Fight blight with Whole Home Repairs

Among Pennsylvania’s many distinctions, the commonwealth has one of the nation’s oldest housing stocks — half of all homes in the state were built before 1959. These old buildings are brimming with architectural character, but redbrick rowhomes and majestic Victorians require lots of maintenance and can be difficult to retrofit to modern sustainable standards. Some residences have dangerous amounts of mold or leadwhich can cause health issues for occupants.

The high cost of updating these homes can cause displacement, demolition, and blight, which destabilizes families and can lead to a broader set of issues in neighborhoods. According to a recent poll of Pennsylvania voters from Data for Progress, a third of respondents said they could not afford their energy bills, and half said they would struggle to afford a critical repair. A quarter have outstanding critical repairs because they can’t pay for them.

In response, State Sen. Nikil

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City workshop to provide home-buying information > Columbia Business Report

Potential homeowners can learn about available loan programs and other information during June’s All Access Columbia session.

The quarterly sessions held by the city’s Community development department aim to strengthen neighborhoods by providing resources to citizens on topics such as local leadership, financial education and home maintenance. The June 23 session will focus on encouraging home ownership and include details on city home loan programs, do-it-yourself projects and cost-saving home improvement ideas.

The session, to be held at the Busby Street Community Center at 1735 Busby St., will also cover topics such as credit and budgeting management, with representatives from several financial institutions on hand to provide information about the process of pre-qualifying for a home loans.

Registration is available online.

“This All Access event for home ownership will entail some DIY classes. We’ll have some seminars and workshops covering home ownership and homeowner maintenance tips,” Delores Shabazz, housing

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Home maintenance fear? Here’s how to keep repair costs down with regular upkeep

Juli Adelman of Northeast Portland should be feeling confident about homeownership by now. Since remodeling a fixer-upper 16 years ago, she’s sold each of her past three properties at a profit, moving her up the real estate ladder.

A year ago, she purchased a century-old house in her goal neighborhood: Beaumont-Wilshire. Despite her time-tested DIY repair skills and her contractor father’s assurance she wasn’t buying a money pit, Adelman still feels nervous.

She wonders: What costly mystery may be ahead?

“It’s a totally sound investment and I’ve been pretty lucky at this so far,” she said, “but it’s still kind of a gamble. What if the sewer goes sideways?”

She’s not alone in having home repair fear.

A survey by the Seattle-based real estate marketplace Zillow found 75{889f11dd78af44195e99a8a45806d98ad1fa7f272d11f4c6d22b45f5e75dcb8c} of pandemic-era home buyerswho battled record-low inventory, rapidly escalating prices and brutal bidding wars, wish they had done things differently.

Many

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