SHA awarded funding

By G. Michael Dobbs

Managing Editor

SPRINGFIELD For Elizabeth McCright, the executive director of the Springfield Housing Authority (SHA), the announcement the agency has been awarded $890,000 in new federal and state funding was more than just good news.

McCright told Reminder Publications the new funding indicates "tangible affirmation of our work.it is absolutely unrelated to the past."

The past to which she referred was the corruption scandal involving former executive director Ray Asselin and his family that rocked the agency. These are the first new grants the agency has received since 2001.

The SHA maintains housing in the city of low-income families, elders and disabled individuals. The agency is best known for providing housing for the elderly and disabled, but McCright said there are 1,000 units of housing occupied by families.

The agency might seem focused on "brick and mortar," she added, but it has many programs to help its clients, which include those funded by the new federal and state grants.

The new funding is from the ROSS Program and it will support a number of initiatives to help residents become more self-sufficient. At the Tri-Towers and Twin Towers developments, $240,000 will be used to organize programs to allow elderly and disabled residents to age in place. The program will involve educational, nutritional, medical, vocational and financial enrichment opportunities.

Another $400,000 will fund an after-school computer center and an adult learning and job search center for the residents of the Sullivan Apartments and the surrounding area. The community room at the Sullivan Apartments will be expanded for those purposes and the renovation's cost will be supplemented by funding from the City of Springfield and the SHA.

The ROSS program also awarded $150,000 for self-sufficiency programs for the residents of the Sullivan Apartments. These programs will help give residents access to career and vocational training, job placement services and literacy classes. There will also be programs to prepare residents to leave SHA properties to either rent market-rate apartments or buy a home.

"We are going in the right direction," she said. "We are looking forward."