Middletown receives $2.1mil for housing renovation

My understanding of this grant is that Middletown has applied along with 14 other cities in the state and hasn't been approved as of today for such grant unless they can show true cause for it.

They may get more if that's the case.

The article in today's Journal stated that some of the money could be used to acquire and rehab blighted homes for the purpose of providing low income people opportunities to purchase these houses, once rehabbed. I thought that the city was trying to get out of the real estate business. Didn't they say, years ago, that they wanted to unload all of the properties that the city owned? What happens if the city uses this money, purchases blighted properties, rehabs the properties, and can't sell them? The city ends up having many " Swallens building" properties that they can't unload. Isn't this a crap shoot from the start? If the houses remain empty, does the city own them, or does the government own them since they provided the money in the first place? Finally. doesn't this whole situation only encourage and aggravate the low income problem we have here in this town? Aren't we growing more Section 8 possibilities here?