A new nonprofit corporation started by the Lawrence-Douglas County Housing Authority should help expand opportunities for low- and moderate-income housing in the city, officials say.

The new Douglas County Housing Inc. will be able to raise money and move faster than the government agency, Director Barbara Huppee said. But the organization has to pull itself together before new houses start popping up.

“Right now, we’re positioning ourselves,” Huppee said.

The Housing Authority already serves more than 1,000 Lawrence families. Most receive rental assistance through the federal Section 8 program; more than 300 other families live in publicly subsidized housing developments, such as Edgewood Homes on Haskell Avenue. Those programs are federally funded.

But Huppee said the Housing Authority, as a government agency, wasn’t eligible for other types of financing, such as tax credits and grants, to build new housing. Thus the creation of the corporation.

“There’s a number of different funding sources, some of which a local Housing Authority is eligible for, and some of which only nonprofit corporations are eligible for,” Huppee said. “To apply for and be in position for a whole range of funding, we needed to form a nonprofit.”

The Housing Authority’s board will oversee the new corporation, coordinating the efforts of the two agencies.

The corporation has not received any funding yet, and Huppee said she didn’t know when it would get rolling.

The new nonprofit could partner with the Housing Trust Fund Advisory Committee, which is still trying to attract new money to add to the $500,000 the city established in 2000 with leftover funds from construction of the Indoor Aquatic Center.

“I’m sure there’d be a willingness to do that with them,” said Margene Swarts, the city’s community development manager who works with the trust fund. “I think that (corporation) poises the Housing Authority to do some new and different things than they’ve done before.”