HUD's FY 99 Budget
Key Programs and Initiatives: Hope VI

Building Homes and Communities for Low-Income Families Across the Nation

Hope VI is HUD's primary vehicle for the revitalization of severely distressed public housing. HUD is requesting $550 million dollars in FY99 for demolition, rehabilitation and new construction; this represents a continuation of the funding levels enacted in FY98. Congressional appropriations from past years, FY93 though FY98, have funded 145 separate HOPE VI grants to 52 Housing Authorities in 26 states. Forty-five thousand vacant and dilapidated units have been demolished and replaced with 30,000 new and revitalized households.

Plans for FY99 call for the demolition of 15,000 additional units, the rebuilding of 4,000 units, and 10,000 tenant-based rental assistance vouchers. The goal for HOPE VI is to demolish 95,000 units of America's worst public housing by the year 2003 and replace them with viable, socially and economically thriving communities.

HOPE VI works to create viable, living communities through a five point program:

1. Change the Physical Shape of Public Housing
Demolish the worst of America's public housing and replace it with apartments and homes that compliment the surrounding neighborhood. Create public housing communities which become part of the larger community.

2. Reduce Concentrations of Poverty
Reduce housing densities and encourage a more balanced income mix among public housing residents. End the social and economic isolation of public housing residents by architectural design and by encouraging working families to live in public housing.

3. Establish Positive Incentives
Provide comprehensive educational, job training and support services to empower residents to move toward self-sufficiency. Through programs like Campus of Learners and Moving to Work, give public housing residents the tools to find and keep jobs.

4. Establish and Enforce High Standards of Personal and Community Responsibility
Through admissions, occupancy, and eviction policies, and through programs like "One Strike and You're Out" and Operation Safe Home, establish public housing communities that are safe, secure, and free from violence and drugs.

5. Forge Broad-based Partnerships
HOPE VI forges a comprehensive partnership by bringing the entire community into the planning and implementation process. Public housing residents, housing authorities and housing boards, political leadership, local and state government, the private sector, and community and non-profits groups are all included. The strategy and the goal of HOPE VI is to forge partnerships and a consensus among all interested parties.

HOPE VI has become the visionary model for the transformation of America's public housing. The program works at the physical re-design of public housing, but more importantly, through HOPE VI, there is a human and spiritual transformation underway. Attitudes of public housing residents are changing. Perceptions of the community at large about the character of public housing are also changing. With HOPE VI funding, the Department plans to continue that transformation and build lives and living communities.