At a recent meeting, City Manager Marla Marcinko proposed reworking the

typical slate of projects funded by Community Development Block Grants to provide more money for the city’s homeowner rehabilitation subsidy program to fight blight.

Expansion of that program was one of the primary recommendations of the recently decommissioned Blight Task Force, whose ideas are now being carried out by a Blight Action Team.

The city allocates CDBG money — $357,000 this year — to the homeowner rehab subsidy program.

More money should go toward the subsidy, but that will mean cutting back on other programs typically funded with CDBG money, Marcinko said.

She mentioned two in particular: one that funds a code officer who operates only in low- to moderate-income areas and another that funds police bicycle unit for those same areas.

This fiscal year, the city allocated $66,000 for designated code enforcement and $210,000 for the bike patrol.

The Department of Housing and Urban Development’s accounting requirements for those activities have become increasingly “difficult to follow,” Marcinko said.

HUD is now requiring that those low- to moderate-income areas be “primarily residential,” she said.

Such restrictions make it especially difficult for Police Chief Janice Freehling, because it limits her freedom to allocate officers, Marcinko indicated.

There’s also another program funded by CDBG — one that Marcinko declined to specify — that might make “economic sense” to scale back, to free up money for the housing program.

Expansion of the owner-occupied home repair subsidy program also will depend on increasing the number of willing contractors and encouraging homeowners to apply, team consultant Winnie Branton said.

It has been hard to find contractors willing to participate, which has led the city to avoid heavy marketing of the program, said Marcinko.

The department may be able to recruit contractors by including notices with invoices it sends out for contractor license renewals, said Rebecca Brown, director of the Department of Codes and Inspections.

The city also could recruit through the Blair Bedford Builders Association, Branton said.

“I’ll reach out,” said team chairman and city Mayor Matt Pacifico.

The city may be able to recruit applicants by continuing to include program flyers when it posts notices of violations on owner-occupied properties, Brown said.

The city can increase the number of homeowners helped by reversing its current policy of correcting all major problems identified at each participating property, Marcinko said.

A less comprehensive approach to each property would mean a greater overall improvement in the city, she said.

More than half the buildings in the low- to moderate-income areas of Altoona are not blighted, but are in need of repair and thus at risk of becoming blighted, according to a report released in May by the Community Development Department.

It might pay to focus the subsidy expansion program on a single neighborhood, to generate maximum impact, said Jim Hudak, team member and administrator of the Blair County Department of Social Services.

Perhaps the city could stretch the subsidies even further by recruiting churches and other nonprofit organizations to supply labor, suggested a team member.

Expanding the program could have the added benefit of allowing weatherization projects that had been “deferred” because of structural problems in applicants’ homes to go forward, after those structural problems are corrected, Hudak said.

The city uses HOME money, also provided by HUD, to fund a rental property rehabilitation program, but that program is not targeted for expansion.

Landlords are in business and shouldn’t necessarily depend on such as subsidy to keep up with maintenance, according to Marcinko.

Mirror Staff Writer William Kibler is at 949-7038.