gave preliminary approval Tuesday<\/a> to a heavily-amended $277 million budget for the H.O.M.E. plan\u2019s first year.<\/p>\nIn addition to shifting allocations for various line items, the resolution incorporated a provision that permitted the Parker administration to expand income eligibility for some benefits but stipulated that 90% of the money for some programs, including BSRP, must go to households earning 60% of the area median income \u2013 just under $72,000 a year for a family of four.<\/p>\n
The battle over who should be first in line to reap the rewards of H.O.M.E. has been ongoing for months. Parker has argued that the initiative needs to be availble for middle-income Philadelphians, while a significant contingent of legislators has pushed for the poorest residents to be prioritized.<\/p>\n
Parker, in a statement Tuesday night, said Council was repeatedly told that introducing new language into the resolution would present \u201csignificant legal issues.\u201d H.O.M.E. is being funded through a bond, and administration officials say the city will now not be able to borrow the money until late March at the earliest.<\/p>\n
\u201cThat means homes are not being restored,\u201d the mayor added. \u201cIt means homes are not being built or repaired.\u201d<\/p>\n
Johnson said lawmakers are planning to introduce an updated bond ordinance as soon as Thursday to quickly resolve any discrepancies between the initial law and new budget.<\/p>\n
In general, H.O.M.E. has received wide support in Council chambers. However, the Mayor\u2019s Office has been frustrated with what, in their opinion, has been sluggish movement from Council. The body unanimously approved a measure in June allowing the Parker administration to borrow $800 million, and, a month later, the mayor\u2019s team transmitted a draft of the first-year spending plan.<\/p>\n
H.O.M.E.\u2019s budget resolution was formally introduced in October. Legislative leaders have said that Council has been doing their \u201cdue diligence” reviewing the proposal.\u00a0<\/p>\n
\u201cCouncil\u2019s responsibility is not to rubber-stamp legislation, but to ensure that any multi-billion-dollar public investment is legally sound and targeted to the Philadelphians who need it most,\u201d Johnson said Wednesday in a statement.<\/p>\n
He noted that concerns about AMI eligibility and reaching low-income residents were \u201craised early and consistently\u201d throughout the process.<\/p>\n
Parker stated that funding for BSRP will be completely depleted in February, while Johnson said any notion that any programs need to shut down as a result of the revised H.O.M.E. spending plan is \u201cfalse.\u201d There is more than enough money in the wider multi-billion municipal budget, and the Parker administration could also pull from the city\u2019s $1.8 billion surplus, he said.<\/p>\n
\u201cThreatening residents with a shutdown of the Basic Systems Repair Program and assigning blame does not move this process forward,\u201d Johnsons added. \u201cCollaboration and working together does.\u201d<\/p>\n
\n\t\tKeywords<\/p>\n
\t\t\t\tH.O.M.E. initiative,\t\t\t\t<\/p>\n
\t\t\t\t Cherelle Parker,\t\t\t\t<\/p>\n
\t\t\t\t City Council,\t\t\t\t<\/p>\n
\t\t\t\t Affordable housing\t\t\t\t<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"By Jack Tomczuk Mayor Cherelle Parker is blaming City Council for delaying the start of her $800 million…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":51571,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[8],"tags":[2313,9537,990,20424,69,71,70],"class_list":["post-51570","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-philadelphia","tag-affordable-housing","tag-cherelle-parker","tag-city-council","tag-h-o-m-e-initiative","tag-philadelphia","tag-philadelphia-headlines","tag-philadelphia-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/51570","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=51570"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/51570\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/51571"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=51570"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=51570"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=51570"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}