HUD Awards $150M to Five Communities to Revitalize Housing, Neighborhoods

USHUD

WASHINGTON- U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development (HUD) Secretary Julián Castro traveled to Atlanta, Georgia and Kansas City, Missouri to announce that five communities will receive a combined $150 million to redevelop severely distressed public housing and revitalize the surrounding neighborhood. HUD is awarding Choice Neighborhoods Initiative Implementation Grants to city and housing authority partnerships in Atlanta, Georgia; Kansas City, Missouri; Memphis, Tennessee; Milwaukee, Wisconsin and Sacramento, California; in order to begin the process of transforming, rehabilitating and preserving public housing.

As part of the Administration’s overall drive to reinvest in neighborhoods of concentrated poverty, President Obama’s Choice Neighborhoods Initiative is intended to transform distressed public and assisted housing into sustainable, mixed-income housing with access to community assets and services and to support positive outcomes for families living in the development and in the community. The five awardees have proposed to replace more than 1,650 distressed public housing units with more than 2,800 new mixed-income, mixed-use housing units as part of an overall effort to revitalize neighborhoods. For every $1 in Choice Neighborhoods funding they receive, the awardees and their partners will leverage an additional $9 in public and private funding for their project proposals.

“The Choice Neighborhoods Initiative is responsible for transforming what were once vacant lots, crumbling parks and storefronts and distressed housing into vibrant communities,” said Castro. “It has become one of our nation’s most important tools in the fight to ensure that every family – no matter where they live – has the resources and strong foundation to succeed.”

Read full coverage here.