBG board) have done a fabulous job and I am just so proud to be a part of it,” Mayor Pro Tem Curt Maddux said. “I can’t wait to come back and see the finished product.”
The homes are in one of Conroe’s oldest neighborhoods; three have been handed down for generations, with one family lot dating back to the 1800s.
Conroe started to obtain housing grant funds the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development Community Development Block Grant program in the 1990s, Mikeska said.
The funds must be used to create suitable living environments for those in need, including demolishing and constructing a new home.
Originally, the program would help residents with repairs such as a new roof.
“We would spend $30,000, maybe $40,000, and something else would go wrong,” Mikeska said. “The council decided years ago we would tear (the old homes) down and put something better on the ground.”
Residents are selected by the seven-member Community Development Block Grant Board and must live in the Dugan and Madeley Quarter areas of the city. Those areas, Mikeska said, are the oldest and most historic in the community.
The new homes will be around 1,391 square feet including a carport, Mikeska said. To date, the city has built 81 homes for residents.
