PART III: Coordinating HUD Programs
Coordination of Competitive Grant Programs

One of the basic goals of the SuperNOFA approach is to make it easier for you to coordinate the use of two or more competitive grant programs. HUD's SuperNOFA provides communities with a menu of resources to use in addressing their problems, not a mandate of what must be used. By having information about all of HUD's competitive grant programs that are designed to address a single issue area, you should have a better understanding of the multiple resources available to address community needs and opportunities. Table II (see Part I) provides a useful starting point for new applicants to begin their efforts at coordination. You can review the table and determine which type of applicant you or your organization qualifies as. Then you can examine corresponding "Available Programs" to determine which programs might be accessible to you. The following examples describe some ways in which you can combine two or more competitive grant programs.

Example 1: Brownfields

An older city located in the Northeast faced the problem of what to do with its abandoned and underutilized industrial sites. Once the engine of prosperity for the city, these sites had become eyesores that had negative impacts on the surrounding neighborhoods. To make matters worse, the city's previous efforts to redevelop the sites had been unsuccessful because potential businesses feared that the sites were environmentally contaminated. In search of a way to turn these burdensome sites into sparks for job creation and neighborhood revitalization, the city assembled a special task force to address the issue. The task force recommended a comprehensive renewal strategy, combining both residential and business development with strong links between the old industrial sites and their surrounding neighborhoods. The city fully supported the plan and made it a priority in its Consolidated Plan. It allocated its own general funds, HUD CDBG, and other financial resources to begin implementation at an initial demonstration site, yet it needed additional project startup funds and help to make the program more comprehensive. To fill these needs, the city looked to HUD's competitive grant programs.

The city decided to focus its efforts on one of the sites that had the most development potential. During the initial marketing of the site, the city discovered that several businesses were interested but were reluctant to commit to the project because of contamination issues. The city conducted some initial soil assessments and found evidence of moderate contamination. It applied for funding from the Brownfields Economic Development Initiative to help finance initial clean-up and replace the site's aging infrastructure. This money was combined with clean-up money provided by the state's Department of Environment and a Section 108 loan to enable a developer to acquire and clear the land which was owned by one of the industrial companies formerly located at the site. These HUD resources, combined with those committed by the State, city, and the private sector, spurred implementation of the economic redevelopment portion of the plan.

The city still needed to create firm links to the surrounding community. It actively pursued local hiring commitments from businesses locating at the site. It obtained commitments from a local community college to conduct customized job training for neighborhood residents. It also committed some of its Community Development Block Grant resources to the physical redevelopment of the area, including the creation of a park at a former industrial site. To further its efforts to link the neighborhood to the business redevelopment strategy, the city applied for additional HUD competitive grants. Since homes in the area had been built in the 1940s—about the time that the plants that used to dominate the area had been built—many of them contained lead-based paint hazards. The city sought funds from the Lead-Based Paint Hazard Control Program, which it planned to use to assess the extent of the lead-based paint hazards, remediate the hazards, and provide on-the-job training and certification in lead paint hazard control to residents of the area. As part of a broader initiative to rehabilitate some of the dilapidated housing in the area, the city decided to apply for Youthbuild funding. The grant would enable young high school dropouts in the area to receive classroom and on-the-job training in housing rehabilitation. Both Youthbuild and Lead Paint trainees would make substantial, direct contributions to rehabilitating housing in the area, giving them a renewed sense of pride in themselves and the neighborhood. The training also provided them with skills, enabling them to acquire stable, well-paying jobs.

Example 2: University involvement in housing counseling

A university located in a Midwestern city was determining how it could become more involved in its surrounding community, which, in its heyday, had been one of the strongest and liveliest in the city. It had provided a variety of housing, cultural, and commercial opportunities to a racially and economically diverse group of residents. However, over time the community began to deteriorate. Although it was still a relatively stable community, it was in serious jeopardy of becoming racially and economically isolated from the rest of the metropolitan area. The university wanted to contribute to the stabilization and revitalization of the area, but its resources were limited. It decided that participation in the Community Outreach Partnership Centers (COPC) program was part of the solution.

A group of university personnel, students, and local residents designed a comprehensive COPC program to address community planning, economic development, and housing. Each component of its program was multi-faceted. Its housing strategy was of particular interest, calling for a combination of housing rehabilitation, homeownership programs, and counseling services. The community had expressed a concern that some homeowners and landlords in the area were engaging in discriminatory practices. Since many of the professors and students in the university's community planning program had developed expertise in fair housing law, the university developed a housing counseling program. To help fund the effort, the university applied for a Fair Housing Initiatives Program Education and Outreach Initiative grant. It planned to use the funds to develop educational materials on fair housing, provide fair housing counseling services, and convene areawide meetings of housing industry and fair housing groups on the university campus. A local community organization agreed to help staff the counseling service, but to boost staff resources and enhance the education of its community planning graduate students, the university also applied for funding from the Community Development Work Study program. The work study funding was used to provide tuition and stipend support to full-time community development graduate students who would work for the housing counseling service.