HARLINGEN — A new program aims to help revive parts of the city’s old neighborhoods.
Habitat for Humanity has teamed with Keep Harlingen Beautiful to launch Brush-Up Harlingen, which plans to touch up parts of the city’s low-income areas.
“The main thrust is beautification and home preservation,” Wayne Lowry, executive director of Habitat for Humanity, said yesterday.
Lowry said he plans to expand the program across the Rio Grande Valley.
In Harlingen, Keep Harlingen Beautiful is contributing $9,000 to fund the first phase of the local program, which will help five households paint and remove rotten trim from their homes.
“It’s a small bite,” Sgt. Maj. Ford Kinsley, president of Keep of Harlingen Beautiful, said. “But maybe this will breathe some life into some spots. People like to walk down the street and be proud of their home and neighborhood.”
The program will help preserve homes in low-income neighborhoods.
“Some of the older neighborhoods, because of the age of the residents, have gone in a bad direction,” Kinsley said. “For residents who don’t have adult children who show up and put on a fresh coat of paint and mow the lawn, it’ll help.”
The program is earmarking $1,500 to paint and trim up each of the first five homes, Lowry told city commissioners as he announced the program in a meeting last week.
Lowry said small clusters of homes will be selected to more heavily impact neighborhood areas.
Next month, Lowry plans to select the first five households.
The program’s leaders will select homes owned by residents whose incomes fall below 80 percent of the median income, Lowry said.
Those include families of four whose annual incomes fall below $43,350.
“When we look at certain regions of the city, we find high density of poverty and we find many of those residents in desperate need of aid because of their income restraints,” Lowry said.
By March, he plans to work with as many as 100 volunteers to touch up the homes on the list.
Lowry believes the program will encourage other homeowners to spruce up their houses.
“We hope by making a strategic and meaningful impact in the lives of a few families, the other families in the community will be inspired to improve their homes,” Lowry said.
After the volunteers complete work on the first five homes, Lowry and Kinsley plan to meet with city officials to plan the program’s second phase.
Lowry said the second phase might include weatherizing low-income homes.
– Keep Harlingen Beautiful funding $9,000
– Five low-income homes to be selected
– $1,500 to fund each home project
