A Centre County grant program supporting affordable housing projects soon will be accepting applications for the first time in three years.
The Board of Commissioners on Tuesday approved a notice of funding availability for the Construction and Acquisition/Rehabilitation for Sustainable Housing (CASH) Grant
Program for 2026. The program will make available $250,000 from the county’s Affordable Housing Trust Fund for housing projects that serve individuals with a gross household income below 100 percent of the Area Median Income for Centre County, a figure that is adjusted annually by the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development.
The Affordable Housing Trust Fund is funded by money made available through Pennsylvania’s Act 137 of 1992, which allows counties to use fees charged for the recording of deeds and mortgages for affordable housing initiatives. Since its establishment, Centre County’s fund has largely been used to support the first-time homebuyer’s program.
It will be the fourth time Centre County has also offered CASH grants from the fund, having previously opened the program each year from 2021 to 2023 for a total of about $250,000.
“Now you may say to yourself, well that’s a small amount of money to fund affordable housing, but it did impact at least 12 properties among not only several housing organizations within Centre County but also private owners of apartments that did rehab and provided that affordable housing measure for those properties,” Ray Stolinas, Centre County director of planning and community development, said.
CASH grants will be awarded to assist with construction of new rental and owner-occupied housing, acquisition and rehabilitation of housing units for sale or rent, and land acquisition for proposed projects to be completed within a two-year time frame, according to information in the commissioners’ meeting agenda.
The county Office of Planning and Community Development anticipates opening the application period from July 1-31, then making recommendations to the commissioners for approval in September.
Betsy Barndt, housing and community development coordinator, will work with successful applicants over a five-year period to ensure that residents are still benefiting from improvements to the properties, Stolinas said.
He added that projects that will use the funding toward matching money for larger state and federal grants are encouraged.
“When you can take small amounts of money and leverage them against larger amounts of money, that’s how projects actually get accomplished,” Commissioner Steve Dershem said. “I think this is a perfect example of how we can take that quarter million dollars, which on its face is not a huge amount of money, but it can be leveraged to make bigger projects happen. And I think we might not be able to change the whole world in one swat, but we can certainly address a lot of the issues across our county.”
Commissioners noted that the CASH grants are one of several ways the county has used available federal, state and local funding to support affordable housing projects.
Board Chair Mark Higgins cited efforts in recent years including the Whole-Home Repairs Program and Emergency Rental Assistance Program Phase 2 for affordable housing rehabilitation and development, Community Development Block Grant funding to preserve a mobile home community in Julian and adjustments to make the first-time home buyer program more flexible.
“Between the Adult Services Department and the Planning Department, we’re approaching about a hundred different residential units, either preserved or created on an affordable basis in the county,” Higgins said. “We know this is a national problem, we know it’s a local problem, and we’re addressing it with the funds that we have available.”
