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The U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development (HUD) held a special announcement event this morning in Franklinton where it was revealed that Columbus will receive $23.2 Million this year to assist neighborhoods with vacant housing in their efforts for urban renewal.
Funding for the Neighborhood Stabilization Program comes from the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act, the federal program for economic stimulus. More information can be found online at Recovery.gov.
@Rory: Chase provided the Stable Families program at CIS with enough money to hire/dedicate a caseworker to the area. We have 5 caseworkers that work in Franklin County plus Jessica Porter who is ONLY allowed to work in WP. We basically do case management to try to prevent families from becoming homeless. Jessica can only take clients that currently live in WP or want to move to WP. You can PM me for more info if you’d like.
I’m really glad that the City is receiving some money and it would have been great to get more, but I, for one, am not confident that we could manage more funds. Think about it: after the tax hike to benefit public safety, all that I’ve seen are a plethora of officers hanging out at traffic lights on Lane and 5th Avenues on non-athletic event days reading magazines. Plus, the City has a history of only adding to its employee rolls and shifting ridiculous retirement costs to the citizens instead of passing funds through to private businesses. I have no confidence that the City would not have diverged from the Plan and left the non-profits out to dry. I’d like to see some outcome measures for the ARRA and tax dollars instead of the useless performance measures in the budget book. Then we can talk about more money.
Additionally, I’d like to see how the City intends to monitor all of these ARRA funds and ensure that sub-recipients aren’t engaging in fraud, waste, and abuse. If we’re lucky, the independent auditor this year and next year will do some testing on the job creation numbers and we’ll see what the real results were relative to what the City reports to the press.
I’m not trying to be rude or burst any bubbles; I’m just being honest from an independent finance professional’s standpoint.
$1.9 million in fed stabilization money buys 150 homes
Tuesday, February 9, 2010
By Mark Ferenchik
THE COLUMBUS DISPATCH
Columbus has spent about $1.9 million to buy 150 homes with federal money designed to shore up city neighborhoods ravaged by foreclosures and vacant housing.
The city bought the houses in Linden, Franklinton and the Hilltop and on the South Side. Purchase prices averaged about $12,666; officials say they expected to spend twice as much, another stark reminder of how bad things have become in some neighborhoods.
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