Housing rehabilitation help is available to qualified West Penn Township residents.

Supervisor Kyle Kester mentioned the assistance at a recent board meeting, and encouraged attendees to reach out to neighbors who could benefit from it.

“It can help them if their house is bad, their roof is bad, or their windows or sidewalks are bad,” Kester explained.

Residents with low incomes may qualify, and information received from applicants remains confidential, he noted.

“A lot of people don’t like to give out their income, but it goes through Schuylkill County — and the county probably already knows how much you make,” Kester said.

Board Chairman Tony Prudenti explained that the township receives funding from Schuylkill County each year.

In the form of Community Development Block grants, the money must be used in areas with low to moderate income for projects like blight remediation, stormwater updates, infrastructure and housing/rehabilitation.

Funding comes from the federal Housing and Urban Development through the Pennsylvania Department of Community and Economic Development.

“The problem is that our median income in the township is too high to utilize it” for most projects, Prudenti said.

At the moment, he said, the only projects eligible would be community parks and ADA projects.

“And now, we came up with this other program,” he said, referring to the housing rehabilitation assistance.

A recent township CDBG project was the creation of an ADA pathway at the J.E. Morgan Park.