BELLEFONTE — As housing costs continue to challenge residents across Centre County, the county commissioners are reopening a program designed to increase the supply of affordable homes.

Beginning in July, the CASH grant program will accept applications from nonprofits and affordable housing developers seeking financial assistance for projects aimed at increasing housing affordability throughout the county.

The program will accept applications for projects involving the construction of rental and owner-occupied housing, the acquisition and rehabilitation of housing units for rent or sale and the purchase of land for developments expected to be completed within two years.

Eligible applicants include housing authorities, redevelopment authorities, non-profit agencies, land trusts, affordable housing developers and other related agencies.

Projects must serve eligible people with a gross household income ranging between 30 percent and 100 percent of the Area Median Income for Centre County to be considered.

According to reporting done by the Centre Daily Times, average home prices in Centre County have outpaced average wages by more than 90 percent since 2017.

The 2026 program marks the fourth year the Centre County commissioners have made the grant available. Since its inception, the CASH grant program has awarded approximately $260,000 to projects at 12 properties.

This round, $250,000 in grant funding will be made available through the county’s Affordable Housing Trust Fund.

A cash match is not required to receive a CASH grant; however, applicants are encouraged to use the funding to leverage other affordable housing grants and programs.

Commissioner Chair Mark Higgins said local organizations, including the State College Community Land Trust, Centre County Land Trust, Habitat for Humanity and Housing Transitions, have used these funds to secure state and federal grants.

“When you can take small amounts of money and leverage it against larger amounts of money, that’s how projects actually get accomplished,” Commissioner Steve Dershem said. “I think this is the perfect example of how we can take that quarter million dollars, which on its face is not a huge amount of money, and make bigger projects happen.”

Higgins added that the county is hearing from Harrisburg and Washington, D.C., that “good things are coming” in the affordable housing space and that officials hope the funding will help local nonprofits prepare financially for those opportunities.

Although municipal and state agencies hold much of the influence over affordable housing policy, the county strategically directs grant funding to help advance affordable housing initiatives.

Rather than dedicating all of a grant’s funding to a single large project, the commissioners distribute funds among multiple projects throughout Centre County.

Employing this grant-leveraging approach has enabled the county to construct or rehabilitate more than 100 affordable housing units, according to Higgins.

“We know this is a national problem, we know it’s a local problem and we’re addressing it with the funds that we have available,” said Higgins

Commissioner Steve Dershem echoed Higgins’ sentiment, noting that an important part of the affordable housing effort includes keeping people in their homes.

Dershem discussed two CDBG grants awarded for a sewer project in the Eagle Creek Subdivision that will keep 33 families in their homes, provide sewer access to a whole community and spare dozens of households from paying excessive sewer bills.

Dershem lauded the sewer project as an example of how grant funding can be leveraged to make multiple projects successful and financially feasible.

“Keeping people in their homes, whether it’s seniors or folks struggling financially, and having opportunities to make a difference for those folks probably has as big, if not bigger, an impact than anything else that we do,” he said. “I think we’ve been very effective at putting those programs together.”

The CASH application process opens Wednesday, July 1, 2026, and closes Friday, July 31, 2026, at 5 p.m.

Interested parties can request an Act 137 Notice of Funding Application packet in person at the Centre County Planning and Community Development Office, 420 Holmes St., Bellefonte, or by emailing Betsy Barndt at bbarndt@centrecountypa.gov.

Project recommendations and grant award amounts for eligible projects will be announced Tuesday, Sept. 1, 2026, during the 10 a.m. Board of Commissioners meeting.

“Affordable housing is one of the most difficult issues nationally, statewide and countywide at this point,” Higgins said.

But despite the magnitude of the challenge, Dershem said the county has shown it can make an impact by strategically leveraging available funding.

“We might not be able to change the whole world in one swat, but we can certainly take a bite out of a lot of the issues,” he said.