‘Choice’ neighborhoods to combat poverty cycle

The Obama administration is proposing a new program that aims to transform the nation’s poorest neighborhoods from head-to-toe: taking 10 urban centers with high concentrations of public housing and improving it while adding day care centers and even farmers markets, sidewalks and parks.

The $250 million proposal is a planning experiment and one of the most progressive proposals under consideration for the next budget year, building upon the Hope VI program, which over the past 17 years has torn down nearly 100,000 of the worst public housing projects in the country.

The initiative, if approved by Congress, will operate in the same way by redeveloping public and assisted housing, but it will include community development, and applicants will have to prove the transformation would be catalytic, said Bruce Katz, a senior adviser to Housing and Urban Development Secretary Shaun Donovan.

It also has a “much tighter link” to school reform, he said of HUD’s Choice Neighborhoods Initiative.

Sen. Christopher S. “Kit” Bond, Missouri Republican, said he would advocate for the new program because it expands on the successful Hope VI initiative he has championed since its creation in 1992.

He said in an interview that the idea is “to see if we can do something in a coordinated effective effort to end the cycle of poverty and distress … and empower the local residents to have more control over their life.”

Mr. Bond cited projects in St. Louis and also on Capitol Hill that are now model communities.

Mr. Katz said Hope VI dramatically lowered crime rates and increased property values in the worst neighborhoods. It merited about $500 million per year in funding during the Clinton administration but was on “life support” during the Bush presidency, Mr. Katz said.

HUD estimates 10 cities would be granted the funding after a competitive process, and to qualify, at least 40 percent of a neighborhood’s residents must live below the federal poverty line of about $22,000 for a family of four.

Atlanta, Kansas City, Mo., Philadelphia and San Francisco were cited often during interviews for this story as examples of places with similar programs or where residents could benefit from the “choice” initiative.

The HUD budget request Congress will consider in coming months says the program will seek to transform poor neighborhoods into “functioning, sustainable mixed-income neighborhoods by linking housing improvements with appropriate services, schools, public assets, transportation and access to jobs.”

Officials stressed this program will be more cooperative, linking together ideas and funding from the Departments of Education, Transportation and Health and Human Services and the Environmental Protection Agency.

“To grow sustainable metros, the federal government should join up transportation, housing and energy and environmental policies. These policies often work at cross purposes today,” Mr. Katz said in a February speech. “Transportation programs generally invest outside core areas of metros, while housing policy continues to favor concentration of affordable housing. Environmental policies often make redevelopment costly and sprawl easy.”

Mr. Katz came to the administration from the Brookings Institution, which recently argued for the concept.

“We have to rethink neighborhood policy over the longer term,” Alan Berube, senior fellow at Brookings, wrote for the Cleveland Plain Dealer in December. “For too long, government has funded housing, schools and economic development in these communities as though they were islands unto themselves.”

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