The City of Centralia has been awarded a $357,000 grant from the Illinois Housing Development Authority.
Community Development Director Gayla Harting says will be the second round of funding the city has received to acquire and remove blighted, vacant, and unsafe homes.
“This will keep us moving forward on our demolition process we already started many years ago when the city went aggressively to start this cleanup. They purchased a track hoe which they still have. So we are able to do in house the cleanup ourselves and then funding like this helps us recoup a lot of that which we have to pay out.”
Harting says the dilapidated properties negatively impact neighboring residences and as a result the demolition work has the potential to increase property values, create jobs, help reduce crime, general additional tax revenue and attract further community investment.
