High demand excludes some rural counties from Pa.’s Whole-Home Repairs Program

So why did a few counties leave the money on the table?

A mixture of not knowing the funding was available and concerns over being able to handle another grant program.

Adams County Manager Steve Nevada said he wasn’t immediately sure why the county hadn’t applied.

Brian Allen, chair of the Board of Perry County Commissioners, said county officials didn’t know about the program in time to apply. There was also confusion, he said, because the county has its own home repair program; when a resident recently called to ask about the new state initiative, he said, he assumed they were referring to the existing one. “If it opens back up, we’ll be first in line,” Allen said.

In a statement, a DCED spokesperson said the agency took “extensive action” to ensure that all 67 counties knew about the Whole-Home Repairs Program, including organizing an information session that all three Perry County commissioners, as well as the chief clerk and solicitor, were invited to attend.

Sullivan County Commissioner Brian Hoffman told Spotlight PA the county decided not to apply for the funding because it already has difficulty spending the smaller amounts of money allocated to its existing home repair program. There is a need for the funding, he said, but finding contractors willing to bid on the work is challenging. The high cost of repairs also makes some projects unworkable.

Additionally, he said, the county has been overwhelmed by the flood of COVID-related grants and doesn’t have the resources to take on a new program. Sullivan County stood to receive an estimated $200,000 from the Whole-Home Repairs Program and getting that funding out would have been a major administrative challenge, Hoffman said.

“It’s almost like too much money at the same time.”

Spotlight PA is an independent, non-partisan newsroom powered by The Philadelphia Inquirer in partnership with PennLive/The Patriot-News, TribLIVE/Pittsburgh Tribune-Review, and WITF Public Media.