Interview with NIFA

Tuesday September 24, 2013

“Design a great place to live and people will want to work there” Tim Kenny, NIFA Executive Director

Today, Matt, Dan, and I had the opportunity to meet with 3 NIFA (the Nebraska Investment Finance Authority) employees to discuss the housing industry in Sarpy County.

About NIFA

NIFA's mission is to serve the people of Nebraska. Within its statutory authority, NIFA is charged with providing a broad range of financial resources for agricultural, residential, manufacturing, medical and community development endeavors and providing technical assistance for activities related to these areas. NIFA's efforts are to be accomplished while preserving and growing the asset base used to provide these resources. NIFA is an independent quasi-governmental instrumentality that encourages the investment of private capital in Nebraska to stimulate economic growth, thereby creating jobs and building the tax base for communities in the state.
NIFA's programs provide low-interest rate financing for manufacturing facilities, certain farm property, health care facilities, residential rental properties, housing rehabilitation, homeownership, and wastewater treatment and safe drinking water facilities. Recently, NIFA was given legislative authority to provide financing for public safety communications projects. NIFA also administers the federal Low Income Housing Tax Credit program for residential rental property development.
[http://www.nifa.org/index.html]
 
The Meeting
 
Matt, Dan, and I had the opportunity to meet with Tim Kenny (NIFA Executive Director), Steve Peregrine (NIFA Deputy Director of Communications and Outreach) and Robin Ambroz (NIFA Deputy Director of Programs) in NIFA’s Lincoln conference room to discuss the housing industry in Sarpy County. 

Between the three NIFA employees, their wealth of knowledge was remarkable. The conversation was a mix of open dialogue and structured questions we brought to discuss with Tim, Steve, and Robin.
After we prefaced the intent of our research in this class (particularly they weren’t all familiar with Emerging Terrain and how this information will be used to help the community), Tim opened up the discussion with his personal views on Sarpy County’s housing trends based from his 30 years of experience in the industry. 

Kenny explained why he sees Nebraska falling behind by almost 30 years from the rest of the country regarding urban planning. Ultimately, the mentality of the “American Dream” lifestyle is the way it is because people don’t know anything other than what history has shown them. Even though it is predicted that the greates scarcity our generation will face is food and clean water- we continue to sprawl. Kenny clearly argued that investment new home development is currently a very bad investment, even when interest rates are low.


We discussed a few particular case studies, such as Park City, Utah housing development, and Boulder, Colorado, before having an open discussion on some core questions we had for them, as well as an extensive sharing of information they provided to us.  

What we Learned

In our next blog, we will uncover the Sarpy County demographics, housing inventory, facts, and figures that Tim Kenny and the NIFA employees aided us with.