HUD announces new funding for Choice Neighborhoods
The US Department of Housing and Urban Development announced the availability of $110 million in grants to transform public and assisted housing and to revitalize communities.
Appearing in Tuesday’s Federal Register is the Notice of Funding Availability, the federal application, for the FY 2012 Choice Neighborhoods Implementation Program.
In October, New Urban News (now called Better! Cities & Towns) described the Choice Neighborhoods program as "Breathtakingly broad in scope," reporting that it "tackles nearly every problem known to afflict city-dwellers."
Choice Neighborhoods takes the ambitions that were at the heart of the HOPE VI public housing redevelopment program and raises them to a new level. Though the total federal funding available through Choice Neighborhoods is only a fraction of what HOPE VI distributed at its peak, the program tries to grapple with a greater array of entrenched social problems.
Comprehensive action — combining physical improvements with an array of educational, employment, training, mental health, addiction, and other initiatives — is a hallmark of the planning and implementation grants, which HUD distributes to highly collaborative groups in cities across the nation. In the last round, planning grants ranged from $200,000-300,000 while implementation grants ranged from $20-30 million.
In both types of grants, HUD counts on a variety of public and private funding sources to generate investments far exceeding the amount of the federal grants.
In addition to tackling social problems, the projects involve urban design. Following on HOPE VI successes, the urban design and development for Choice Neighborhoods is generally focused on the creation and revitalization of compact, mixed-use neighborhoods.
