The next bank to open in Liberty County may help alleviate the affordable housing crunch.

Liberty County Commission Chairman Donald Lovette signaled to Bob Sprinkel, with Liberty’s Initiative for Community Housing, that he was open to forming a land bank. If it goes ahead with the plan, the county has to find at least one partner city in the county to sign on, before establishing ordinances and putting intergovernmental agreements in place.

But the land bank, Sprinkel told county commissioners recently, is the “last piece of our puzzle.”

A land bank, Sprinkel detailed, would identify vacant, abandoned or distressed property and turn them into productive use. A land bank, he added, would not have eminent domain powers.

Several other area governments have set up land banks and done so successfully, such as Statesboro and Valdosta, Sprinkel said.

“Our goal is to put things that are no longer bringing taxes into the county back into use,” he said. “Once it is up and operating, it generates its own funding. They become more self-reliant. However, they have to get started.

“We need the right people at the right time with the right organization. Now we have the right people together with the right stuff. We must establish our land bank to put our puzzle together. It’s very important to us. We’re trying to build workforce housing that fits the needs of our workers who are working in Liberty County. We’re trying to get them into a real home as a real owner.”

Liberty’s Initiative for Community Housing has been in existence since 2013, and it was one of the first county-wide such endeavors to earn the state Department of Community Affairs’ approval to be a Georgia Initiative for Community Housing (GICH) organization, Sprinkel pointed out.

“We have accomplished a whole bunch,” Sprinkel said. “We actually have accomplished quite a lot.”

One of the first projects was a tax credit letter for what became Live Oak Villas in Midway.

“That was excellent,” Sprinkel said. “I was glad we were a part of that.”

The local GICH also conducted a countywide housing survey, completing it in 2018. The survey results were used to obtain CHIP and other grants and led to two houses built in Riceboro targeted for low to moderate income families.

“That was an extremely good project,” Sprinkel said.

The Liberty Initiative for Community Housing was approached by two developers this year about tax credits for their projects. One project, referred to as the Benson project, is off Kacey Drive with 84 units and the other, the Searles Foundation project, is off Highway 84, behind Rodeo’s, with a total of 139 units.

“Both of them were exceptional projects. Both of them were worthy of being done,” Sprinkel said.

The Searles Foundation project plans to provide additional amenities, and “that’s what got them the leg up,” Sprinkel added. They received an additional two points on their application to the DCA, but they won’t find out about potential tax credits to be awarded until November.

Liberty’s Initiative for Community Housing can add extra construction criteria, such as parks or additional sidewalks.

“With our next round, we are going to be asking those kinds of things, what are you going to be doing for our community,” Sprinkel said.

The community housing members also are in talks with a developer for two potential projects, one in Midway and one in Riceboro, for workforce housing.

“We need workforce housing for our people working in our county,” Sprinkel said.

Currently, there is not a way for a local government to have money routed to them to buy the land for such a project, Sprinkel pointed out. The DCA, however, is working on a process to enable that to happen, and this project is the first such proposal that has what the DCA is looking for, he said.

Under the vision Sprinkel laid out for commissioners, the county would own the land and the homeowner would own the home on that land. If the home owner wanted to sell, there would be covenants in place, restricting on who could buy it.

After a set period of time, the ownership of the land would turn over to the homeowner.

“People who deserve workforce housing would have them until the end,” Sprinkel said. “It’s groundbreaking. No other county or municipality is doing anything like this.”

Sprinkel said they need to do another community survey and he would like to work with the Liberty County Development Authority and its business and industrial contacts to see what the workforce needs are.

“I want to make sure we do the right thing,” he said.

The community housing initiative also is gearing up for a seminar on heirs property to be held later this fall. Sprinkel said they have tried to enlist the help of a statewide heirs property legal outreach to conduct the sessions.

“We run into roadblocks every time we try to do that,” he said.

The group held its first community-wide information seminar on heirs property back in 2017, and Sprinkel said they learned a lot from holding that session. At its second seminar, it had eight families who got their heirs property untangled.

“That doesn’t sound like a lot, but that’s eight families and the process is very tedious,” he said, adding there is one family that has 300 heirs and has property tied up.

What is needed, Sprinkel said, are lawyers willing to donate their time to help out.

“I’ve got to find some attorneys willing to do some pro bono,” he said.