Spartanburg City Council recently voted 5-1 to approve a plan to partner with Northside Development Group to use $600,000 of the City’s American Rescue Plan Act (ARPA) funding for an owner-occupied home repair program for city residents in low- and moderate-income areas.
Council member Rob Rain voted against the plan, and Council member Meghan Smith was absent from the meeting.
Designed as a neighborhood stabilization measure meant to prevent displacement at a time when Spartanburg is seeing unprecedented growth, the program will help older and physically disabled homeowners in areas of the city where the threat of future displacement is often greatest. By assisting at-risk homeowners who lack the resources to make needed repairs to their homes and who may otherwise have few options beyond selling their properties, the City intends for the program to be a powerful tool in helping to preserve the character and culture of its neighborhoods.
The City of Spartanburg currently has two existing programs to assist with owner-occupied repairs that will serve as models for operating the new initiative. One is an emergency repair program operated in partnership with Christmas in Action, a local nonprofit organization that focuses on providing such repairs. That program is currently limited to $10,000 in repairs annually, using City Community Development Block Grant (CDBG) funds, and assists 10-15 homeowners per year. The other program is focused on HVAC and minor home repairs and is operated directly by the City.
Neither program comes close to meeting the need for such repairs within the community, according to Community Development Director, Martin Livingston, who cited over 20 calls received from residents inquiring about home repairs after media coverage of the City’s plan to spend its ARPA funding mentioned an eventual program.
Prior to the new partnership’s approval, the City issued a Request for Qualifications and held an interest meeting on June 4. Three nonprofit organizations attended, but only NDG submitted a proposal. NDG has relevant experience with similar efforts, assisting more than 23 applicants in Spartanburg’s Northside neighborhood using state and private funding for needed home repairs. The program is expected to get up and running in the coming months, with City staff handling inspections of the work and monitoring NDG’s implementation of the program.
Also at Monday’s meeting, Council heard a presentation on new traffic enforcement technology. Assistant City Manager Kevin Limehouse shared that the City’s leadership and Police Department has been engaged with conversations with other communities in South Carolina regarding best practices and tools to help keep the city’s streets and roadways safer, including traffic monitoring cameras for speeding and running red lights.
Subject matter expert Bill Tente walked Council through some of the relevant statistics for those conversations, showing that over 10,000 collisions have occurred annually in Spartanburg County every year going back to 2018, with the exception of 2020 during the COVID-19 pandemic. A total of 340 people died in those collisions over that period. In a pair of 30-minute tests performed on city roadways, 186 vehicles passed through the LIDAR detection zone, with 30 of those traveling at greater than 10 miles per hour over the posted speed limit.
While they have been deployed in other states, camera-based traffic enforcement technologies such as the LIDAR system used for the test are currently prohibited from being used by law enforcement to issue citations in South Carolina. Assistant City Manager Limehouse said that technology behind those systems has improved greatly since state law first banned their use in issuing citations, and data shows the camera system’s potential in reducing dangerous driving behavior. Some South Carolina cities, such as Columbia, have thrown their support behind changing state law to allow the technology to be used. Council was not asked to offer their support to that effort, as the presentation was for informational purposes only.
For more on the recent meeting, see the full video at this link.
Written by the City of Spartanburg.