The city of Philadelphia is facing a $649 million budget shortfall, and Mayor Jim Kenney is proposing to cut deeply from the city's housing budget to make up the difference.
Despite federal funding coming to Philadelphia through the CARES Act, the city could be facing budget cuts that will "leave a major gap in housing assistance programs in the coming year," reports Meir Rinde.
The federal money targeted to help with housing costs — a portion of the $276 million Philadelphia received from the federal CARES Act — totals $26 million. But due to budget cuts proposed by Mayor Jim Kenney, along with projected drops in fee collections and the expiration of a bond measure, the amount of money going to two of the city’s main housing programs — the Housing Trust Fund and the Basic Systems Repair Program — is still set to drop by nearly $45 million in the new fiscal year that starts next month.
The Philadelphia City Council's Finance Committee held a public hearing on the subject earlier this week, and encountered impassioned please from the public to restore funding to the Housing Trust Fund.
Anne Fadullon, director of the Department of Planning and Development, is cited in the article discussing the Kenney administration's focus on core priorities of education, public safety and economic development.
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