Jose Pasillas raised six children in the Recht Street home he
bought in 1982. Now, more than 20 years later, he’s grateful the
home will be in good enough condition to pass down to his kids one
day.
Hollister – Jose Pasillas raised six children in the Recht Street home he bought in 1982. Now, more than 20 years later, he’s grateful the home will be in good enough condition to pass down to his kids one day.
Local low-income households, like Pasillas’, are getting an unexpected helping hand this year from the Hollister Redevelopment Agency and the Community Services Development Corporation, who have teamed up to make $500,000 worth of repairs to area homes in dire need of a fix-up.
“I’m just happy for the opportunity to have something like this done, and happy that something has been made available to us,” said Pasillas, whose house is undergoing an RDA-funded overhaul this week. “My situation is that I’m at the point where I’m retired and I can’t work, so otherwise there’d really be no other way to do it (home repairs) as far as income. And raising kids and a family, that doesn’t leave too much money for improving your home. So in that sense it’s given us a chance to do something and leave something for our kids.”
Out of the 30 households that applied for the program, the two agencies have scheduled improvements like new roofs and paint jobs, plumbing and electric repairs and the installation of new windows to 15 homes so far.
Low-income households apply for the program though the CSDC and can qualify only if they own their home and fit into an established income criteria based on the number of people in their family, according to CSDC’s Martha Martinez. For example, qualified two-member households can’t have more than $46,000 in income a year; three-member households can’t exceed about $52,000 a year.
Applicants chosen for the program then receive a three percent interest “loan” from the RDA. The RDA pays for the repairs, but only expects repayment and interest on the loan if the homeowner turns around and sells his house. But if he stays in his home for at least 45 more years or passes the house down to other family members, the loan is forgiven.
The RDA may have enough money to “squeeze out one more” home improvement project this year, bringing according to the RDA’s Bryan Briggs, and they’re hoping to run the program again in July if they can come up with some additional funding.
Hollister’s RDA has sponsored the program at least twice before, Briggs said, once in the ’80s and again in the early ’90s. But since then, it hasn’t been worked into the agency’s budget.
“Our budget was set up and approved in June, but we hadn’t anticipated doing this. So we asked for a supplemental appropriation of $500,000. The RDA’s got a lot of projects, but I just felt like it’s been too long since we’ve done this,” Briggs said.
CSDC and the RDA used that $500,000 to contract Robert Postigo Construction, a comprehensive building contractor that does everything from plumbing to roofing to painting. Shoddy or worn-out roofing is one of the biggest problems Postigo said they’ve been seeing, since low- or fixed-income families seldom have the $9,000-$10,000 a new roof would cost them just lying around.
CSDC and the RDA’s main concern with the home improvements is getting everything up to regulation, Robert Postigo said, making sure they get health or safety hazards fixed before looking at request list from homeowners. The agencies also require new paint jobs for homes that haven’t been painted within the last five years.
“We’ve been putting in a lot of new gutters, some houses we’re doing new double-paned windows to replace windows that are leaking real bad, we’re fixing electrical problems, leaky bathtubs,” Postigo said. “Basically if there are things that aren’t up-to-code, we’re bringing them up-to-code.”
Postigo said his crews are working on five houses simultaneously right now, and he’s aiming to have all 15 completed by July in case the RDA gets funds to start the program up again.
Jessica Quandt covers politics for the Free Lance. Reach her at 831-637-5566 ext. 330 or at [email protected].
