Dorchester Times: June 20 Meeting Will Focus On Home Ownership In Dorchester, Saline Co.

Wednesday, June 15, 2016

June 20 Meeting Will Focus On Home Ownership In Dorchester, Saline Co.

Did you know that between Dorchester's two largest employers -- Farmers Co-op and Dorchester Public School -- fewer than 20 of approximately 100 employees live in Dorchester?

Ideally, job creation should encourage new income to be invested in the community where it was earned.

This dynamic must change if Dorchester is to have a bright future.

That is why Dorchester area residents are invited to a June 20 meeting at Doane University in Crete to discuss home ownership opportunities.

Located at 1014 Boswell Ave. in the East-West Dining Room of Perry Campus Center, the meeting will begin at noon on Monday.

The focus of the event will be opportunities available for families and individuals to achieve the dream of homeownership. USDA Rural Development has approximately $120 million available in Nebraska to assist with meeting the housing needs in rural communities.

Available housing is important in supporting employers in the community, and allows families to live and raise their families in communities where they work.

State and federal partners, community officials, lenders, realtors, major employers, home builders and other housing partners will convene for the meeting. Families that are interested in living in rural communities and owning their own home or existing home owners that need assistance with home repairs should plan to attend.

Representatives from USDA Rural Development, Nebraska Investment Finance Authority (NIFA), and the City of Crete will be available to discuss programs that offer up to 100% financing for a home purchase. Financing is available with interest rates at 3% and below, and households may qualify for rates as low as 1%.

These affordable rates with no or a low down payment makes home ownership affordable and may be less than rent. Low interest rate loans at 1% are also available for home repairs for existing home-owners for very low income household. Grants are available for elderly households 62 years of age or older for home repairs that are unable to repay a loan.

Register to NIFA for the meeting: http://tinyurl.com/cretecommunitymeeting.

For information, call 402.826.6775.

1 comment:

AnonymousJune 15, 2016 at 11:39 PM
A great start would be getting the 20 or so vacant homes in town lived in (or in a few cases bulldozed)
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Dorchester: A Good Little Family Town

Dorchester, Nebraska (est. population 630) is located in northern Saline county. Close in proximity to Interstate 80, Dorchester is only 25 minutes from the state capital of Lincoln (est. population 250,000) and about 55 minutes from Omaha (metro population 725,000).

Dorchester's median resident age is 37 years. In 2005, Dorchester had a median family income of approximately $35,600. The median house value was about $63,000. About 95 percent of Dorchester residents commute to work via Interstate and highways.

The village has a quality public school, which received a $4.1 million expansion and modernization in 2008; it offers a small classrooms and individualized attention. Total enrollment of grades K-12 is around 230-250 students.

Ancestries of the Dorchester area are primarily German (42.4%), Czech (24.9%), Irish (12.5%), English (5.4%), and Dutch (4.9%).

Dorchester Historical Facts

* On July 4, 1871, the railroad reached Dorchester.
* Incorporated in 1881, Dorchester's population grew from 200 to 500 by 1882.
* In 1882, Dorchester had 90 buildings, 35 of which were businesses or public facilities. Brick buildings lined both sides of Washington Avenue for two blocks.
* Dorchester's longest-running newspaper was The Dorchester Star, which was published until the late 1940s.
* By 1889, Dorchester's population is said to have reached 800, while the town housed an opera house, a two-story brick schoolhouse with a bell tower, and four churches.
* By the 1910s, Dorchester had electricity, a water tower and a fire department.
* Dorchester's main arteries, Highways 6 and 33, were graveled in the 1940s.
* Dorchester's first irrigation well was drilled on Chris Weber's farm and rural electrification was finished following WWII.

A Village with History

Dorchester is one of the "alphabet towns" on the Burlington & Missouri River Railroad line built west from Lincoln. The town site was selected for its pleasant location in the northern part of Saline County, about eight miles west of Crete. This situation is an attractive one, being on the level prairie land, midway between the West Blue River and Turkey Creek. The first named stream is three miles north, and the latter about the same distance south from the town. Dorchester was platted in 1870 and incorporated in 1881. The name "Dorchester" came from either for a suburb of Boston by that name or a town in England. No one is sure. Two of the very first settlers were James Seely and Edward McIntyre, who both made Dorchester their permanent home.

Dorchester: In The Beginning

Here is a look at Dorchester around 1890, less than a decade after its official incorporation, as documented by Andreas' History of the State of Nebraska:
* POPULATION: "About 300, and is made up of a substantial and progressive class of citizens, who are moral and industrious. ... The town grew but very little until the year 1879, for the reason that Pleasant Hill, on Turkey Creek, a short distance south, was the county seat and naturally drew a trade for quite a large scope of country."
* BUSINESS: "The business and professional interests of the town are represented by three general merchandise stores, two drug, one grocery, one furniture, two hardware, and two millinery stores, one bank, two restaurants, two hotels, three livery stables, a post office, one newspaper office, two elevators, two lumber yards, two coal yards, two blacksmith shops, two lawyers and four physicians."
* SCHOOL: "The schoolhouse is a good one. The schoolhouse was built in 1872, since which time the public schools have been continually kept up. The present schoolhouse is 24' x 40' in size, two stories high. The school is graded and consists of three departments. The house is found too small, and arrangements will soon be made to increase its size."
* CHURCHES: "There are three substantial churches."
* HOMES: "The residence portion of the village is made up of neat houses of different styles of architecture, but none of them very large."
* NEWSPAPER: "The Dorchester Star, which was established August 21, 1881, by H. C. Bittenbender, who edited it until January 19, 1882, when he sold it to Ryerson & Bullock, the present proprietors. The Star is a bright weekly paper, five-column quarto, in size, and is Republican in politics."