SHARON Business program gets financing

Public housing tenants must contribute eight hours of community service each month.
THE VINDICATOR, YOUNGSTOWN, OHIO
By HAROLD GWIN
VINDICATOR SHARON BUREAU
SHARON, Pa. -- The federal drug grant that enabled Mercer County Housing Authority to create a business impact center and small-business incubator may have dried up, but the authority has found new financing.
The program encourages housing authority tenants to start businesses of their own and helps them find jobs with contractors doing work on authority housing projects.
The authority had been putting about $30,000 a year into the program.
New funding source
L. DeWitt Boosel, authority executive director, said Wednesday that a five-year Weed and Seed program grant secured through the Pennsylvania Commission on Crime and Delinquency will replace the funding lost with the expiration of the drug grants.
The authority, working with the Farrell/Sharon Weed & amp; Seed Committee and Northwest Pennsylvania Planning & amp; Development Corp., was able to get the state allocation which will provide $75,000 in the first year and at least that amount in each of the following four years, Boosel told the board of directors.
The only catch is that the grant requires a 25 percent and 50 percent match in the final two years, but that can be in the form of in-kind services and the program will be housed either at the Federal Street Community Center, where it operates now, or at authority property on Wallis Avenue, he said.
The business incubator, which helped 25 businesses either get started or expand, has closed down for lack of funding and will be reactivated as a micro-enterprise effort, Boosel said.
The business impact center portion of the program continues to function, trying to secure jobs for authority tenants in the Hope VI rebuilding of the Steel City Terrace housing complex in Farrell, he said.
Boosel said a community service requirement for nearly all residents of public housing has been reactivated by the federal government.
Was on hold
The requirement for eight hours of public service per month was introduced in 1998 but produced such an outcry that the federal government put it on hold, he said.
That hold has been lifted and the program is now in place, Boosel said, noting it will be incumbent upon the authority to make sure its tenants comply.
Those eight hours can be spent in service to the authority or some government or other nonprofit entity, he said.
Failure to comply could result in eviction, Boosel told the board.
All members of an authority household who are 18 years or older must comply. The only exemptions are for tenants over the age of 62 or those who are disabled.