TO: Mayor and City Council
FROM: Beth Beatty, City Manager
SUBJECT:
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Resolution Approving and Authorizing the Acceptance and Implementation of a 2024 Choice Neighborhoods Planning Grant from the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development
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BACKGROUND:
The US Department of Housing and Urban Development Choice Neighborhoods Initiative (CNI) is a program that leverages significant public and private dollars to support locally driven strategies that address struggling neighborhoods with severely distressed public housing and/or HUD-assisted housing through a comprehensive approach to neighborhood transformation. Local leaders, residents, and other stakeholders, such as public housing agencies, cities, schools, police, healthcare, business owners, nonprofits, architects, and private developers, come together to create and implement a Transformation Plan that revitalizes distressed HUD housing and addresses the challenges in the surrounding neighborhood. The program helps communities transform neighborhoods by redeveloping severely distressed public and/or HUD-assisted housing and catalyzing critical improvements in the neighborhood. To this end, CNI is focused on three core goals:
1. Housing: Replace severely distressed public and HUD-assisted housing with high-quality mixed-income housing that is well-managed and responsive to the needs of the surrounding neighborhood.
2. People: Improve outcomes of households living in the target housing related to income and employment, health, and education; and
3. Neighborhood: Create the conditions necessary for public and private investment in distressed neighborhoods to offer the kinds of amenities and assets, including safety, good schools, and commercial activity, that are important to families' choices about their community.
The first step in CNI is an application submission to HUD for a CNI Planning grant used to engage residents, partners, and community stakeholders over a two-year planning process to develop a Transformation Plan for a target neighborhood.
The maximum award for a planning grant is $500,000. The City of Joliet was recently awarded the maximum grant amount for our CNI submission.
With the Joliet Housing Authority, the City will commence a two-year comprehensive visioning and plan development process that will include numerous planning and charette events.
Once the Transformation Plan is formed, the CNI Team can apply for Choice Neighborhoods Implementation Grant, which is between $25 million and $50 million.
To accept this grant award, the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development requires that the legislative body adopt a resolution directing the Mayor to execute the grant agreement.
CONCLUSION:
The City has been granted a significant federal award to create a Transformation Plan that will address the quality of our housing stock, improve outcomes for our residents, and make our neighborhoods poised to thrive. At the conclusion of this process, we will be able to compete for up to $50 million in construction funds.
RECOMMENDATION:
recommendation
Based on the above, it is recommended that the Mayor and City Council adopt the attached Resolution approving and authorizing the acceptance and implementation of a 2024 Choice Neighborhoods Planning Grant from the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development.
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