The city’s plan for spending its Community Development Block Grant money this year includes a project that will start correcting a gnarly, longstanding problem with roots in another city project 42 years ago.

The proposal is to spend about $800,000 out of about $2 million available on replacing the sidewalks on both sides of Eighth Street between Sixth and Crawford avenues: sidewalks that were installed in 1983, along with Bradford pear trees at the curbside — which over the years have heaved and broken many of the sidewalk slabs.

The project funding consists of $415,000 from the current fiscal 2025 CDBG allocation and about $385,000 from the allocations for the previous two years, according to officials at a meeting Wednesday during which the CDBG spending plan was discussed, along with a plan for this year’s available HOME money, plus a five-year “consolidated plan” for both those programs, which are funded by the Department of Housing and Urban Development.

The city is hopeful that the $800,000 will cover the costs of removing the offending trees and replacing the sidewalks on Eighth Street, although the project will require payment of prevailing wages, officials said.

The project’s eligibility for CDBG funding was in doubt for a while, because even though the 2010 census showed that 88% of households along the street were low-to-moderate income — well above the 51% eligibility threshold — the 2020 census pegged that eligibility percentage at 50.79, falling just short, according to Diana White, the city’s CDBG manager.

Officials suspected that the drop occurred because people failed to respond to the census.

The city salvaged the situation with a door-to-door survey that resulted in a finding of 62% as low-to-moderate income, comfortably beyond the cutoff, according to White.

Still, even if the allocated money pays for all of Eighth Street on both sides in the problem area, the work of recovering from the tree damage will only be half done: Seventh Street, which is part of a one-way pair with Eighth Street, has the same problem.

The city will seek to do that work too, although the project will require its own eligibility survey, according to White.

Other CDBG proposals

The other proposed CDBG expenditures are:

— $400,000 for the perennial single-family rehabilitation loan program, which provides no-interest loans for income eligible residents;

— $287,000 for the Community Development Department to manage, monitor, coordinate, oversee and evaluate projects;

— $200,000 for continued funding of street reconstruction in low-to-moderate-income areas;

— $110,000 for continued finding of a the city’s emergency roof replacement program, which provides no-interest loans that become grants after four years for income eligible residents;

— $50,000 for a single family owner-occupied emergency repair program, which provides no-interest, deferred and forgivable loans of up to $5,000 that are amortized over four years for low-to-moderate income homeowners to correct exterior code violations — not including mowing; and up to $20,000 for emergency correction of heating, plumbing and electrical system failures or other repairs as determined necessary by city inspectors that don’t trigger major lead paint remediation requirements;

— $49,900 for the Overflow Church’s warming center for homeless people;

— $33,200 for an Overflow Church meal initiative designed to encourage connections in the church’s struggling neighborhood;

— $30,000 for fair housing activities designed to deal with discrimination;

— $25,000 for a Salvation Army program that helps low-income individuals deal with rent, utility and heating fuel needs;

— $10,000 for exterior restoration of the deteriorating Railroaders Memorial Museum’s ALTO Tower, a relic of the PRR and the only remaining interlocking tower in Blair County;

— $5,000 for Operation Safe Space, a city program that temporarily relocates people living in buildings that have been condemned.

CDBG rules allow no more than 15% of a municipality’s allocation to go for public service projects; and no more than 20% for program administration, according to city consultant Dave Jordan of Urban Design Ventures of Homestead.

HOME proposals

The proposed HOME expenditures:

— $131,000 to continue a rehabilitation deferred loan program for owners of low-income rental units;

— $108,000 for replacement of 14 kitchens on the top floor of the Improved Dwellings for Altoona’s Fairview building, along with some other work;

— $26,000 for administration.

HOME rules allow for no more than 10% of annual funds to be spent on program administration, while at least 15% must be spent on the municipality’s designated Community Housing Development Organization, which must be a private nonprofit with a federal tax exemption whose mission is to provide affordable housing. Altoona’s CHDO (pronounced “chodo”) is IDA.

Overall outlook

The fiscal 2025 CDBG allocation for Altoona totals $1.56 million.

An additional $80,000 in CDBG program income brings the money for this fiscal year to $1.61 million.

The 2025 HOME allocation is $266,000.

Thus the total city allocation for Altoona from HUD for fiscal 2025 is $1.8 million.

The requests for CDBG funding totaled $3.5 million.

The requests for HOME funding totaled $352,000.

The city’s Department of Community Development will present the annual HUD spending plan to City Council for approval Monday.

The Trump administration is seeking to defund — or “zero out” — the CDBG and HOME programs for 2026, according to Jordan.

That is in line with other previous administrations of both parties, he said.

Congress is unlikely to accept the defunding of CDBG, based on the decades-old program’s popularity, according to Jordan. It’s a real possibility, however, that HOME will be defunded, he said.

The federal budget was approved late this year, so this stage of the city’s work on the HUD funding programs came later than usual, officials said.

Contracts are likely to be let in November, they said.

The city’s new consolidated plan, covering 2025-29, calls for prioritizing housing, homelessness, “other special needs,” community development, economic development and administration and planning, Jordan said.

Mirror Staff Writer William Kibler is at 814-949-7038.