MUSCATINE, Iowa — Many improvements to public housing will be completed this  year in Muscatine instead of the next three years because of federal funding announced Wednesday.

“We are happy to get the money and we’ll have it all spent within six months (of receiving it),” Richard Yerington, Muscatine’s housing administrator, said Thursday.

The Muscatine Municipal Housing Agency will receive $256,000. Cities across Iowa will receive $15.1 million from the Department of Housing and Urban Development in addition to the $46.6 million approved for the same Act earlier Wednesday. The funding comes from the 2009 Recovery Act Capital Fund Formula Program and the Lead-Based Paint Hazard Control Program.

Yerington said HUD used a formula to distribute money that will help agencies with capital improvements and stimulate jobs and small businesses.

There are 152 public-housing units in Muscatine, including 100 units at Clark House, which rents apartments to people who are least 50 years old, 50 low-income housing units at Sunset Park Apartments and two single-family homes.

A majority of the money will be used for replacement of outdated heating and cooling systems at Sunset Park. Energy efficiency will be another use for the money.

“We will focus on saving energy, which will save operation costs for the city and the residents and federal subsidies,” Yerington said.

Some of the units will also receive replacement appliances and other improvements.

“We would have done a little bit every year but we couldn’t have done at once,” Yerington said.

The Lone Tree Housing Commission will also receive $26,040 in funding. Janice Schafer, executive director, said the Board of Commissioners for Lone Tree’s housing department will have a year to decide how to spend the money.

“We’re really going to try to plan this out and make it into something we wouldn’t have been able to afford otherwise,” Schafer said.