To be eligible for a grant, a home must be single-family and be the owner’s primary residence.
The city has about $500,000 to give out as grants as part of the program, according to Rick De La Torre, a spokesperson for Development Services, which administers the program.
The grants are income-restricted and will only be available to households that make less than 50% of the area’s median income. For Los Angeles County, that’s $59,500 for a family of four.
Another layer of eligibility, though, will also be applied: location.
While the city says it hopes to expand the program to eventually include all of Long Beach, the focus of the first series of grants will be neighborhoods that have racially and ethnically concentrated poverty and those that the city says are part of its “Place-Based Neighborhood Improvement Strategy.”
Those neighborhoods include nearly the entire Westside as well as South Wrigley and the Washington neighborhoods. The Sunrise, Hellman and St. Mary neighborhoods also fall in the city’s focus zones.
Smaller portions of the Upper Westside, the Carmelitos and College Square would also be eligible, according to a map posted by the city.
Long Beach also provides low-cost loans to repair homes and apartment buildings and offers rebates for home upgrades on things like dryers, water heaters and gas stoves.
Applicants for the roof repair program will have to provide proof of income including any pension, disability, Social Security or other supplemental income they might receive in order to be eligible to receive a grant.
To receive a grant, homeowners must obtain three bids from roofing contractors for their roof work and then select the contractor of their choice, De La Torre said. The homeowner and the roofing contractor will then enter into a contract to complete the scope of work, and the city will pay the contractor as work progresses.
The city is able to fund the grants immediately, according to De La Torre.
More information on the program and applications for the roof repair grants can be found here.
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