Low-Income Housing Renovation Gets Funds

The city’s Housing Rehabilitation Program will receive $866,240 from Community Development Block Grant funds, despite an attempt by two councilmen to divert some of the money for street repair programs.

City Council members last week voted 3 to 2 against a $200,000 diversion and, instead, approved the funding for housing rehabilitation.

Mayor Chris Norby and Councilman Peter Godfrey, who cast the dissenting votes, wanted to take money from the housing rehabilitation funds and add it to the street repair funds.

Norby argued that road improvement would benefit a greater number of people.

“Roads are 100% city responsibility. Housing is a very small city responsibility. Building roads benefits all the citizens,” he said.

Councilwoman Jan M. Flory called the diversion proposal “nothing more than a continued assault on affordable housing programs.”

Flory said funds from gas taxes and a number of other resources are available for street improvement projects.

“Lord knows that the streets are going to be taken care of,” she said. “The same is not true for affordable housing programs. We have to kick, bite and scratch for every damn dollar that goes into the programs.”

Godfrey said he would have rather taken the money from the housing program to repair streets because public improvement money has dwindled in the past few years.

The council did vote to spend $116,970 of the city’s federal block grants on street improvement projects.