Rural Missouri - February 2025 - 11

photo by Sara Schafer
Damian, Ellie and Linden Antal sit in the living room of their brand-new home in Lancaster. The home was the first built through Housing Enhancement
Northeast, which aims to bring workforce housing - single-family homes aimed at working families - to a six-county area in northeast
Missouri. With multiple houses underway, the program hopes to build two houses per year in each county.
The commission started with money from an apartment
complex it owned. Tri-County and transmission cooperative
Northeast Power leveraged matching funds from generation
cooperative Associated Electric's Power4Progress
program and provided a combined $240,000 five-year loan
at 0%. Finally, the Missouri legislature earmarked funds to
help increase the capital available to NEMO RPC.
With the funds in place in late 2023, Derek started
looking for land and in March 2024, a crowd gathered to
ceremonially turn the dirt on the first home of the project
- where the Antals now call home.
" We would've eventually gotten this project going on
our own, " says Derek. " But if it weren't for Tri-County
and Northeast Power stepping up, we wouldn't be this far
along. I guarantee we wouldn't have gotten the money from
the state legislature without that initial funding in place. "
Today they are constructing or have contracts to buy
land or sell houses in Lancaster, Lewistown, Edina and
Memphis, with their eyes on plenty of other locations
throughout the area.
Derek says the businesses, cities and counties of northeast
Missouri are the real winners. " We're bringing workers
into this area, and we're taking lots that weren't producing
any real property tax, " he says. " Now they will have revenue
for sidewalks, streets and utilities every year. "
Every house is approximately 1,650 square feet and
includes three bedrooms with a garage. The houses all
have a similar floor plan, however, they won't look the
same as they don't build two identical houses next to each
other. The only buyer prerequisite is that it will be occupied
by the owner. " Our prototypical buyer is like our first
family in Lancaster, and we were very excited for them to
buy it, " Derek says. " But if I spent my energy worrying
about who moved in, I think we would get lost. Our main
priority is to increase the housing stock. "
He also notes the residual impact it can have on the
community including sales tax generated in buying from
local lumber yards and construction companies, as well as
using local contractors. " When people drive by that house
being built, they know who is building it, " Derek says.
" We've had discussions with schools about involving their
building and trades programs too. "
While the overall goal for the cooperatives and NEMO
RPC is to enrich and bolster the communities they serve,
seeing the Antals move in just months after they kicked off
the project reminded them of the real-world effects.
" Handing over the keys and seeing their little girl playing
in the living room of their brand-new
house, that's like a dream come
true for all of us, " Mike says.
" That's exactly why we did this. "
Memphis
For more information on Housing
Enhancement Northeast or NEMO
RPC visit www.nemorpc.org/hen or
call 660-465-7281.
FEBRUARY 2025 | RURALMISSOURI.COOP 11

http://www.nemorpc.org/hen http://www.RURALMISSOURI.COOP

Rural Missouri - February 2025

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