Siding needs replacing on the home of a Grove Street woman, and a branch of the federal government may finance the project at low interest.

Birdie Spencer, 810 Grove St., spoke Wednesday with a manager of the U.S. Department of Agriculture’s Rural Development branch who was at City Hall to help qualified residents apply for home-repair loans at 1 percent interest.

An applicant’s annual income must be below a certain level to qualify for a loan. For a family of four, the number is $23,450, and it ranges from $16,400 for one person to $30,950 for a family of eight, said Lenell Henry, Rural Development’s manager for Warren, Claiborne and two other counties.

The City of Vicksburg encourages and coordinates some home-repair projects are available through Rural Development and charity programs such as World Changers, a summer program for junior-high and high-school students, said Beatrice Moore, the city’s director of housing and community development. Blank applications for the Rural Development loans for pickup by local residents at Moore’s office, 819 South St.

“We keep a waiting list” of people who have requested help with hone repairs, Moore said. The city also offers courses for prospective homebuyers, she said. “We get to meet a lot of people.”

Henry has been visiting Vicksburg every other Wednesday since October to provide information and help applicants seek Rural Development financing, he said.

“They contact us and we’ll take it from there,” Henry said.

This year is unusual in that the USDA has made available extra money for home-repair loans like the one for which Spencer was applying, said its state director of single-family housing, Johnny Jones.

Also included on Spencer’s loan application is funding for painting and seal-replacement on her home, Henry said.

Such loans may be made for $200 to $20,000 and for terms of up to 20 years, Henry said.

“We can probably buy a window unit,” he cited as an example of one of the least-expensive projects a person might choose to finance through the program.

The loans are repaid directly to Rural Development monthly. At 1 percent interest, even some people on fixed incomes may be surprised by the size of the monthly payments the loans can require, Moore said.

The monthly payment for principal and interest on a 20-year loan for a $3,000 roof repair, for example, would be $13.80, Moore said. Even at the maximum loan amount the monthly payment would be $92.

Loans of less than $7,500 do not require real estate as collateral and can be made available for disbursement in as little as two weeks, Henry said.

When a loan is approved, Rural Development creates a joint account with the recipient. Contractors are paid from that account with checks requiring signatures of the recipient and a Rural Development representative, Henry said.

Vicksburg residents have been eligible for Rural Development loans since only 1990 and remain ineligible for the agency’s hardship grants under a related program, Jones said.

The agency classifies cities and towns with fewer than 20,000 residents as rural and Vicksburg does not qualify on that basis. It has, however, been granted a federal waiver, good until 2010 and is the only city in the state to be so treated, Jones said.

The type of loan for which Spencer is applying falls under one of three main programs Rural Development offers. The other two are for higher-income people and provide direct and guaranteed loans, also at subsidized interest rates.

So far this year, Rural Development has made six loans for $73,541 and five grants for $32,026 in the district Henry manages.

“Right now we’ve got plenty of money to spend,” Henry said.