The calls still come in to ACTION Housing, from people living in older homes who need a major repair that they can't afford.
Low-income homeowners call the Pittsburgh-based nonprofit because at one time it administered the Whole Home Repairs program. The state-administered initiative offered up to $50,000 for certain major home repairs, such as installing a new roof, fixing foundations, or replacing out-of-date knob-and-tube wiring.
Unfortunately for the callers, the program hasn't been funded for several years.
"We receive at least five calls a day from people asking if we have anything like this or if we know of anyone that does," said Ian Thomas, ACTION's housing stabilization program manager. "And right now the only answer we can give them is: 'No.'"
The Whole Home Repairs program was funded with $125 million in federal Covid-relief funds as part of the state's 2022-23 budget. It launched with great fanfare and enthusiastic support from Republicans and Democrats – a rare bipartisan consensus in Harrisburg.
And although not every county participated in the program, state statistics show it helped more than 4,000 Pennsylvania homeowners make major improvements to their residences.
In Allegheny County, more than 250 low-income homeowners fixed up their properties. (That number will grow slightly even without new funding, since a small number of projects are still in progress.) Thomas said the program addressed the needs not just of homeowners but of the surrounding community as well.
"We have a housing shortage in this county, in this country," he said. "We have some of the oldest housing stock in Allegheny County and in Pittsburgh. And it's far cheaper to repair a home than to build new. It's far more reliable to fix what we have as opposed to trying to recreate it from scratch."
One Mt. Oliver homeowner, who used the program for foundation repairs, told reporters that before the program, "I felt like my house was dying from cancer," and she feared it would crumble underneath her.
Due to high demand, only a fraction of those who applied were able to get assistance through the program: ACTION-Housing was able to assist only about 1 in every 20 of the applications for help it received.
But the low-income homeowners who used the program to pay for repairs "reported reductions in stress, an increased sense of their home as a financial asset, and a greater ability to use their homes fully," according to a study of the program in Allegheny County by The Housing Initiative at the University of Pennsylvania.
What happened in Harrisburg?
Democrats, and some Republicans, have continued to champion Whole Home Repairs and advocate for its funding to be restored in the state's budget. But the spending hasn't been reauthorized since the initial 2022-23 allocation.
The federal COVID aid that funded the whole-home repair initiative has long since run out. And with the state facing a $5 billion deficit, support for the program seems to have dried up too, at least among Republicans who run the state Senate.
When asked about the program recently, Senate Majority Leader Joe Pittman showed little enthusiasm.
"I think the better approach is allowing the market to efficiently, effectively, and cheaply build homes," he said last month. He said the solution was to streamline the construction permitting process, adding that he feared Whole Home would "just turn into another bureaucracy."
Philadelphia Democratic state Sen. Nikil Saval believes most lawmakers agree the program would be heavily used. Wait lists were quickly filled up in the program's first and only year of operation.
"In particular, the Senate Republicans just have been opposed to spending money, and they made clear that they don't want to have an outlay of money, not necessarily just to this program, but to a number of different initiatives," said Saval, one of the bill's original sponsors.
But he said the repairs would help people regardless of their district or party affiliation.
"Everyone benefits from this," Saval said. "No one is checking [when] your house is in disrepair, whether you're a Republican or a Democrat. We want to keep Pennsylvanians housed."
Republican state Sen. David Argall, another major backer of the program, has joined Saval to cosponsor a measure that would bring back the program.
Argall said older homes in disrepair are a huge problem in parts of his northeastern Pennsylvania district, which includes many former coal-mining communities.
"I have a lot of older homes in some of my communities that are in desperate need of repair," he told WESA.
Argall said the program was incredibly successful. But not all lawmakers think it's a priority, he said, because not all parts of the state need repairs so badly.
Pittsburgh-area members are also pushing for the legislation in the state House. Democrats Lindsay Powell, who represents parts of Pittsburgh, and Monroeville Rep. Brandon Markosek have a companion funding bill similar to the Senate measure. It passed the Democrat-controlled House by a solidly bipartisan 122-80 vote this past June, but has idled in a Senate committee ever since.
'The housing crisis hardly anybody is talking about'
Nationally, urban planner and advocate Alan Mallach has argued that the country's growing number of older homes in need of repair represent a national crisis.
"Millions of people are living in unsafe, unhealthy houses," he told a conference in Pittsburgh last month.
"This is the housing crisis that hardly anybody is talking about," he said.
But even as Harrisburg has let the repair program languish for lack of federal money, a federal pilot version of the program made its way into the 21st Century ROAD to Housing Act, which Congress passed and President Trump signed earlier this year.
"I'm hoping to also be as helpful as I can to our senators and congresspeople in helping in whatever way that Pennsylvania's experience can be a model for how they orchestrate the program in Washington," Saval said.
The status of the federal pilot program is unclear, however: The U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development declined to comment.
Read more from our partner, WESA.
Copyright 2026 90.5 WESA