The Columbus Cares grant program is making progress on its first home.
The home, built in 1939 or 1940, is located on College Street and is home to Charlie and Valencia Neal.
The Neals now have central heating and cooling thanks to a HVAC unit installed on the home through the program.
Valencia said the unit has been in place for about two weeks, and she’s already seen a difference compared to the window units they used to have.
“With us being on a certain income and my husband being on oxygen … getting a unit like this was almost impossible,” Neal said. “This is going to help us tremendously. Especially with the heating and cooling unit being central, I think it’s going to save quite a bit.”
The grant program is funded through the Federal Home Loan Bank, which is providing $105,000 to repair old qualifying homes. The city is using $150,000 left over from an older, similar program to bolster the total available funding to $255,000.
Travis Jones, project coordinator for the city’s Office of Planning and Community Development, said the Columbus Cares program will work on 17 homes, with up to $17,000 available for each. If any money remains, organizers will see if it can fund work on other homes.
Mayor Robert Smith, who spoke at a press conference Thursday about the program’s progress, said he was pleased to see the work helping residents. Smith added that he intends for the city to apply again for the grant for 2018.
“From the city’s standpoint, this is the way that we can help the neighborhoods as far as assisting with their homes becoming more energy efficient and to save on their energy bills in the future,” Smith said.
Repairs are focused on homes in the city’s Housing District 1, which the council created last fall. The district falls in an area that’s eastern border is formed by 22nd Street, northern border by Highway 82, western border by the Tennessee-Tombigbee Waterway and southern border by Ninth Avenue South.
The program is geared to offer repairs to homeowners who earn less than the city’s median income — $29,335 annually, according to the U.S. Census Bureau — and who can’t afford them otherwise.
Some homes, like the Neals’, will see heating/cooling and flooring repairs, but the program will tackle more than that.
“Some of the other repairs being taken care of on this program are plumbing improvements, electrical rewiring, roof replacements and repairs, as well as the HVAC units and floor repairs,” Jones said. “Floors and roofs have been our most common repairs that we’ve been running into.”
Jones said the city hopes to complete work on all the homes by mid-to-late summer.
The program uses local contractors, such as Edward Simmons, home of Starkville-based Simmons Home Improvement. Simmons’ company will work on fixing the floors in the Neals’ home, which he said are uneven in places due to the home shifting with age.
Simmons said that work should take three to four days to finish.
Alex Holloway was formerly a reporter with The Dispatch.
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