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FY 1999 Annual Performance PlanStrategic Objective 1
Empower Communities to Meet Local Needs
Introduction
Our mission of creating communities of opportunity requires more
than just administering our programs on a day-to-day basis. HUD
must take a proactive, leadership role in partnering with America's
communities.
Key to this objective is the Consolidated Planning Process.
The Consolidated Plan/Community Connections system, initiated
in 1994-5, was developed to offer a more comprehensive and rational
approach to housing and community development planning. It was
an attempt to break down the barriers between four block grant
programs totalling over $6 billion annually to allow communities
more flexibility in applying different programs in an integrated
way to solve local problems. CPD folded 12 different planning,
application, and reporting requirements of these four programs
into one planning and reporting system, enabling the communities
to address their problems more comprehensively. This approach
reflects the current "placed-based strategy" applied
to all of HUD.
This approach has been a success. Annually, every State and
entitlement community submits an action plan showing how they
are going to spend current fiscal year funds received by formula
to carry out the goals laid out in the strategic plan. Some 1,000
Consolidated Plan summaries have been placed on the Web for all
to see. Strategies Planning and executing housing and community development initiatives that are community-driven
Local communities know best how to implement programs. While
maintaining a needed focus on meeting national objectives established
by Congress, Government must empower citizens and communities
to plan how their taxpayer dollars are to be spent. A new emphasis
on citizen participation and bottom-up planning and program design
drives HUD's internal organization and its relationship to its
grantees. Field Offices will continue to be given significantly
increased authority to waive requirements, develop integrated
customer service plans, including technical assistance, geared
toward meeting specific local needs, and implement priorities
in a manner that addresses the unique circumstances of the areas
they deal with on a daily basis.
Coordinating comprehensive, sustainable solutions to urban
problems
Solving community needs requires a holistic, comprehensive strategy
that links economic, human, physical, environmental and other
concerns. While separate program requirements may address individual
elements, neighborhoods in fact operate as systems. The most
effective solutions are those that reflect a comprehensive, coordinated
approach. The plethora of programs and regulations HUD traditionally
administered actually undercut communities' ability to implement
comprehensive solutions. Traditionally, as new urban problems
emerged, separate categorical programs to address them would be
funded. As a result, communities were required to focus on specific
symptoms of larger problems and were prevented from addressing
the underlying causes.
HUD's proposed public housing reforms will allow housing authorities
to take a more comprehensive approach to managing their assets
and programs. Housing Authorities will be able to plan and manage
stock in a manner consistent with sound real estate management
practices rather than simply managing to outdated regulations.
In addition, Housing Authorities will be required to certify
that their stock management strategies are consistent with the
local Consolidated Plan, thereby tying their activities to urgent
community needs. These reform measures include: flexible use of
capital and operating funds, use of mixed-finance development,
the conversion of competitive grants to formula allocations that
will allow Housing Authorities to plan their use strategically,
and allowing Housing Authorities to retain operating and capital
funds for the replacement of obsolete housing.
HUD will also promote urban development that is friendly to the
environment. HUD is committed to demonstrating that economic
growth and environmental quality are complementary. Some examples:
sustainable development will again be one of the key selection
criteria for the Empowerment Zones and Enterprise Communities;
and Homeownership Zones will adopt pedestrian friendly design
standards that will contribute to improved air quality in urban
areas.
Streamlining housing and community development programs to make them more efficient and effective
Streamlining and simplifying programs are essential steps to
making them much more comprehensible and approachable, eliminating
burdensome requirements, stripping away superfluous procedures
and focusing on what works. Previous efforts to implement detailed
program requirements were accompanied by overly restrictive program
submissions and produced a dysfunctional system in which regulations
and process triumphed over performance and product. Through the
Consolidated Planning Process and other strategies, HUD will continue
its efforts to move both HUD and community development in general
into the 21st century.
Other programmatic reforms will improve the performance of HUD
programs. The development of flexible capital and operating funds
and expansion of mixed financed development mechanisms will allow
Housing Authorities to manage assets strategically. The merger
of the Section 8 certificate and voucher programs and implementation
of streamlining measures will make tenant based assistance easier
for HUD, Housing Authorities and private landlords to administer.
HUD has begun to administer the "NAHASDA" Block Grant,
which provides Tribally-Designated Housing Entities with flexible
funding.
Increasing access by and communication between citizens and Government at all levels
An essential element of community empowerment is access to information
and improved communication with Government. We must maintain
open lines of communication not just among Government and citizens,
but also among different levels of Government and within the Department
as well. Government must learn how to talk with local communities;
it must reach out and involve local residents. HUD will take
advantage of new technologies, moving its programs and the communities
they serve onto the information highway.
Through this technology, HUD is able to ensure that every citizen
has information on Consolidated Plans for their community. Summaries
of Consolidated Plans are being placed on the Web, with some 1,000
placed on the Web to date. This includes maps of proposed projects
in relation to social and economic conditions in the community.
The HUD Website will continue to provide citizens and communities
with information about the total range of HUD programs and issues
facing urban America.
Analysis of Impediments to Fair Housing
The Department has moved in the direction of empowering communities
to chart their own course in resolving local problems. It began
by allowing communities to define impediments to housing opportunities
in the community and develop a strategy and program to eliminate
these impediments. Fair Housing Planning's Analysis of Impediments is the vehicle that empowers the communities to define their local fair housing problems and develop a program to eliminate these impediments. This effort enables the community to develop a holistic approach and gives it the responsibility and authority to decide the nature and extent of fair housing problems and design a program that assures accessibility and housing opportunities to all of its citizens.
Through its fair housing and other grant programs, the Department
will support locallydriven efforts to address tensions which
arise in their communities when persons seek to expand their housing
choice. Such tensions may arise when communities implement court
settlements designed to eliminate racial segregation in public
housing, take steps to reduce the isolation of low income groups
within a community or geographical area, or provide new group
homes for persons with disabilities. Rather than dictating solutions
to such problems, the Department will empower communities to implement
their own strategies, to coordinate these strategies with their
Consolidated Plan and community development programs, and to build
upon collaborative grassroots efforts among local governmental
agencies, fair housing organizations, and other community groups.
FHEO will work closely with EPA and other HUD Program Offices
to assure that residents of its housing programs are not unduly
impacted by negative environmental conditions, (i.e., toxic waste,
superfund sites).
The Department views this effort as an integral part of meeting
our urban problems, as it is part of a comprehensive and coordinated
approach to meeting the needs of all local residents. Linkage to HUD 2020: Management Reform Plan
In order to assist the communities with the issues facing them,
without increasing the levels of bureaucracy that have existed
in the past, HUD will undertake several measures including:
External Factors
The Grants Management Process is performance-based and provides
front-end and ongoing consultations, reviews, assessments, monitoring
and technical assistance, including the use of best practices.
Without legislative change, HUD cannot mandate the type of performance
measures established by grantees. Ranking may be used to measure
the success of communities in resolving problems identified via
their Consolidated Planning Process, which reflects the relative
success of the program. FHEO and CPD are working with PD&R
to assess data collection and reporting processes required to
start demonstrating (by FY 1999) progress jurisdictions are making.
HUD's ability to empower communities to a large extent hinges
on the resources that poor communities can bring to bear in improving
themselves. A slowdown in the overall economy will result in
unemployment for the vulnerable working poor. A failure to find
jobs for people affected by welfare reform similarly will result
in diminished economic resources in distressed communities.
There are also inherent limitations on HUD's ability to "deliver"
on quantitative goals within block grant programs, which, by their
design, follow a "bottom up" process. Congress set
up the four CPD block grant programs and the competitive homeless
programs to ensure that the Federal Government did not dictate
local policies or priorities. Instead, it set up a "community-based
planning" system to ensure that local plans and priorities
reflected changing community needs and priorities. The Consolidated
Plan regulations and the program statutes upon which they were
based provide limited grounds for rejecting a five year strategic
plan or a one-year action plan. Similarly, the Notices of Funding
Availability for the homeless competitive program ask communities
to identify community homeless needs and priorities with maximum
participation by homeless providers and other groups.
This means, quite simply, HUD cannot set up and deliver realistic
numerical goals on "outputs" for any one given year
for construction of housing, jobs, etc. Further, although HUD
does have authority to sanction a community for failure to implement
its program in a timely manner, we do not have any sanctions for
the failure of a community to carry out HUD's current priorities.
What we can do is highlight priority areas of the Department
and encourage lagging communities to improve their performance
in those priority areas. In addition, factors such as poverty and individual challenges exacerbate problems that cause people and families to be without homes. Coordination and collaboration of housing and supportive services are crucial to breaking the cycle of homelessness. For some homeless persons, such as the handicapped, the attainable goal is self-sufficiency to the extent possible, rather than complete self-sufficiency.
Annual Performance Goals
Through the Consolidated Planning Process, grantees identify milestones for achievement within the applicable fiscal year. Within the confines of legislative mandates (see External Factors above), HUD will coordinate comprehensive, sustainable solutions to urban problems. Our annual goals are designed to help the communities to use viable milestones with timetables in their Consolidated/Action Plans and demonstrate progress in improving locally defined conditions.
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Content Archived: November 29, 2011 | ||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
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