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ROC AF ROC IL DIN 4 A F E OUSING IN RURAL COMMUNITIES September 22, 2026 Hon. Geoffrey W. Hack, Supervisor and Members of the Town Board Town of Holland 47 Pear! Street Holland, NY 14080-9722 Dear Supervisor Hack and Members of the Board: ROC Affordable Housing Corporation is a nonprofit housing developer working in rural Southern Erie County. We are the housing arm of The Rural Outreach Center in East Aurora, which works with rural families across the Southtowns. We develop housing for the people already living in these communities. Seniors who want to stay in the town where they raised a family. Younger families who grew up here and cannot find a place nearby. The teacher aides, EMTs, childcare workers and shop staff who keep a town running and increasingly cannot afford to live in it. Rents have climbed faster than wages, older housing is getting harder and more expensive to keep up, and new housing has been slow to come out this way. This is not a failing of any one town. Rural communities get passed over when housing funding is handed out, and it is not for lack of need. It is because there is rarely anyone locally set up to build it. Construction costs are high, water and sewer do not always reach the parcels that make sense, and the numbers often do not work for a private builder. The private market alone will not close this gap, and neither will any one of us. A town brings local knowledge and the vision for what it needs, we bring the develop- ment work and the ability to navigate the funding, and the state and county bring the resources. For our project in North Collins we assembled roughly $2.5 million in state and county funding, and we would like to do the same in more communities here. The Small Rental Development Initiative funds af- fordable housing development in communities like these, and we anticipate a new round in early 2027. The Mobile and Manufactured Home Replacement program pays to replace an aging mobile or manufactured home with a new one, and we would be glad to look at what that could do here. Where an older building is worth saving, federal and state historic tax credits can cover a real share of bringing it back, which is often what makes saving it possible. Erie County HOME funds and Federal Home Loan Bank grants sit alongside these. All of these programs score applications on readiness, and readiness takes time. Site control, zoning and the water and sewer questions take months to work through. A community that starts when a round opens has already missed it. That is why we are writing now. Your 2018 Comprehensive Plan identifies the need for a diversity of housing types so new families are drawn to Holland and seniors can age in place, and that is exactly the kind of thing we could help turn into homes. Our question is simple. Does your community have a vacant site or an underutilized building where that goal could take shape? We would welcome the opportunity to meet and talk about what it might take to see something built there for local families. You can reach me at 716-240-2220, extension 105, or [email protected]. Sincerely, \ Vignesh Ramaiah Executive Director ROC Affordable Housing Corporation ec: Jill M. Dix, Town Clerk RO The Rural Ovireach Center 716-240-2220 Fasten dlr www.theroc.co Assist. Empower Elevate.