Volume 4 Number 6
June 2007

In this Issue
Excellence in Historic Preservation
Promoting Homeownership: Local Educational Institutions Take Action
Learning More about the Homeless
Design Advisor Promotes Affordable Housing
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• The Empowerment Zone/Enterprise Community program was designed to inspire Americans to work together to revive the nation’s most distressed urban and rural areas. Initially, six urban empowerment zones and 65 urban enterprise communities were named to receive assistance for developing opportunities in their areas. One of the original urban empowerment zones was recently awarded the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development Secretary’s Opportunity and Empowerment Award at the American Planning Association’s Annual Meeting this past April. We’ll examine the Federal Empowerment Zone program and the difference it has made for the award winner, the American Street Empowerment Zone Neighborhood.

• Fourteen new houses in Blacksburg, Virginia’s historic district received a 2007 ENERGY STAR® Award for Excellence in Energy-Efficient Affordable Housing, one of only six awarded. Initially subsidized with a CDBG small cities grant from the Virginia Department of Housing and Community Development and later from Blacksburg’s CDBG funds, the seven “green” duplexes are approximately 25 percent more energy-efficient than the average new home. We’ll look at the partnership between Blacksburg and Community Housing Partners Corporation and at the energy-efficient, affordable houses that have been built as a result.

• The HUD USER website features a new study commissioned to review the status of impact fees as they relate to issues of equity and housing affordability. The report is published as a guide to help practitioners in designing or revising impact fee structures to cover the cost of infrastructure for new development, without disproportionately burdening lower income homebuyers. We’ll review findings and some of the many useful features of this guidebook.

• Change in the nation’s housing stock over time is the subject of two new reports recently released by HUD’s Office of Policy Development and Research. In one, the housing stock profiles in 2003 and 2005 are compared to determine how or why housing units left and entered the inventory between the two years. In another, the rental stock is examined for changes in rental unit affordability during that period. We’ll discuss the findings of these important new studies.