CLEVELAND — Cleveland City Council announced a $102.5 million American Rescue Plan Act proposal.
The American Rescue Plan Act has helped with multiple COVID-19-related issues and Cleveland City Council President Blaine Griffin said housing insecurity is a huge problem because of the pandemic.
What You Need To Know
- City Council proposed a $102.5 million ARPA plan that would focus almost of its efforts on housing insecurity
- It would address things such as tenant protections and loans for home repairs
- It will be introduced to legislation in September
“It’s important to mitigate the crisis that COVID-19 has caused and I believe that there’s been no bigger crisis that has affected families, women and children, in these cities other than housing insecurity,” Griffin said.
In the proposal, $50 million of the $102 million would go to housing for all, including areas such as tenant protections, grants and equity for affordable and market-rate housing and grants for home repairs.
“We really put forth a package that focused on home ownership, home repair, gap financing and several other tools that city council has been advocating for, for approximately the last two or three years and now we have an opportunity to fund them appropriately,” Griffin said.
Council hopes for the projects to happen fast, but Griffin said it has to go through legislation first.
“This ARPA money was put in place to mitigate a crisis. So, that’s what I’ve been pushing all along is we need to hurry and get these dollars out in the street,” Griffin said.
It will be introduced Sept. 12 and potentially be implemented by the end of the month.