HARRISBURG — Republican concerns about state spending could keep $50 million to help Pennsylvania homeowners with the cost of major repairs out of this year’s budget, despite overwhelming demand and bipartisan support for a similar initiative several years ago.
In 2022, state lawmakers created the Whole-Home Repairs Program and funded it with $125 million in federal pandemic aid. Demand was overwhelming, leaving thousands of homeowners on waitlists.
Two previous attempts to continue the program with state funding were unsuccessful. In 2023, another $50 million for the repair program was included in the state budget, but became ensnared in the political impasse over Shapiro’s veto of funding for private school vouchers. In last-minute negotiations over a compromise, the repair program “got lost in the shuffle,” state Sen. David Argall (R., Schuylkill) told Spotlight PA at the time.
In 2024, Shapiro again proposed more funding for the home repair program, but it was left out of the final budget deal altogether. State Sen. Nikil Saval, a progressive Democrat from Philadelphia who first proposed the initiative, told Spotlight PA that some of the opposition sprang from Senate Republicans’ reluctance to replace one-time federal funding with state dollars.
The Shapiro administration is now pitching a new home repair program, though officials have declined to explain exactly how it would be different.
“It’s not just, like, a new name for Whole-Home Repairs, it is a new program,” Rick Siger, secretary of the Department of Community and Economic Development, told lawmakers during a budget hearing in February. In another hearing, Siger said the new program would build on lessons from the earlier effort, “but really starting afresh.” He said the department had listened to state lawmakers’ feedback.
While the funding was highly sought after, some of the earlier program’s more ambitious policy goals — like ensuring that landlords did not raise rents above a certain level after receiving funding for repairs — proved difficult to implement.
After the program closed, around 18,000 households statewide were left on waiting lists.
The proposed $50 million could serve roughly 2,500 households per year, Siger said.
Homes across the commonwealth could use the help, as Pennsylvania has some of the oldest housing stock in the U.S. Almost 60% of houses were built before 1970, Gov. Josh Shapiro said in his budget address.
The Democrat is framing the request as part of his statewide housing strategy, which is still under development. A task force, created by executive order last fall, has already held more than a dozen listening sessions on the issue across the state, Siger told lawmakers.
“There's a lot of energy around the idea that Pennsylvania has to invest in our existing housing stock,” he said.
Whether the proposed repair program makes it into a final budget deal this year will depend on negotiations in the coming months between the Shapiro administration, the Democratic-controlled state House, and the GOP-majority Senate. The latter seems unlikely to get on board.
“With such a large demand for new spending and unrealistic consideration as to the impact for future years, at this point it’s hard to see how such a program could be funded,” said Kate Flessner, a spokesperson for state Senate Republicans.
Republican lawmakers argue that the spending increases in Shapiro’s proposed budget, which would boost state spending by 8% over the current year, are unsustainable.
