Montco officials meet to discuss housing issues

NORRISTOWN Officials from the county, First Suburbs Project of Southeastern Pennsylvania, and Building One Pennsylvania met with senior officials of the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development on Wednesday to discuss how to resume a stalled regional housing mobility program that was originally scheduled to launch in 2013.

The program, created in 2012, is designed to provide more options for low-income voucher holders who seek to move to better neighborhoods in the county. But the plan got bogged down in bureaucracy and disagreements, and never got off the ground.

"This is to be a model for the nation, and more importantly, help families move to higher opportunity, and reduce concentrated poverty in communities in our region," Norristown Councilman Marlon Millner, the cochair of Building One Pennsylvania, said in a statement.

First Suburbs Project of Southeastern Pennsylvania and Building One Pennsylvania are statewide coalitions that have advocated for the program.

The groups agreed Wednesday to reconvene this month.

- Inquirer staff