Rockdale County’s Neighborhood Stabilization Program will see about $12,000 more in funds, thanks to reallocation by the Georgia Department of Community Affairs.
Three NSP1 grants in Georgia were given back to the GDCA, which administers about the funds for many counties and entities in Georgia, because the applicants them decided they did not want or could not use the funds, said Glen Misner, director of the office of field services for the GDCA.
"One of them, while they submitted the application with county commission approval, when they saw the actual provisions of NSP, they decided it wasn’t for them. The other two, as they got into a little bit, they felt they weren’t going to be able to accomplish what they started out to do," said Misner.
The funds were divided up among the remaining 21 grantees, based on their percentage of funds spent. Newton County received $75,000 additional reallocated funds.
Rockdale County was granted $2.7 million in NSP1 funds in March, as part of the federal stimulus efforts, to purchase, fix up and sell foreclosed homes to both moderate and low income buyers that intended to live in the homes.
Georgia received about $154 million in NSP1 funds, and about $3.92 billion was granted nationally for the NSP1 program.
Georgia applied for but received comparatively little, about $3.45 million, from the NSP2 grants, which were recently awarded, according to the Housing and Urban Development Web site.
Misner said the division that administered NSP1 in Georgia did not apply for NSP2 because "NSP2 was a completely different program. It didn’t quite mesh as well because of the different things you had to pull together. We decided we wouldn’t apply." He said a different division of the GDCA, the Georgia Housing Finance Agency, reportedly applied.
County grant administrator Alice Cintron, who was administering Rockdale’s NPS program, said they had purchased 14 houses and would probably end up with 18 houses in all. She said she heard the NSP programs would be reevaluated in a month or so.
The county recently hired a full time NSP coordinator, Tanesha Lanier, who will be paid with NSP funds at $20 an hour for no more than 40 hours a week.
The Rockdale NSP program is tentatively scheduled to hold an open house on its first renovated house in two weeks.
