The SOUL Home Repairs program served 28 families with over $500,000 in critical home repairs within its first year. The repairs made through the program address health and safety hazards, including leaky roofs and non-functional bathrooms, making way for energy efficiency and supporting generational wealth building by enabling homes to be passed down to future generations.
The SOUL Home Repairs program covers rural areas of Troup and Heard County and prioritizes assistance for homes with occupants who are elderly, handicapped, or have young children.
This program expansion was inspired by research showing that low and moderate-income households in Georgia pay 19.4% of their annual income for energy on average, and households living at 50% of the Federal Poverty level spend an average of 30% of their income on energy costs. These households have energy burdens that are more than five times higher than Georgia households earning more than $55,000 a year. This research further showed that a major culprit behind high energy burdens is typically poor housing quality.
Additionally, more than 50% of the low-income homes assessed in the first year of the SOUL pilot required structural repairs before being eligible for even simple weatherization efforts. Many homes had roof leaks, holes in the walls and ceilings, plumbing leaks, soft spots in the flooring, and other health and safety concerns that needed to be addressed for residents to safely and comfortably live in their own homes. Because the pilot program was only designed to address energy efficiency, funding and support for these critical repairs had to be coordinated outside the program -- often blocking weatherization upgrades for months.
In response to this need, Groundswell raised grant funds from the USDA Housing Preservation Grant program and local partners to help address these issues. This funding has enabled critical upgrades to floors, roofing, siding, plumbing, and more, improving the comfort and safety of these homes while making way for energy-efficiency upgrades.
Groundswell is actively working to expand the SOUL program and to bring together sources of funding to address repair needs in conjunction with energy efficiency upgrades.