Redevelopment authority applies for housing grant
WAYNESBURG – Greene County Redevelopment Authority has applied for a $600,000 grant from a state program aimed at developing housing in communities impacted by Marcellus Shale gas drilling.
The authority applied for a competitive grant from the Pennsylvania Housing Affordability and Rehabilitation Enhancement Act program, a program funding by the state’s drilling impact fees.
The authority hopes to rehabilitate or build 13 houses throughout the county with the grant money. Once the houses are completed, they will be sold.
On Thursday, the Greene County commissioners authorized the authority’s grant application and committed $375,000, most of it from the county’s own impact fee allocation, toward the program should the grant be awarded to the authority.
Three of the six municipalities in which houses will be rehabilitated or built, Cumberland and Jefferson townships and Waynesburg Borough, also have agreed to commit money to the program should the grant be funded.
Properties the authority plans to work with are all “underutilized” and include vacant and blighted houses and vacant lots, said David Mirkovich, authority executive director.
“One of the goals is to take properties no one wants and no one wants to do anything with and make them useful,” Mirkovich said. “We want to turn existing houses that are vacant or blighted into houses someone can live in and with the lots, put up houses on properties that are now underutilized.”
Rehabilitating the houses will eliminate blight and benefit the communities by helping to increase the value of surrounding properties, he said. On many of the properties that will be purchased, no taxes have been paid for years. The project will return those properties to the tax rolls, Mirkovich said.
The authority also would like eventually to make money on the sale of the properties to generate operating income for the authority and make the housing program self-sufficient, he said.
Mirkovich, hired last year with an assignment to address the county’s shortage of available housing, began developing the authority’s program before he became aware PHARE money was available to help support it.
With the grant, the authority plans to purchase 23 parcels of land on which it will rehabilitate five houses and build another eight houses. The parcels are in Dunkard, Franklin, Jefferson and Cumberland townships and Waynesburg and Jefferson borough.
The authority already has purchased three properties, one each in Jefferson Borough, Jefferson Township and Dunkard Township.
The properties were purchased from the county’s tax repository. The repository includes tax delinquent properties that failed to sell at tax sales and at subsequent judicial sales, at which they were offered free and clear of liens and delinquent taxes.
The properties were purchased for $50 to $100 each, not including costs. “We’ve been trying to buy property as inexpensively as we possibly can,” Mirkovich said. “With limited funds, we want to put our money into rehabilitation and construction.”
Mirkovich said the authority hopes to purchase another six properties from the repository, nine properties coming up for judicial sale and four now in foreclosure. An additional parcel will be purchase that adjoins one of the lots the authority already owns.
Cost estimates have been prepared to rehabilitate each of the five houses that will be saved. The eight houses the authority plans to build will cost in the $125,000 range, he said.
To meet a requirement of the grant program, a majority of the homes rehabilitated or built will be sold to people whose income is at or below 50 percent of the median area income. The median area income for Greene County is $52,600.
The entire budget for the authority’s housing program is about $1.5 million. Of that, $600,000 will come from the grant and the remainder from the county and municipalities and other grants the authority hopes to receive. The authority also has received a line of credit from a bank for gap funding.
Mirkovich said he expects to know if the grant will be funded sometime in the fall.