By Whitney Downard | Pennsylvania Capital-Star
A multi-million dollar proposal designed to rehabilitate Pennsylvania’s aging housing stock failed to receive funding in the state’s 2025-2026 budget — marking the third year without a state-funded successor to the popular Whole Home Repair Program.
Advertisements
Sen. Nikil Saval (D-Philadelphia) said that the thousands of Pennsylvanians on waitlists across the state “vastly understates the need,” since many counties closed theirs after distributing funds.
“We know that there is immense demand for the home repair program,” Saval told the Capital-Star.
Saval and Sen. David Argall (R-Schuylkill) sponsored the bill to create the PA Home Preservation Program in the Senate, while a trio of bipartisan House lawmakers introduced its companion bill in their chamber. The House version passed 122-80, only to stall in the Senate along with Saval’s effort.
Advertisements
Gov. Josh Shapiro earmarked $50 million for the state program in his proposed budget, but the request quietly disappeared after a monthslong impasse that concluded earlier this month.
“Our best guess is that there were a lot of funding priorities in this budget and when it came to coming up with the funding number, they did not find money for this program,” said Saval. “Frankly, they didn’t find money for virtually any housing program, and that’s really unfortunate given the nature and scale of the housing crisis.”
Advertisements
A similar, federal effort dubbed the ROAD to Housing Bill is still moving as part of the National Defense Authorization Act, which passed the U.S. Senate in October. The Whole-Home Repairs Act under that proposal would allow the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development to establish a five-year pilot program to offer grants and forgivable loans to low- and moderate-income homeowners alongside qualified landlords.
Program details
Only a sliver of the 17,000 applicants — 3,965 homeowners — got a share of the $125 million Whole Home Repairs Program’s funding, according to the state Department of Community and Economic Development.
Bucks County received roughly $4.6 million as part of the program.
Advertisements
Just three counties have spent all of their program funds before the Jan. 31, 2026 deadline: Bradford, Cameron and McKean.
Cliff Clark, the director of Cameron County Community and Economic Development, oversaw how the $200,000 awarded to his county was spent. He said the funding quickly went to four homes on an existing housing repair list maintained by the county.
Advertisements
“Our housing stock is old. That’s not to say it’s deteriorated, but it’s old,” said Clark. “One of our goals is to try to improve the housing stock … we’re doing, I think, a very good job making houses that aren’t otherwise marketable, desirable.”
The program limited individual home projects to $50,000, a number Clark said could be higher if a similar effort is approved on the state level. For example, he noted a new boiler for some homes could cost as much as $20,000.
Advertisements
“Costs have increased so much that we’re only able to do about half of the homes we used to be able to do. I used to do 10 to 12 homes a year and now I’m doing about five. So if you’re number 50 on my waiting list, you’ve got a 10-year wait,” said Clark.
Part of the bottleneck in the county is due to a shortage of contractors, Clark said, which is a statewide problem meant to be addressed with workforce development funds. Under Whole Home Repair, $4.9 million has been spent on scholarships, training programs and more.
Advertisements
Tom Stark, speaking on behalf of the County Commissioners Association of Pennsylvania, told the Capital-Star workforce development was a difficult component for many counties, particularly those that didn’t have existing workforce programs.
“With the trades, in general, finding workforce in a timely fashion and getting a contractor out there to actually conduct the work?” Stark said. “There aren’t as many out there as there used to be.”
What other funding is out there?
Prior to Whole Home Repair, Stark said counties had access to a variety of different assistance programs — both state and federal. He highlighted the commonwealth’s Weatherization Assistance Program as one used to make homes more energy efficient.
Advertisements
For example, replacing windows under the initiative was a popular use of funds, but had its shortcomings.
“The challenge is if you go to a home and they need a window repair, but you know they need a roof first, there really wasn’t funding for that,” Stark said. “Whole Homes came in to fill that gap.”
Advertisements
He said that funds for landlords were “underutilized,” noting the additional requirements. To qualify for a forgivable loan of up to $50,000, landlords must own no more than five properties and no more than 15 rental units.
The unit’s current tenant must also get a three-year lease extension and annual rent increases cannot exceed 3%. In addition to owning the unit for at least 15 years, landlords must not have any serious code violations during that time.
By the numbers:
Advertisements
Roughly $3.7 million, or 3%, of the initial $125 million allocation went to the state for administrative costs, leaving $121.3 million to be distributed to counties, according to the state Department of Community and Economic Development.
Of that $121.3 million, $89.6 million has been committed to the following categories:
- $75.7 million in homeowner grants (including small landlords)
- $5.9 million on provision and enhancement
- $3.2 million on county-level administrative costs
- $4.9 million on workforce development
Clark said Cameron County also receives grant funding from HUD’s HOME Investment Partnerships Program, which allocates billions of dollars for affordable housing across the nation. HOME can cover housing repairs, but restricts some repairs on homes in floodplains and requires an environmental review.
Advertisements
The Whole Homes Repair program had neither restriction, Clark said, nor did it enforce HUD’s minimum standards for repairs — a benchmark Clark said he still followed for his county’s projects and believed should be implemented for others.
Overall, he called the WHRP “a very easy program to administer” and an “economic driver” for his community.
“We get $200,000 and all of that money goes right back into the economy,” he said. “We hire local contractors and I’d say probably 80% to 90% of supplies are purchased locally as well.”
The state’s proposed home preservation program could become more important if federal funding gets cut. The Trump administration has proposed zeroing out funding for the HOME program, meaning that communities could miss out on funds for future repairs or affordable housing initiatives.
Advertisements
While the current state fiscal year finally has a spending plan, the 2026-2027 state budget process is already underway as the Office of the Budget reviews agency budget requests for the coming year, with the next budget address scheduled for early February.
Pennsylvania Capital-Star is part of States Newsroom, a nonprofit news network supported by grants and a coalition of donors as a 501c(3) public charity. Pennsylvania Capital-Star maintains editorial independence. Contact Editor Tim Lambert for questions: info@penncapital-star.com.
Advertisement
Meet Your Canna Coach: Personalized Guidance, Free for You!
