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Strategic Objective
Strengthen communities' economic health, resilience, and access to opportunity
Strategic Objective
Overview
If hard-working people who play by the rules are to get ahead, they need to be able to access quality education and decent jobs, from a foundation of security in basic needs like personal safety, housing and food. Creating such environments requires collaboration among organizations with different roles and specialties at the local level, and federal agencies that are able to provide cross-sector support. Neighborhood, municipal, and regional environments that can attract investment and also support children and families are the backbone of inclusive and resilient economic growth. Building on the community’s institutional, financial, human and physical capital is vital to economic growth and bolsters resiliency in times of disaster or downturn.
Local networks among the private sector, government, and community leaders can be particularly effective at creating lasting solutions. The federal role is to support and complement the private sector, civic institutions, states, and localities, not to supplant their efforts. An effective federal role is to catalyze private investment and market discipline by addressing market failures, frictions and gaps. HOME and CDBG, the two major formula grant programs that support housing, community and economic development, provide a strong foundation for these placed-based federal efforts.
HUD participates in several interagency place-based initiatives that focus existing funding more effectively and create incentives for collaboration across organizational, jurisdictional and sectoral lines. Such initiatives support communities in improving their growth potential and the quality of life and opportunities for their residents.
Read Less...Progress Update
ConnectHome
The White House and HUD announced ConnectHome on July 15, 2015, as the next step in the federal government’s efforts to increase access to high-speed internet for all Americans. The initiative builds on ConnectED, which aims to connect 99 percent of K-12 students to high-speed internet in schools and libraries by 2018. ConnectHome leverages public-private partnerships with organizations nationwide to offer high-speed internet service, devices, technical training, and digital literacy programs to residents of HUD-assisted housing in the 28 pilot communities. Local government leaders from Boston to Durham, and from Washington, DC to Seattle, have committed to reallocate local funds, leverage local programming, and use regulatory tools to support this initiative and the expansion of high-speed internet access in low-income communities.
Choice Neighborhoods
Building on a commitment to help local communities redevelop distressed public or HUD-assisted housing and transform neighborhoods, HUD announced seven new Choice Neighborhoods Planning Grant awards and five new Choice Neighborhoods Implementation Grant awards, totaling over $150 million. Planning Grant awards will help grantees craft comprehensive, locally driven plans to revitalize and transform distressed neighborhoods. Meanwhile, HUD expects the Implementation Grant awards to help grantees replace more than 1,650 distressed public housing units with more than 2,800 new mixed-income units. Part of the Obama Administration’s effort to build Ladders of Opportunity to the middle class, HUD’s Choice Neighborhoods Initiative promotes a comprehensive approach to transforming neighborhoods struggling to address the interconnected challenges of distressed housing, inadequate schools, poor health, high crime, and lack of capital.
Community Development Block Grants (CDBG)
The CDBG program and its partners have achieved a number of significant accomplishments over the past year, including:
- Successfully established of five neighborhood revitalization strategy areas (NRSAs) in the City of Detroit, in partnership with the White House.
- Obligated over 50 percent of the total $13 billion in Hurricane Sandy CDBG-DR funds to grantees, with over 50 percent of obligated funds expended by grantees on recovery programs.
- Held two regional CDBG-DR grantee trainings in the summer of 2015, attended by grantee staff from across the country.
- Conducted public offering of Section 108 guaranteed loans to finance more than $391 million in loans.
Community Needs Assessment
Each Round 1 CNA Community submitted a completed Operational Action Plan. These plans needed to be completed prior to the end of FY 2015 and were received no later than October 1, 2015. HUD sent out CNA guidance and HUD Field Offices are currently in the process of selecting their Round 2, expected early 2016.
Promise Zones
HUD and the Department of Agriculture (USDA) are on track to designate 20 communities, with 13 currently identified. Through leading this process, HUD has developed a strong working relationship with its federal agency partners. The program has transitioned to the Office of Field Policy and Management (FPM) to better integrate program operations with HUD field work.
Strong Cities Strong Communities
SC2 directly supports local leaders in creating a solid foundation for economic growth through a variety of coordinated federal-local partnership efforts. These partnerships include the SC2 federal-city pilot, which deploys interagency-federal SC2 teams to each city for two years. In FY2015, the SC2 federal-city pilot had active federal teams on the ground in eight cities: St. Louis, MO; Flint, MI: Youngstown, OH; Rockford, IL; Macon, GA; Rocky Mount, NC and Brownsville, TX. It also includes direct technical assistance via the SC2 National Resource Network (NRN). Beginning in FY2014, the SC2 NRN expanded the SC2 model of onsite expertise and remote coaching to additional communities through a consortium of private sector, non-profit, and academic experts.
Sustainability Community Initiative
FY 2015 saw the conclusion of funding for the second and final cohort of Sustainable Communities grantees. With the close of that work come several significant milestones achieved: more than 80,000 stakeholders engaged, 3,500 organizational partnerships forged, 500+ formalized planning documents created, and 74 regions with systemic analyses of the barriers to access to opportunity that became the pilot efforts of the new Affirmatively Furthering Fair Housing rule (known as the Fair Housing Equity Analysis). Of the 56 active grants during FY 2015, 52 have been closed-out (four grants received extensions to their period of performance and remain active, slated for closeout in FY 2016). In addition to the formal adoption of several SCI-funded plans, many received national awards for planning excellence. To date, more than 30 documented state and national planning awards have been conferred upon SCI grantees.
