Anti-blight grants at risk
Trump’s proposed budget would eliminate funds for public health and safety projects in Rome.
Rome stands to lose at least $400,000 a year under President Donald Trump’s proposed budget, and cities across the nation are facing similar situations.
“It has never looked this grim before,” Community Development Director Bekki Fox said Monday.
Among the items completely defunded in Trump’s budget are Community Development Block Grants. The city gets about $400,000 annually for projects in low- to moderate-income neighborhoods. Fox said another $600,000 can come from the also-eliminated HOME Investment Partnerships Program, aimed at replacing blighted buildings with affordable housing.
Plans for this year range from sidewalk improvements and targeted code enforcement activities — including demolitions — and the minor and moderate repair programs. Under the repair programs, low-income elderly and disabled homeowners can get help rehabilitating deteriorating properties.
“That keeps them from having to go through our (condemnation) process,” said Building Inspection’s Howard Gibson.
More than 140 people have been helped with minor-repair funding since that program began in 2007. Still, Gibson said there could be as many as 2,000 homes in Rome and Floyd County that should be demolished.
He spent about a halfhour explaining to the city’s Community Development Committee how his office addresses public health and safety issues, such as overgrown lots that attract vermin and abandoned houses used for drug dens and other illicit purposes. They get about 45 complaints a week, he said, and have logged 447 property maintenance contacts so far this year.
Fox said the city’s Wilson Avenue home building project also was funded through a program that will no longer exist if the president’s budget is adopted.
Local banks are working with moderate-income buyers on mortgages for the new homes built on formerly blighted lots.
Two of the three new houses are expected to be under contract in April, and Fox said the South Rome Redevelopment Corp. has bought property for two more homes.
The CDBG and other atrisk funds are often considered some kind of welfare, she said, but they’re targeted for projects that help people help themselves. And cities like Rome don’t have the local money to do that.
“There’s almost a panic across the country about these funds,” Fox said.
The National Community Development Association is urging officials to contact their representatives with specific information about what the programs have accomplished.
Fox said U.S. Rep. Tom Graves, R-Ranger, sits on the Appropriations Committee’s Transportation, Housing and Urban Development subcommittee.
Members of the city’s Community Development Committee gave her the go-ahead to seek support from the Rome City Commission and Floyd County Commissions and the Rome-Floyd Chamber.