Housing authority gets grant for literacy program
The Northwest Georgia Housing Authority has already identified 100 potentially eligible public housing residents who could benefit from a new literacy grant.
Members of the housing authority board of directors learned Wednesday it could be funded for up to three years, but the authority would have to show progress and re-apply annually to continue to receive the money.
The amount of the grant is not yet known.
Retired Georgia Highlands College professor Ken Weatherman wrote the grant application and has been hired by the housing authority to actually serve as the grant navigator.
“The design of the grant is to try to create a pathway for 15 to 20 year olds to get to college, so that’s what we’re working on,” Weatherman said. “Two days ago Molly Majestic (director of residents’ services
for the NWGHA) and I went around to some units and knocked on doors. A computer analysis shows there are a little over 100 eligible residents.”
Weatherman also explained the original design of the grant was to have an experimental group and a control group with half of the kids getting services and half not. “We requested — if possible
— to serve all students, and HUD came around and agreed to that,” Weatherman said.
NWGHA Executive Director Sandra Hudson said one of the young women who answered the knock by Weatherman and Majestic was a 20-year-old mother who was very excited to learn about the program because she wants to become a dental assistant. “That’s wonderful, because if she wants it she will work harder for it,” said NWGHA Board Chairman Lee Hight.
NWGHA Director of Housing Kimberly Lewis told the board public housing agencies all over Georgia are having a difficult time finding landlords for the Section 8 Rental Assistance program.
The Section 8 program allows private citizens to rent houses or apartments to low-income qualifiers at fair-market rates.
Lewis said she attended a recent meeting of the Floyd County Landlords Association and realized quickly only a small handful of landlords participate in the program. “It could be for a variety of reasons. It could be them not having knowledge of how Section 8 program runs or it could be they had a bad experience with a prior tenant,” Lewis said.
Lewis said the NWGHA is allotted has 741 Section 8 vouchers but is using 671 at this time.