Foundation Testing Assistance Available For Stafford Residents

VERNON/ELLINGTON/STAFFORD, CT — Residents of Vernon, Stafford and Ellington can now apply for portions of a grant totaling $480,000 designed to assist homeowners with testing for crumbling home foundations.

The funds, administered through the state Department of Housing via the federal Community Development Block Grant, are designed to provide eligible property owners up to $5,000 to test their concrete foundations for the presence of pyrrhotite with no up-front or out of pocket costs.

Vernon, Ellington and Stafford are among the towns hardest hit by the crumbling foundation epidemic caused by a bad batch of concrete harvested from a north-central Connecticut quarry. It contained pyrrhotite, which leads to the deterioration of concrete.

According to the rules of the grant, 51 persent of the funding will benefit low- anf moderate-income households and the towns have contracted with a consultant to collect data and "assist in the timely review of applications for eligibility," officials said.

U.S. Rep. Joe Courtney, a Vernon resident, first identified the CDBG program as a source of federal assistance to response to the crumbling foundations crisis in 2016, after HUD confirmed in writing that the state's allocation of CDBG funds could be used for crumbling foundations. After Courtney called for the use of CDBG funds for the crisis, former Gov. Dannel Malloy announced that $1 million in CDBG funds would be set aside for crumbling foundations related projects.

However, after it was revealed in February 2018 that only $250,000 of this allocation had been provided to a single application and that the remaining $750,000 had been redistributed to other programs, Courtney publicly called on the DOH to restore the funds and re-open the application process so that other communities had the opportunity to apply.

Despite what Courtney called "initial resistance" to his requests, in May 2018 the DOH re-opened the program and restored funding for applications from eligible communities."

Information on how residents can apply for the testing program is available at the social services departments of each of the three communities.