REDFIELD, S.D. (Dakota News Now) – The non-profit Feeding South Dakota is a massive social service organization that serves each of the state’s 66 counties once a month.

Weather permitting, every South Dakota county gets a visit. The story, by the numbers, was provided by Stacey Andernacht of the Feeding South Dakota organization.

Stacey said, “In South Dakota, nearly 73,000 people are food insecure, and that means that they are unable to have access to the food that they need to have a nutritious lifestyle. Our mobile food distribution is hosted right now in 119 communities across the state, every single month.”

Funding is a big issue with these social service programs.

Stacey continued, “Feeding South Dakota is funded through private donations, along with some grant and foundation opportunities that we apply for. Other than the food items that we receive through the USDA commodity programs, we don’t receive any funding from the state.”

Thursday was the distribution event for Redfield in Spink County. Penny Ihnen is the Co-director of the Tri-County Food Pantry, and she talked about the impact of the program.

Penny related, “We’ve had people say that they couldn’t make it from month to month if it wasn’t for this mobile food truck that comes. It’s a blessing to them.”

Both Ihnen and Andernacht say that the Feeding South Dakota program wouldn’t exist without the incredible volunteers. Leonard Deibert, one of those volunteers, explained how he got started.

Leonard said, “The wife and I were walking down by the Armory one time when the Feeding South Dakota truck come there and they were helping the people and we walked over and asked them, ‘What’s going on?’ And they explained the program to us and we asked, ‘Well, do you need any help?’ and he said, ‘Sure, we can use help,’ and we’ve been going back and helping them probably three or four years now. We enjoy it, it’s a good program, and the people enjoy it.”

Occasionally, the weather gets in the way of this distribution but, for the most part, every county in South Dakota has one of the 119 stops on the Feeding South Dakota route.

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South Dakota Housing will launch its Grants for Grads program Friday, aiming to help college and technical-college graduates purchase their first home in South Dakota. The program is available “for a limited time.”

The program existed under former Gov. Dennis Daugaard’s administration in an effort to attract workers to the state, but ended in 2019, South Dakota Housing Director of Homeownership Programs Brent Adney told board members on Thursday.

“I wouldn’t be surprised if we had quite a few commitments right away,” Adney said.

Rapid rise in South Dakota home prices is ‘not sustainable,’ economist says

The timing is good, added Director of South Dakota Housing Chas Olson, and it’ll help first-time homebuyers enter the market.

Average first-time homebuyers can expect to spend about two-fifths of their pre-tax income on a monthly payment for a house in South Dakota, according to Dakota Institute research.

“Any kind of affordability relief we could provide is good at this time,” Olson told board members. 

The program will also help with South Dakota’s workforce development initiatives, added Housing Development Authority Board President Scott Erickson.

“If someone graduated three years ago, moved to a major city and found that housing is really expensive, it would be the draw to bring them back,” Erickson said.

First-time homebuyers will be eligible if they’ve earned a degree from an accredited university or technical college in the last five years, select a South Dakota home costing $385,000 or less, and meet income requirements. According to Zillow, the median home sale price in South Dakota is $290,833.

Materials from the prior iteration of Grants for Grads said the program provided 5% percent of a participant’s loan amount as a grant to be used for a down payment or closing cost assistance.

Interested participants must contact a lender to set an appointment and apply for the program.

(Pierre, SD) — Restoring abortion rights could be on South Dakota ballots during the next election.

A group called Dakotans for Health handed in a constitutional amendment petition with 55,000 signatures yesterday. The group’s founder Rick Weiland said “Restoring the tenets of Roe, the framework of Roe, you know, isn’t radical.” He continues to say that the group believes it’s the right thing to do even if other abortion rights groups are reserving judgment.

The group should know in a couple of weeks if the constitutional amendment will be on the November ballot.