Pee Dee communities to receive CDBG funds

Thirty-one communities across the state — including many in the Pee Dee — are set to receive $11.4 million in Community Development Block Grant funds. These communities’ projects will directly benefit more than 15,200 low- to moderate-income residents, according to the S.C. Department of Commerce.

Twenty-seven of the CDBG-funded projects will provide new public water or sewer service and improvements to existing deteriorated systems to ensure a suitable living environment. Among the Pee Dee projects receiving funding are Clio’s wastewater treatment plant upgrade, $440,800; Dillon County’s Germantown Road water extension, $103,300; Florence County’s Gray Road water extension, $237,263; Greeleyville’s sewer extension, $500,000; Johnsonville’s water extension, $495,995; Marion County’s U.S. 501 neighborhood water extension, $192,329; Marlboro County’s S.C. 385 water extension, $520,070; Olanta’s wastewater pump station upgrade, $360,000; and Timmonsville’s sewer upgrade, $671,747.

Four additional projects, most in the Pee Dee, are designed to help improve the physical appearance and stabilize neighborhood property values through a program called Paint the Town. The Pee Dee projects receiving funding through this program are Bennettsville, $79,860; Hartsville, $50,200; and Marion, $53,240.

Paint the Town is designed to make communities more economically competitive by improving the overall physical appearance and stabilizing neighborhood property values. The program will make necessary repairs to façades and exteriors of low- and moderate-income occupied housing units within a concentrated neighborhood.

The projects receiving grants were selected through a statewide competitive process. Communities receiving CDBG funding are required to provide at least 25 percent matching funds. 

All grants awarded through the CDBG program must meet at least one of these objectives:

• Benefit low- and moderate-income people.
• Aid in the prevention or elimination of slums and blighting conditions.
• Meet other urgent community development needs where existing conditions pose a serious and immediate threat to public health and welfare and where other financial resources are not readily available to meet such needs.

The grants funds are allocated annually to South Carolina from the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development. The S.C. Department of Commerce administers the CDBG program for the state. The program assists communities in providing housing, a suitable living environment and expanded economic opportunities.

Grants are awarded to local governments to carry out a wide range of activities addressing housing and community development needs.  More than 70 percent of the $11.4 million in funding will assist the state’s most-distressed and least-developed counties.