State Attorney General Eric Schneiderman says his office is working with the Rochester Area Community Foundation as part of a program designed to help low-income families lower their energy bills and eliminate serious home health and safety hazards in older homes.
Rochester will get $1 million and Syracuse will also get $1 million for a similar program. The money comes from a court-ordered settlement with American Electric Power, the largest U.S. power company, over violations of the federal Clean Air Act.
The programs in Rochester and Buffalo are modeled after a similar program in Buffalo. It's designed to help communities with a lot of older housing stock. In Rochester, the attorney general says more than 60 percent of homes were built prior to 1940.