Baltimore council committee hears progress on home-repair programs for older adults; asks administration for plan to clear backlog

Baltimore City Council members on the Education, Youth and Older Adults Committee heard agency updates on home-repair assistance for older adults and asked the city and its community ‘‘hubs’’ partners to produce a 1–3 page analysis of what it would take to clear the current backlog.

The committee received a detailed briefing from the Department of Housing and Community Development (DHCD) and Office of Rehabilitation Services (ORS), which described reorganizations of client intake, new subgranting of Affordable Housing Trust Fund dollars to hubs partners, and a formalized ‘‘no-heat’’ emergency triage that will let contractors replace HVAC units on a faster timeline when grant funds allow.

The work matters to thousands of Baltimore homeowners and to neighborhood vacancy-prevention strategies, committee members said. Council President Z. Cohen told staff, “This should be 1 of them,” when asked which budget priorities the council should consider. Council leaders asked DHCD and the hubs partners to return with a short analysis of staff and capital needs to close the backlog.

DHCD officials outlined changes intended to reduce delays in the pipeline that leads from initial requests to completed repairs. Alice Kennedy, Housing Commissioner, said the department is “executing the Affordable Housing Trust Fund older adult repair funding in a different manner,” by issuing subgrants directly to hub leaders so those organizations don’t need to wait for reimbursement through the city.

Deputy Commissioner Nicole Hart described an internal reorganization that created an Office of Integrated Client Services and a Light intake and assessment unit (referred to in testimony by the shorthand “Light”). Hart said…