Part Two: Closing the Opportunity Gaps
E. Moving Beyond Business as Usual
The devolution of responsibility to States and communities in almost every sphere of public policy in the 1980s and 1990s is transforming the relationship among all levels of government. Cities and States face a sometimes bewildering array of decisions to be weighed and relationships to be built, where before there were only Federal rules to be followed. The challenge for Washington has been to rediscover a meaningful but more modest role for itself in ensuring the success of locally designed initiatives -- a role that is supportive and not preemptive, one that breaks down barriers to local and regional cooperation instead of raising them. Three HUD initiatives exemplify this approach:
Community Builders
One of the aggravations of working with the Federal Government has always been getting -- or even learning about -- the particular tool or resource you need. Knowledge and responsibility within a Federal bureaucracy can be so fragmented that finding the right information can be almost impossible -- like trying to use a vast catalog without an index.
As part of its new focus on outreach and customer service, HUD is recruiting a cadre of committed professionals from various fields to support urban revitalization efforts. Called Community Builders, they will serve as the first point of contact with the agency for the thousands of people who need HUD's help, from homebuyers to mayors, from community groups to bankers. Over 8,000 people have applied to be community builders. After initial training at HUD and Harvard University, Community Builders will work out of HUD's 81 field offices for 2 to 4 years as problem solvers and team builders, helping local customers find the resources they need, the strategies that can work, and the partners who can help.
Community Builders will empower communities by providing technical expertise in finance and economic development programs. Using state-of-the-art Communities 2020 computer mapping software will help facilitate comprehensive communitywide planning. They will share information on best practices from communities throughout America. They will break down bureaucratic barriers within HUD.
Center for Community and Interfaith Partnerships
More and better partnerships with our Nation's grassroots organizations are crucial to the new HUD. Community and faith-based groups are closest to the poor and disadvantaged. They are much better positioned than any government agency to understand community assets and needs and to respond effectively. HUD has therefore created the Center for Community and Interfaith Partnerships to ensure that grassroots groups have a place at HUD's table.
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"The Joint Center for Sustainable Communities of the U.S. Conference of Mayors and the National Association of Counties will be a resource base to help cities like mine find answers where there aren't any rules about how to manage problems that cross political borders."
M. Susan Savage, Mayor of Tulsa
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While it is not a new source of HUD funding, the Center is working to strengthen HUD's link with a broad range of community and faith-based organizations by providing information and expertise on HUD's programs and ways to best utilize them, seeking input on policies and programs and ways to better assist communities, acting as a problem solver to help overcome barriers and find common ground, and forging new and deeper partnerships. The Center is working from the bottom-up to collaborate with those committed to empowering the poor and vested in building stronger, safer communities across America.
Regional Connections
The greatest challenges facing metropolitan communities -- from job mismatches to crumbling infrastructure and from disinvestment to sprawl -- are regional in nature. Unfortunately, the incentives for cooperation between cities and suburbs -- and the institutions for putting that cooperation into practice -- are weak. HUD has proposed a $100 million Regional Connections Initiative that will spur the search for regional solutions to regional issues, encouraging communities to begin to work together and develop strategic plans that emphasize coordinated metropolitan economic growth and action on a range of environmental and social equity issues.
Regional Connections will be carried out in collaboration with the Joint Center for Sustainable Communities, a partnership of the National Association of County Officials and the U.S. Conference of Mayors, which grew out of the President's Council on Sustainable Development.
PATH
HUD is also working to ensure that all the housing stock in cities and throughout the United States benefits from the best practices and the best technology that our Nation has to offer. Technological innovations are notoriously slow to be adopted in the housing industry -- but a new initiative known as the Partnership for Advancing Technology in Housing (PATH) is being launched to collect and disseminate information on the most promising ideas for reducing housing utility costs, carbon emissions, housing construction injuries, and losses due to fire and disasters.
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