Boynton Beach bringing back program to help residents improve homes

Efforts aim to ax blight, bring affordable housing to Heart of Boynton.

BOYNTON BEACH — McKinley Miller’s 1973 Cherry Hills home needed a new roof, windows, doors, hurricane shutters and a paint job about six years ago.

Miller, now 71, couldn’t afford it. But the improvements happened because the city had a program for residential improvements in the Heart of Boynton area where Miller lives. The work cost about $18,000.

And Miller didn’t have to pay a cent.

The city and its Community Redevelopment Agency paid, with the help of money from the state.

“It was good,” Miller told The Palm Beach Post last week. “A lot of improvements.”

The program ran from November 2007 to September 2010. Nearly 40 homes received about $562,000 worth of renovations, CRA documents show.

Boynton officials say they know many residents, specifically in the Heart of Boynton neighborhoods, like Miller who need help and have needed it for a while. This month, with a push from Mayor Steven Grant, they decided to bring the program back. Also, they plan to start a program through which the redevelopment agency will buy distressed properties, then renovate and sell them at affordable and workforce prices. The homes would be only ones in foreclosure or ones up for purchase as a short sale.

The two programs are part of an effort to eliminate blight and bring affordable housing to the Heart of Boynton, which includes the intersection of Martin Luther King Jr. and Seacrest boulevards and the surrounding neighbor- hoods. The median household income in these neighborhoods is less than $30,000, according to CRA documents.

Officials also want to create a cit ywide housing authorit y, which could provide affordable housing to low-income families through government assistance programs. They also signed off on spending about $25,000 for a study to measure how much