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District Awarded $3 Million to Create Sustainable Communities

Wednesday, October 20, 2010
HUD awarded a total of $40 million in Sustainable Community Challenge Grants to jurisdictions nationwide

(Washington, DC) – The Department of Housing and Community Development, in partnership with the National Community Reinvestment Coalition (NCRC), today was awarded $3 million under the US Department of Housing and Urban Development’s Sustainable Community Challenge Grant. 
 
DHCD will use this funding to build on major City and Federal investments focusing on Historic Anacostia. Despite its strengths and ample assets, Historic Anacostia has struggled for years as a very low income community lacking economic opportunities for its residents. The District’s award of $3 million in this competitive funding round is the largest single award and the maximum awarded to any single awardee.

“We are excited at the opportunity this funding creates to further our efforts in the Anacostia area.  Historic Anacostia is one of Washington’s oldest communities and home to many valuable, yet under-leveraged assets,” said DHCD Director Leila Finucane Edmonds. 

Said NCRC President and CEO John Taylor, “We are pleased to continue our important partnership with the District to help improve the quality of life for residents in the city. This forward thinking grant will help ensure that existing residents are the primary beneficiaries of the revitalization of the neighborhoods where they live.”

DHCD will work closely with NCRC, the Office of the Deputy Mayor for Planning and Economic Development, the District Department of Transportation, the DC Commission on the Arts and Humanities, the Department of Consumer and Regulatory Affairs, the Department of Small and Local Business Development, the Department of Employment Services, the Office of Planning and others as we move forward.  This is a multi-agency effort to coordinate activities in these areas and create a truly comprehensive and sustainable approach.  Although the efforts will encompass the entire Congress Heights, Anacostia and St. Elizabeths area, emphasis will be placed on Historic Anacostia, ensuring that neighborhood residents benefit from the 11th Street bridge redevelopment, the proposed streetcar line in Historic Anacostia and the new federal job center at St. Elizabeths. 

Specific outcomes from these efforts will include:

  1. Sustaining and expanding affordable homeownership and improving low-cost rental options for lower-income and senior household,
  2. Leveraging public and private investment to develop an economic development implementation plan that strengthens the unique assets of the Historic Anacostia commercial district, expands small business development and enhances employment opportunities for and job skills of the area’s current lower-income residents, and
  3. Conducting a community engagement campaign to ensure residents have strong input into and shape the ensuing redevelopment of Historic Anacostia.

The narrative for the District’s application, entitled “Historic Anacostia Community-Led Comprehensive Redevelopment Plan,” can be downloaded below.

HUD’s Sustainable Communities Challenge Grants will foster reform and reduce barriers to achieving affordable, economically vital and sustainable communities. HUD awarded $40 million in Challenge Grant funding to jurisdictions nationwide. These funds will be used by communities, large and small, to address local challenges to integrating transportation and housing.

Historic Anacostia Community-Led Comprehensive Redevelopment Plan Narrative

About DHCD
The mission of the Department of Housing and Community Development is to create and preserve opportunities for affordable housing and economic development and to revitalize underserved communities in the District of Columbia. DHCD fulfills its mission by providing gap financing; increasing first-time homeownership opportunities; providing funding to rehabilitate single-family and multi-family homes; supporting communities through neighborhood based activities; providing funding for homelessness prevention; addressing vacant and abandoned properties; and overseeing the administration of rental housing laws. The agency is located at 1800 Martin Luther King Jr. Avenue SE, Washington, DC 20020.

About NCRC
The National Community Reinvestment Coalition is an association of more than 600 community-based organizations that promote access to basic banking services, including credit and savings, to create and sustain affordable housing, job development, and vibrant communities for America's working families. NCRC can be found online at www.ncrc.org.