In Apr 2009, HUD Secretary Shaun Donovan spoke to a ULI
Spring Council Forum in Atlanta; he settled that his administration’s thought was
“to put a UD behind in HUD,” and explained that HUD’s over-reliance on housing
solutions wasn’t assisting cities residence their formidable revitalization needs. Just over dual years later, this tiny new appropriation program
caught my eye on a list of new HUD announcements:

*** HUD HOPE VI – $0.5 million
Application Due: Aug 22, 2011
Eligible Entities: Local governments

HUD requests proposals for a HOPE VI Main Street Program.
This module yield grants to tiny communities to support in a rejuvenation
of an ancestral or normal executive business district or “Main Street” area
by replacing new blurb space in buildings with affordable housing
units. HUD encourages activities that actively foster sustainability through
enhancing appetite fit measures.

Now, we suspect it
would be satisfactory to assume that a village who relates for this module has
already complicated a parcels and “Main Street” area in doubt and done a
determination that housing would be a long-term improved use of a land than
the existent blurb use, though it strikes me as surpassing a end of the
federal supervision to make a hypothesis on interest of authorised small
communities that this land use change should be made. Indeed, a module is
only open to communities with 50,000 or fewer residents, that describes
communities that don’t mostly have a excess of veteran formulation capacity
to investigate a doubt like this before chasing sovereign funds. HUD could have made
one of a eligibility criteria that a locality has a extensive devise or
zoning in place that would support this thespian land use change. By not doing
so, this module seems to inspire a internal appropriation target to order a spot
rezoning for a influenced properties.

The settled objectives of a module are to: “Redevelop Main
Street areas; Preserve ancestral or normal settlement or settlement features
in Main Street areas; Enhance mercantile growth efforts in Main Street
areas; and Provide affordable housing in Main Street areas.” Of these goals,
only a fourth (providing affordable housing) is clearly met by every
allowable output underneath a program. Replacing viable downtown commercial
space with housing units seems like a controversial pierce towards “enhancing
economic development”  and from the
perspective of preserving ancestral and normal architecture, rehabilitating
older downtown buildings for re-use as housing is generally usually preferable if
the usually choice is to rip a archaic structure down.

Especially in a stream mercantile climate, that has
created impassioned sensitivity in many communities’ retail, restaurant, office, and
light production industries, we can see many communities being meddlesome in
the thought of regulating sovereign supports to residence empty storefronts by this
program, though I’m not certain it’s correct for them to do so. Hundreds of small
downtowns are struggling now, though stealing blurb space, violation adult what
little sell smoothness exists, and adding initial building residences that are
bound to tighten themselves from a travel seem like moves that will promote rather
than stop a settlement of decline. Why not use this appropriation to promote
developing additional affordable housing units on vacant land or land that is adjacent
to existent downtowns? Predicating a appropriation on
a internal land use change from blurb to residential incentivizes short-term
decision making, and leaves a lot of “UD” still left to do for struggling small
downtowns.

I’m curious:

• Do you
  know any communities who applied?
• Can you
  think of smaller downtowns that would advantage from this program?
• Do you
  think it’s advisable to make such a thespian land use shift?
• Do you
  have examples of affordable housing in tiny downtowns that are located in before commercial
  space and minister to a downtown’s mercantile development?

I’ll watch for a formula of this appropriation and news back
about a community(ies) that are awarded.