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DASH Directors Nate Crawford and Sam Craig provided an update on the nonprofit’s housing projects, including a plan to turn the former Unity Mill into affordable housing.

DASH (Dependable Affordable Sustainable Housing) LaGrange was created in 2002 to address inadequate and unsafe housing in the city, particularly in the once-thriving mill villages.

DASH Executive Director Nate Crawford said last year the nonprofit was awarded over $7.5 million in funding, which allowed them to complete 16 new housing units. 

“We are wrapping up our strategic plan this year, which started in 2023 and we’re on track to complete about 80% of our items that we had, which we feel is a really good thing for a nonprofit of our size,” Crawford said.

Crawford said their Hillside commercial redevelopment now has five thriving businesses, thanking the city for investing in streetscaping for the area. The commercial redevelopment helps support DASH’s nearby housing development.

The housing was meant to provide homes for all walks of life with mixed-use housing, or mixed-income and missing middle housing. 

“We said a success would be if we had a doctor and a single mom living next door. Unfortunately, they don’t live next door. They live about 200 feet apart,” Crawford said. “We have a Section 8 tenant, a single mom, living in these units, and we also have a doctor at Emory living in these units.”

Crawford said they are developing a duplex unit on Cherry Street, where they are working with First Presbyterian Church to support their childcare department to provide affordable housing for their childcare workers.

“It’s providing housing as a perk of the job. We’ve been working with them, and this was built with leftover chip funds that we had already earmarked for affordable housing,” Crawford said.

Another housing development is also under construction near South Bend Park. The 16-unit development was paid for using a $4.4 million grant from the State of Georgia. The homes are earmarked for 65% median-income residents.

“It’s extremely close to the industrial park and extremely close to the hospital. The impetus originally behind this was to have housing for people working in the hospital because a significant portion of hospital workers are low-wage earners, but they’re also the people who run the hospital. That’s laundry service, that’s food service, that’s lower-paid nurses,” Crawford said.

Sam Craig, Director of Development for DASH, gave an overview of plans for the redevelopment of the former Unity Mill.

Craig said the idea for restructuring the mill into housing came from a meeting between Visit LaGrange President Kathy Tilley and DASH Board Chair Ricky Wolfe to discuss the Mulberry Street Cemetery.

“[Wolfe was looking at the site plan, and he was walking the site and then he saw this textile mill over the creek, past Horace King Bridge, and was like, all this money in the cemetery, you have no clue what’s going to happen with that mill. You need to expand your vision and do something with it, which turned into DASH doing something with it,” Craig said.

Plans to renovate the 125-year-old textile mill into housing was an overwhelming process, especially due to environmental issues, construction costs and surprises that might pop up, but they began exploring what they could do.

Craig said they have found a funding path to turn the former mill into 104 units of loft housing, with 80 percent earmarked as federally regulated affordable housing with an income cap, and 20 percent market-rate units.

The plans are similar to the Dixie Mill renovation where they used historic credit funding, except theirs is all market rate. DASH plans to do the same thing with historic tax credit funding, but also get low-income tax credit funding. Those two funding sources are projected to provide $28 million in outside capital.

“With the city’s investment in The Thread and the city’s investment into the Mulberry  Street Cemetery, it’s really the perfect location for something like this,” Craid said. “But we still have to get the funding.”

Craig said the majority of the homes will be single-bedrooms for bonafide workforce housing. The layout will be determined by the structure that exists, Crawford said.