{"id":127821,"date":"2026-03-02T23:46:07","date_gmt":"2026-03-02T23:46:07","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/127821\/"},"modified":"2026-03-02T23:46:07","modified_gmt":"2026-03-02T23:46:07","slug":"state-officials-including-dced-secretary-push-for-more-affordable-housing-during-reading-visit-berks-regional-news","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/127821\/","title":{"rendered":"State officials, including DCED Secretary, push for more affordable housing during Reading visit | Berks Regional News"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>READING, Pa. &#8211; The push for more affordable housing in Pennsylvania takes center stage in Reading.<\/p>\n<p>The state secretary of community and economic development paid a visit to talk about the governor&#8217;s housing action plan.<\/p>\n<p>&#8220;The governor&#8217;s budget includes some key initiatives to support including a $1 billion critical infrastructure fund focused on housing,&#8221; said Rick Siger, PA Secretary of Community and Economic Development.<\/p>\n<p>Siger says the plan has some focuses and a lot of details.<\/p>\n<p>&#8220;Housing is a human health issue; housing is an economic issue,&#8221; said Siger. &#8220;In a city like Reading, it&#8217;s really important to show folks and visit places like this where you can see the impact that high quality housing makes for people&#8217;s lives.&#8221;<\/p>\n<p>Officials toured parts of the city that are being redeveloped.<\/p>\n<p>&#8220;I love their strategy because they don&#8217;t just knock one house down and then put up one or fix one here or fix one there; they work on a neighborhood,&#8221; said PA Sen. Judy Schwank (D,) as she spoke about some of Habitat for Humanity&#8217;s contributions in the city.<\/p>\n<p>&#8220;These projects are about people and opportunity,&#8221; said Reading mayor, Eddie Moran. &#8220;Creating homes and supporting jobs and bringing long empty buildings back into productive use.&#8221;<\/p>\n<p>Developer Alan Shuman spoke about a recently announced project at Fifth and Penn.<\/p>\n<p>&#8220;This is a $52 million dollar project,&#8221; said Shuman. &#8220;We&#8217;re looking to do 150 market rate residential units at this site. We&#8217;re hoping to have them open and available within the next three to four years.&#8221;<\/p>\n<p>Officials also toured Habitat for Humanity&#8217;s Buttonwood Gateway project. &#8220;Working families are seeking affordable living conditions that provide dignity and stability and the opportunity to become more engaged in their communities and plan for their future,&#8221; said Doug Long with Habitat for Humanity.<\/p>\n<p>Some of the key things the governor&#8217;s plan will do is of course build more housing, preserve and improve existing homes and modernize housing regulations and zoning rules.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"READING, Pa. &#8211; The push for more affordable housing in Pennsylvania takes center stage in Reading. The state&hellip;\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":127822,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[11],"tags":[42546,59547,59546,2005,8667,59548,6168,736,128,130,129,4075],"class_list":{"0":"post-127821","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-reading","8":"tag-alan-shuman","9":"tag-dced-secretary","10":"tag-doug-long","11":"tag-eddie-moran","12":"tag-judy-schwank","13":"tag-pa-secretary","14":"tag-pennsylvania-department-of-community-and-economic-development","15":"tag-reading","16":"tag-reading-city","17":"tag-reading-city-headlines","18":"tag-reading-city-news","19":"tag-rick-siger"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/127821","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=127821"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/127821\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/127822"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=127821"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=127821"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=127821"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}