A new program in a central Iowa prison aims to help fill the state’s skilled labor shortage and bring quality, affordable homes to rural areas, while also helping keep offenders from returning to prison. The first completed houses will go to Marshalltown to help with the rebuild blitz.

Only four houses will be built this year as Iowa lawmakers didn’t provide enough money to fully launch the program. Iowa Prison Industries director Dan Clark says the goal is to eventually have about 100 men, including medium-security inmates, working on a ten-acre, fenced-in site.