Deputy Director of Development, Kasie Foulk, talks with the City Council’s Housing Committee about the results of the city’s federal Housing and Urban Development Department annual action plan and five-year consolidated plan. P-J photo by Sara Holthouse

More than 80% of those who responded to a recent city survey want to see more of a focus on new business initiatives.

The city Department of Development has officially submitted the annual action plan and five-year consolidated plan to the United States Housing and Urban Development Department, and has reviewed the public comments and results of the survey they sent out that goes along with that. During Monday’s City Council Housing Committee meeting, Kasie Foulk, city deputy director of housing and development, said the results were pretty standard.

“We got 23 survey responses back,” Foulk said. “Eighty-two percent of our responses said that there weren’t enough jobs in the city and not enough economic opportunity, and to combat that people are hoping for new business initiatives, 65% of responses thought that was more important to them.”

When looking at neighborhoods in the city, Foulk said 52% of the survey results said they felt safe, 15% said sometimes they feel safe, and the rest said they did not feel safe in their neighborhoods. 65.2% of people felt that parks were the most important accessible activity in the city.

“As expected, 43.5% of responses said that we needed to rehab our existing housing stock,” Foulk said.

Along those lines, Foulk said she was also able to sign the first contract with a homeowner for the city’s Vacant Property Improvement Program, which will rehab two vacant rental units in the city, bring them up to code and living standards and let them be rented out to individuals with 60% AMI, which Foulk said is relatively standard. These properties are over on Cook Avenue and Foulk said the plan is to open applications up for that program again in August.

“So keep an eye out for that if you have vacant rental properties and you’ve owned them for a year or can justify in a waiver why that year shouldn’t apply to you, we would be happy to take a look at an application and see if we can get the program going for you,” Foulk said.

There is a vacancy requirement with the program of six months, but there is the opportunity to apply for a waiver for that. Foulk said the reason that requirement is in place is so people will not evict their tenants in order to get included in the program.

More information on the Vacant Property Improvement Program, along with the application when it opens again, can be found on the city’s website, jamestownny.gov.