Grant to fix mold, other health issues in homes
The city of Columbus has received $2 million in federal funds to make housing safer from health hazards in city neighborhoods.
The money will go toward supporting projects for 155 homes in those neighborhoods through additions to homes that need more space, completing safe units, and educating occupants, owners, contractors, and others about healthy housing practices.
That includes repairs to Columbus homes that will help families with young children, seniors, and disabled residents to be able to afford to stay in their homes.
While the city has a lead-safe program, “this is a program meant to expand beyond more than just lead, a more-comprehensive look at the home,” said Erin Prosser, the city’s assistant director of housing strategies.
“It’s more flexible funding than we’ve seen” from the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development, she said.
Homes in older neighborhoods often contain health hazards
Prosser said this is a much more coordinated and holistic approach to deal with home health hazards in areas such as Linden and the South Side.
“Those are certainly neighborhoods that have older housing stock in need of some investment in their homes,” Prosser said.
Both homeowners and rental property owners with tenants who earn up to 80% of the area median income — that’s $46.950 for one person and $67,050 for a family of four — will be eligible for the money, Prosser said.
The city plans to reach out to groups to publicize the new program. “We may be partnering with other agencies on this,” Prosser said.
“Negotiations with HUD are still in the works, so we don’t have any one entity identified to work with at the moment,” Sheldon Goodrum, a spokesman for the city’s Department of Development, said in an email.
“When the negotiations are completed, we’ll reach out to all communities and the Columbus Public Health Department to help us out. We’ll also drop off flyers to all nonprofit agencies, churches, and libraries in our target area,” he said.
Linden home plagued with mold could benefit from program
Hugh Black Jr. knows someone who could benefit from such a program: himself.
Black, who is vice chairman of the South Linden Area Commission, owns an older home he said has been plagued with mold. He said it gave him headaches and nausea and other health issues.
“It slowly came on for like three weeks,” Black said.
He said the foundation is a problem. The cost to fix that is between $14,000 and $25,000.
Black said some people do need to learn more about potential health problems in their homes and the cost to fix them.
“Some segments of the population aren’t as educated in certain areas,” he said. “That’s generational.”
Erica Hudson, program manager for the city’s Lead Safe program, is the one who applied for the grant.
“Being the lead program manager I can see more than the average person,” Hudson said. The lead-safe program can’t address all the safety issues in the house, she said. The new federal grant money can help do that.
The money could pay for handrails along stairs, repair broken windows, new smoke detectors, and mold eradication, Hudson said, all of which make homes safer and healthier. All will help to preserve affordable housing the city needs as demand — coupled with a shortage of housing, and especially affordable housing — have driven home prices and rents skyward.
The average grant per units will be about $7,000, Hudson said. She said 65% of the grant directly goes to repairs, with the rest going to salaries and other administrative costs.
The city will test for radon in all the units getting grant money, she said. The city could concentrate money in certain neighborhoods if Mayor Andrew J. Ginther wants, she said.
Prosser said there is no silver bullet to addressing the needs in the city.
“Those pressures are going to be on our existing neighborhoods,” she said. “It’s really a great opportunity to support those homeowners.”
This dovetails in some ways with another effort.
Linden is one area where the Healthy Homes collaborative has expanded to build and fix up homes.
In the past year, that included 37 home repair grants totaling $875,000 and construction on 20 rental houses, most of them new builds. Four were finished by the end of 2021.
The cost of those homes is $4.3 million, with funding coming from the Ohio Capital Corporation for Housing, the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation and CareSource. Healthy Homes is a collaboration between Nationwide Children’s Hospital and the nonprofit Community Development for All People.
If you need help
For more information on whether you and your home might be eligible to participate in the Lead Safe/ Healthy Home program, or for information on how to apply, visit: https://www.columbus.gov/development/housing-division/Lead-Safe-Columbus_M/
@MarkFerenchik