Proposed COVID-19 relief program to offer assistance for WB residents

WILKES-BARRE — A newly designated use of COVID-19 relief funds could help provide heating and rent and mortgage assistance to city residents.

The Wilkes-Barre Office of Economic & Community Development still needs approval for its proposed plan to make $60,000 of the funds already received through the Coronavirus Aid, Relief and Economic Security Act.

During a brief public hearing Monday afternoon OECD Director Joyce Morrash Zaykowski detailed the plan to create a new line item from the $1,239,087 in CARES funding.

“We want to make it reachable and we want to make it helpful and we want to help people,” Zaykowski said.

The Emergency Rent/Mortgage & Utility Assistance Program would have income guidelines and eligibility requirement. The maximum allocation would be $1,200 for six months.

“If a person opts to apply for two, like rent and utility, which wouldn’t be out of the question,” Zaykowski said,”then it would be three months each.”

The idea for the program grew out of a suggestion city council Vice Chairman Tony Brooks made at council’s Nov. 5 meeting about helping residents affected by novel coronavirus pandemic.

Brooks said he was glad to hear of the proposed program.

Zaykowski said the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development recently declared heating and rent/mortgage assistance an eligible use of CARES Act funds allocated through the Community Development Block Grant program fund.

“This is new,” Zaykowski said.

The city received an initial award of $915,761 in CARES Act funding earlier this year. HUD approved the city’s budget for the CDBG funds. An additional $323,326 was later awarded and approved by HUD.

Because the city is amending its CDBG COVID-19 budget to include the proposed assistance program HUD has to review it. The administration of Mayor George Brown and city council also are part of the approval process.

The first of two votes to approve an ordinance to amend the budget could be on the agenda for the Dec. 3 city council meeting, Zaykowski said. At the latest it will be on the agenda for the Dec. 17 meeting, she said.

“My goal is to get it up and running as soon as possible because this is not going away. The need is not going away,” Zaykowski said.

Comments to be submitted to HUD will be accepted until Dec. 4. They can be mailed to: Office of Economic & Community Development, Attention Joyce Zaykowski, 40 East Market Street, Wilkes-Barre PA 18711, or sent by email to jzaykowski@wilkes-barre.pa.us.