WASHINGTON, DC – Pennsylvania U.S. Senator John Fetterman, a member of the Senate Committee on Banking, Housing, and Urban Affairs, on Wednesday promoted Pennsylvania’s “Whole-Home Repairs” program when questioning witnesses at a hearing discussing the future of housing.
“I’m really excited about Whole-Home Repairs,” said Sen. Fetterman in the hearing. “Here in Pennsylvania, one of my friends, Nikil Saval in the Senate, shepherded it. And he got linked up with the Republicans and they actually created one of the first kinds of a program like this in the nation.
“I come from a community here, in Braddock, Pennsylvania, where your home can go bad really quickly. And I’m really excited that we can take something like that, which is happening in Pennsylvania, and take it federal.”
The Whole-Home Repairs Program helps preserve Pennsylvania homes and stabilize Pennsylvania communities. It was led by State Sen. Nikil Saval in the Pennsylvania Senate and aims to help low- and moderate-income homeowners and small landlords with needed repairs, fight blight, improve energy efficiency in homes, and provide construction-related workforce development.
“The Whole-Home Repairs Program is something we’re incredibly excited about,” said Lou Tisler, Executive Director, National NeighborWorks Association. “If you don’t address those issues, your house will dilapidate, preferred maintenance goes down, and you start that whole ‘broken windows’ syndrome… Being able to have a national home repair program would be incredible.”
The hearing was titled “Building Consensus to Address Housing Challenges, and the witnesses were: Mr. Tisler; Ms. Vanessa Brown Calder, Director of Opportunity and Family Policy Studies, Cato Institute; and Ms. Diane Yentel, President and CEO, National Low Income Housing Coalition. A recording of the full hearing can be found here.