When projects involve both agencies, what does that process look like today?

Well, what we're attempting to do, and the MOU was signed on September 29th, and it was kind of a neat ceremony.

We had Secretary Scott Turner come in from HUD and And to him, Secretary Rawlins signed this MOU that is meant to eliminate redundancy and streamline a lot of the regulatory process with housing.

Of course, in our case, we're talking about rural housing and the concerns for affordability.

And when you layer all these regs, we were finding in our case that not only did you have local regs, you had state regs.

And then you're coming in and you're layering federal ranks on top of that.

And when the regulatory process gets burdensome like that, it adds to the cost of housing.

in a lot of cases for the lenders as well,

And as we look across the whole country, is there anything you consistently see as you go from state to state when it comes to rural development?

Well, I think two areas in particular.

Housing is something that, you know, growing up, I think we took for granted in the rural area.

And I grew up in a rural area of western Iowa.

I've been a farmer my whole life, a farmer and ag businessman.

So I see it's surprising.

that at times when a business is considering locating to a rural area, it used to be taken for granted that we had adequate housing for the expanded workforce.

What do you see as underutilized resources when it comes to rural development and the programs available to potential participants?

And as we look across the whole country, is there anything you consistently see as you go from state to state when it comes to rural development?

Well, I think two, two areas in particular.

Housing is something that, um, you know, growing up, I think we took, took for granted in a rural area, and I grew up in a rural area of, of Western Iowa.

Um, I've been a farmer my whole life, a farmer and ag businessman.

So, um, I, I see, uh, it, it, it's surprising that at times when a business is considering locating to a, to a rural area, uh, it used to be taken for granted that we had adequate housing for the expanded workforce.

Uh, today we, we don't see that as much.

Um, we, we have a need for new housing, but the challenge with new housing is it's so, so expensive, and we've talked with, uh, uh, several of these communities about some different programs we can, we can, uh, we can offer support for, for existing homes.

What do you see as underutilized resources when it comes to rural development and the programs available to potential participants?

So talk about some of these changes and the new structure here and how this process is going to work for folks who are looking to apply a project here under the REAP program.

Yeah, at first glance, if you look at that, Jesse, you think, well, what happens in that interim year before it's fully operational? And of course, in the application process, you demonstrate what you expect to see, the savings in efficiency, in energy.

That should be all laid out in the proposal.

And then there's a one-year period before that you're not eligible for grant funding.

Now, these projects are funded by a combination of grants and loans.

But in the interim, they are eligible for a guarantee loan through their bank, 80% guarantee, to get them through that interim one-year period to prove that their prospectus and the analysis is accurate.

And so it doesn't leave them dang pulling those funds out of operating money.

What does things look like moving forward?