Berkeley County seeking input on community and housing needs as part of action plan

MONCKS CORNER, S.C. (WCBD) – Berkeley County is working on its annual action plan, which looks at community and housing needs. They are seeking input from residents on how to spend some of the grant money.

“The annual action plan is a yearly plan that will come out, and it will entail what the county will do with the funds that we’ve receive from HUD,” explained Berkeley County Grants Administrator LeChele N. Brown.

The county has money for Community Development Block Grant (CDBG) funding, and a separate HOME funding program under HUD.

“Right now, HUD has not sent down our official allocation, because Congress just passed the budget for the housing and urban development, we are actually awaiting our final allocation for the coming year,” said Brown.

The county’s CDBG funding last year was roughly $1.3 million. There could be some additional money included in the HOME funding.

“As far as CDBG is concerned, we have nonprofits that apply for funding- so coming up in our hopefully April 22 council meeting, we will make that recommendation to our county council on those nonprofits that applied for funding.”

The Federal money could be used for things like money for demolition of blighted properties, or renovation and improvement work done by local nonprofits serving Berkeley County communities, or housing-related nonprofit needs. There’s a wide range of options.

The county is seeking input from the public from now until April 14th, on how to spend the money.

“So, we’re asking the public to come by, and review that annual action plan- there are copies available at our front desk. There is a link at our website. You can get that annual action plan. You can review it and you can make your public comment to that,” said Brown.

You can review the plan by clicking here.

Berkeley County Council could receive the plans and decide on how to spend the money as soon as next month.