Yonkers Community Needs Assessment

HUD staff work with local planners, state experts and federal interagency partners to address stormwater management in Yonkers, New York.

HUD's Community Needs Assessment Initiative brings together local, state and federal stakeholders to first identify challenges in targeted neighborhoods, and then develop the strategies and foster the momentum to overcome them. In Yonkers, New York, this involved extensive onsite analysis with local partners including the Yonkers Housing Authority, the Department of City Planning and local nonprofits, like Groundwork, to understand current local development and revitalization plans. During the process, it became increasingly clear that stormwater management was an issue at the nexus of several barriers confronting the City's planning efforts.

Leveraging the Federal Partnership for Sustainable Communities, HUD brought national experts from the Environmental Protection Agency, as well as state-level partners from the New York State Department of Environmental Conservation, the Governor's Office of Storm Recovery and the Sarah Lawrence College Center for the Urban River, to participate in a "Stormwater Summit". The summit featured presentations of best practices and case studies featuring similar communities that had successfully addressed stormwater issues from around the country. With this technical assistance on hand, local planners and stakeholders were able to generate concrete plans for creating sustainable infrastructure that would meet their needs. A selection of materials presented at the conference is below.

• Green Infrastructure 101
• Green Infrastructure NYS Stormwater Design Standards
• Green Infrastructure Case Studies from Peer Communities: Poughkeepsie and Newburgh
• Yonkers Stormwater Map

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