U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development Office of Public Affairs New York, N.Y. 10278 |
For
Release Friday October 22, 2010 |
HUD AWARDS $200,000 TO CREATE A MORE SUSTAINABLE LIVABLE GLENS FALLS
NEW YORK - Today Adolfo Carrión, HUD's Regional Director for New York/New Jersey met with Glens Falls Mayor
Jack Diamond to announce the award of a $200,000 Challenge Grant to the City of Glens Falls, New York. The grant will be used to conduct a planning initiative to promote a more equitable, sustainable, and economically viable community. The initiative will evaluate the feasibility of developing a downtown parking facility that also functions
as bus/taxi transfer station, public market, and festival/farmers market site, improve connections to an existing pedestrian/bike path, amend the zoning ordinance to increase and promote energy efficiency, develop a strategy
to provide affordable workforce housing downtown, and identify vacant properties throughout the City for infill development.
In an unprecedented collaboration between two federal agencies, the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development (HUD) and the U.S. Department of Transportation (DOT) this week awarded $68,000,000 to help stimulate a new generation of sustainable and livable communities, connect housing, employment and economic development with transportation and other infrastructure improvements. The joint HUD-DOT collaboration will
support 62 local and regional partnerships seeking to create a more holistic and integrated approach to connecting affordable housing, job opportunities and transportation corridors.
"Today two federal agencies come together to produce a win-win for local communities around the country," said
HUD Secretary Shaun Donovan. "We're helping local and regional planners connect all the dots in their efforts to
make their communities more sustainable and livable. These grants will help communities to hit on all cylinders, producing more affordable housing near good jobs and commercial centers which will help to reduce our energy consumption and increase competitiveness."
HUD is awarding $40 million in new Sustainable Community Challenge Grants to help support local planning designed
to integrate affordable housing, good jobs and public transportation. Meanwhile, DOT is awarding nearly $28 million
in TIGER (Transportation Investment Generating Economic Recovery) II Planning Grants to implement localized
plans that ultimately lead to projects that integrate transportation, housing and economic development.
At the announcement Regional Administrator Carrión said "For HUD and Transportation, sustainability means tying
the quality and location of housing and transportation to broader opportunities, like good jobs, quality schools, and safe streets. This Challenge Grant will allow the City of Glens Falls to develop a plan that ties those elements
together in a comprehensive way, in order to build a more sustainable and economically viable city. We are
investing as a partner in Glens Falls' future and look forward to working with the city and its leadership."
The new HUD-DOT collaboration also builds on the Partnership for Sustainable Communities, an innovative new interagency collaboration, launched by President Obama in June 2009, between the Department of Transportation (DOT), the Department of Housing and Urban Development (HUD), and the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA). Guided by six Livability Principles, the Partnership is designed to remove the traditional federal government silos that exist between departments and strategically target the agencies' transportation, land use, environmental, housing
and community development resources to provide communities the resources they need to build more livable, sustainable communities.
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HUD's mission is to create strong, sustainable, inclusive communities and quality affordable homes for all. HUD is working to strengthen the housing market to bolster the economy and protect consumers; meet the need for quality affordable rental homes: utilize housing as a platform for improving quality of life; build inclusive and sustainable communities free from discrimination; and transform the way HUD does business. More information about HUD and its programs is available on the Internet at www.hud.gov and espanol.hud.gov.