BLOSSBURG - Rents in the Northern Tier are doubling and sometimes tripling, pricing many lower-income residents out of the housing market, but the federal Department of Housing and Urban Development doesn't seem to realize it, said Tioga County Housing Authority executive director Jim McRath.
McRath told the board here Monday that HUD had just notified the authority that it was increasing its Fair Market Rental subsidy for 2011 by just $7, despite the fact that rents here have jumped anywhere from $300 to $500 since drilling in the lucrative Marcellus Shale natural gas play began in earnest last year.
"This is requiring a lot more negotiating with landlords, but probably we will experience more attrition, losing landlords. The Pennsylvania Housing Finance Agency says we are in the midst of a rental housing crisis. We have tried to make HUD aware of this, and their response is that they didn't see it as a significant change," McRath said.
McRath said that HUD officials in Philadelphia "won't go by what you send in from real estate papers.' "They view us the same way they view Philadelphia. You get rental information from Realtors, even though we have the best rental information, they won't accept our expertise," he said.
Even officials in Harrisburg wasn't aware of it, "but now they see that it needs to be addressed," he added. To address some of that need, a low-income elderly housing facility will be constructed in Liberty, called "Liberty Cottages," which according to McRath, "most people think should be 50, 60 units."
The next step in the project, McRath said, is for soil testing to be done to make sure there is no residual contamination left from the gasoline storage tanks that were there as part of the Agway farm store that once occupied the site.
In its capacity as the Redevelopment Authority, the board held a special session for approval of the final sale of the 23 West Ave. property to John Albrech for $186,000 with the closing today.
Of the money, $60,000 of it will go toward paying the mortgage on the property and another $64,700, at 117 Lynd St., Blossburg, said authority solicitor Priscilla Walrath.
About $60,000 will go "right back out" as part of the Liberty Cottages project, McRath said.
The balance, about $2,200, will be put into the authority's Improvement Association account, he added.
In other business, the authority:
Approved a revised $1.48 million 2011 budget submitted by the authority's chief financial officer Charlie Bourque, with about $20,000 in the newly revised administrative salary table, which includes a 2.5 percent "step increase," a 2.3 percent cost of living allowance; and a $38,000 increase in health insurance costs, which Deputy Director Kelley Cevette said is "more in line with other agencies."
Heard from Bourque that rental write-offs for the 2010 fiscal year stand at about 1.6 percent, or $15,500, down from over $28,000 last year. "There is still room for improvement," Borque said, "in Bradford County it is under 1 percent."
Approved two housing rehab projects for elderly residents, which both came in well below the estimates provided, McRath said. He said about $6,000 in projects for Clara Lawson and Robert Mattreski represents the "last of the county money" for rehab projects from a program that has been in place since 1992.
Awarded service contracts to Susquehanna Fire Equipment Co., Dewart, for fire extinguisher service: and Roderick Hughes Energy, at $75 per emergency call, and $70 per hour for emergency generator service.
