Rhode Island news | projo.com | The Providence Journal

« Former RWU chairman Papitto gives $1.63M in gifts | Today | NORAD to begin exporting truck cabins at Quonset »

March 12, 2008

Cicilline: City seeks HUD loan to help with foreclosures

PROVIDENCE -- Providence will apply for $10 million in federal loans to purchase, rehabilitate or demolish foreclosed properties which have become a blight on city neighborhoods, Providence Mayor David N. Cicilline announced today.

The city is seeking approval from the Providence City Council to authorize the city's redevelopment agency to apply for the Section 108 loan from the federal Department of Urban Development, or HUD.

The federal money could be used to help buyers of foreclosed properties with downpayments and closing costs, as well as to pay for the cost of boarding up foreclosed properties, Cicilline said.

The city would acquire, renovate and re-sell forecelosed homes through zero-interest and low-interest loans, Cicilline said.

The city would also use the money to improve the system that tracks information on ownership, foreclosures and vacancies, improving "the city’s ability to get foreclosed properties" back into homeowners' hands, according to the mayor's office.

-- projo.com staff writer Michael P. McKinney and Journal business writer Lynn Arditi

The U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development loan would be repaid using future Community Development Block Grant money, according to a news release from the mayor's office.

“We’ve worked hard over the past five years to strengthen our neighborhoods by bringing in new investment and creating safer neighborhoods through community policing,” Cicilline said in the statement. “Now we have to work even harder to protect those investments by using all of the resources at our disposal to ensure that the national foreclosure crisis does not take a greater toll on our neighborhoods."

Cicilline said the loan “will not only give us the tools we need keep our neighborhoods strong and encourage home ownership, it will also act as an economic stimulus by creating employment opportunities for construction workers, sub-contractors and others in the building trades and real estate industry."

The announcement came in city's West End, on a block of Ford Street "where families are forced to live next to six foreclosed houses," the statement said.

The mayor's office said foreclosures increased in Providence to 745 over the past year.

Posted by Mike McKinney at 12:17 PM | Permalink

March 12, 2008

Cicilline: City seeks HUD loan to help with foreclosures

Comments

Post a comment