Cleveland City Council approved roughly a million dollars Monday to extend the Healthy Homes Initiative which helps homeowners find resources to make repairs and upgrades to their homes.
The support specialists are housed in neighborhood Community Development Corporations and connect with homeowners to help resolve maintenance and repair issues, Michiel Wackers, Cleveland's assistant director of community development, told council members, during a city council committee meeting Monday.
The program’s 15 support specialists can often help resolve code violations, but Councilmember Jenny Spencer said the program has yet to reach its full potential.
"I would strongly encourage the administration to continue to work closely with Council so that we can be part of that cycle of referral and support to get more residents the help that they need," said Spencer, who represents Ward 15, which includes Edgewater, Cudell, Detroit Shoreway and parts of the Ohio City and Stockyard neighborhoods.
The program has been hampered by specialists who were taken away from their regular duties to help with other initiatives like the citywide housing survey, which surveyed nearly 170,000 properties for lead contamination in 2022, which Spencer said was "critically important."
Going forward, Spencer said the initiative needs appropriate resources.
Ward 8 Councilmember Michael Polensek told Wacker during the committee meeting that he wanted to see support specialists deployed to parts of the city without CDCs, like parts of the East Side ward he represents.
Polensek's Ward includes the neighborhoods of North Shore Collinwood, Collinwood Village and the eastern section of Glenville.
Wacker said the program will also hire five more regional specialists using a separate block grant to help fill in the need in neighborhoods without dedicated CDCs.
