Top federal urban programs face the ax
Smart Growth America alerted its members today that funding for the federal Partnership for Sustainable Communities is in imminent danger of being discontinued.
"Last week, the U.S. House of Representatives voted to strip funding for the federal Partnership for Sustainable Communities," the advocacy group said in a news release. "The Senate's vote on funding for the Partnership is scheduled to take place tomorrow [Tuesday, Sept. 20], and NOW is the crucial time to ask your Senators to preserve funding for the Partnership," Smart Growth America said in its e-mailed announcement.
Launched in 2009, the Partnership is regarded by smart growth and New Urbanism advocates as one of the best federal urban initiatives in years. It has resulted in unprecedented collaboration among three different parts of the government: the US Department of Housing & Urban Development, the Department of Transportation, and the Environmental Protection Agency.
Through the Partership, the government has been able to forge a much more cooperative relationship among agencies that otherwise tend to pursue their own narrower agendas. New Urban Network reported Sept. 2 on the first five projects to receive Choice Neighborhood Implementation Grants. The $122 million in grants are aimed at making far-reaching improvements in five troubled neighborhoods in Chicago, Boston, New Orleans, San Francisco, and Seattle.
"When cities, towns and suburbs plan their future transportation, housing, water and sewer infrastructure and public services strategically, they save money and so does the federal government," Smart Growth America said. The organization cited two examples of the Partnership's importance at the regional level:
• Envision Utah received $1 million of its $8 million budget from two of the three Partnership agencies (the Environmental Protection Agency and the Federal Highway Administration). Once implemented, the plans developed by Envision Utah will save Utah and the Salt Lake City region $4.5 billion in infrastructure, much of it usually paid for by the federal government.
• The Region Five Development Commission in central Minnesota includes five rural counties and a series of small towns looking to save money and create jobs. The region is struggling with population shifts, family farms disappearing, pressure on natural resources and economic distress. Working across local agencies and jurisdictions, the communities are developing a strategic plan for housing and employment, business retention and attraction, and conservation of natural resources through eco-tourism. This effort will save money across the jurisdictions and leverage each step for future economic growth.
The purpose of the Partnership goes beyond simply saving money, however. Another important goal is to get various federal agencies to embrace a more unified approach to urban and regional issues—escaping the usual single-purpose orientation.
There has been little mainstream press coverage of the decisions now being made in Congress on how much money to give to such initiatives.
A Connecticut advocacy group whose name, the Partnership for Strong Communities, is slightly different from that of the federal initiative, reported Sept. 13:
The House Transportation, Housing and Urban Development, and Related Agencies (T-HUD) Appropriations Subcommittee voted on September 8 to deeply cut the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development’s (HUD) Fiscal Year 2012 budget, including cuts to many affordable housing and homelessness prevention programs.
Significantly, the bill eliminates funding for the HOPE VI program, including the Choice Neighborhoods Initiative, and proposes deep cuts for public housing programs, according to the National Low Income Housing Coalition (NLIHC).
The Connecticut group identified the following cuts as having been among those approved by the House subcommittee:
- The Public Housing Capital fund is set at $1.53 billion, 25 percent below the FY (fiscal year) 2011 level.
- The Public Housing Operating Fund is set at $3.86 billion, 16 percent below the FY 2011.
- Funding for the HOPE IV program, including the Choice Neighborhoods Initiative (a set-aside within HOPE VI), is eliminated.
- Tenant Protection Vouchers are funded at $75 million, $35 million below the FY 2011 funding level.
- The HOME Investment Partnership program’s funding is set at $1.2 billion, 25 percent below the FY2011 level.
- The Fair Housing and Equal Opportunity program, funded at $50 million, a 30 percent cut.
The subcommittee increased funding for some other programs. Section 8 Project-Based Rental Assistance, for example, is funded at $9.4 billion, a 2 percent increase.
For more in-depth coverage on this topic:
• Subscribe to New Urban News to read all of the articles (print+online) on implementation of greener, stronger, cities and towns.
• See the September 2011 issue of New Urban News. Topics: Walk Score, sprawl retrofit, livability grants, Katrina Cottages, how to get a transit village built, parking garages, the shrinking Wal-Mart, Complete Streets legislation, an urban capital fund, and much more.
• Get New Urbanism: Best Practices Guide, packed with more than 800 informative photos, plans, tables, and other illustrations, this book is the best single guide to implementing better cities and towns.
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Comments
So sad! You have so many good
So sad! You have so many good initiatives in America that need support from the governments. Like the Piscataquis Village Project in Maine.
This is part of reducing the deficit...
This is pretty predictable if you've been following the statemets of very conservative groups for the last 3 years.
When people clamor to "close the loopholes" they are talking about removing tax incentives that help people and corporations lower their tax liabilities. Housing tax credits are a big tax incentive, therefore "loophole". Likewise will follow tax incentives for conservation easements, and more.
On the other hand, if we are going to lower the national debt, what do YOU suggest as the place to cut? These are difficult choices and we can't continue to have it all.
Deficit Question
Jeff,
Your capitalization of the word "YOU" in your question seems to be more of a pointed challenge...so I'll accept it. A tax credit program (LIHTC, NHTC, etc.) that leverages money - otherwise destined for the Federal treasury - for the benefit of community improvements that would otherwise go unfunded is not a loophole. Actual good is accomplished by it's diversion.
There are plenty of real loopholes in the tax lawyer's bag of tricks (not to mention undeserved, direct subsidies) that do nothing for society except keep big oil and the like from paying the full cost of doing business and allows them to plod along in a dying, dinosaur industry that is: A) No longer cost effective (Cost/Energy input does not warrant Value/Energy output)B) Bleeds investment away from the new technologies that will be necessary to establish future energy systems before the energy dense petroleum resources required to build them are extinguished or too expensive to matter.C) Wrecking the communities they do business in with impunity...especially unconventional plays like hydro-fracking & tar sands.You wanted suggestions on how WE would cut the budget? Get out of the military entanglements that are running us broke. With the money pissed down a rat-hole in the Middle East each year we could fund the entire national rail build-out (jobs, compact development incentives, real infrastructure ROI, etc.), provide reasonable national-health care to all and probably solve whatever bogus claims of Social Security shortfalls we are constantly bombarded with.
I know none of this is relevant or realistic because our elected officials don't work for us. They work for the corporate suits that pay for their campaigns. I will not be holding my breath expecting to see any of these suggestions manifested in reality.
The window is closing on our ability to salvage this country's future. Every story like this one is further proof of our cluelessness and that we deserve what we get.
DRL
Re: This is part of reducing the deficit
Good question, Jeff. The livability programs are a drop in the bucket and mostly represent a shift in priority, not actual spending increases. All of the livability programs together — TIGER capital grants, sustainable communities regional planning grants, community challenge planning grants, etc. — are now at less than a billion dollars a year, by my calculation. This program is beginning to set a new course for transportation and land use in the US that will contribute to better transportation, environment, health, national security (less oil dependence), stronger cities and towns, and a better economy.
By comparison many single interchange projects on US interstates cost hundreds of millons of dollars for little measurable effect on transportation, let alone the other things I mentioned. A $400 million project in Binghamton, NY, is upgrading an interchange that I have driven at least 200 times over 15 years while never experiencing a single delay, let alone problem.
I do think for big deficit reduction numbers they will have to pass a tax increase, military reductions, and entitlement reductions. They will no doubt have to reduce other programs, but eliminating the livability programs while continuing to spend tens of billions on dubious highway projects would raise foolishness to a higher level, and that's saying something. The nation needs to increase these programs, not eliminate them.
Defecit
A huge part of the problem is the shift of wealth that occurs to the Feds per taxes when the States and local governments should be receiving the funds.You say "they do receive the funds"...yea the states and locals receive the funds after they have trickled down from the Federal level , after the funds have passed through all these bureacratic hands who do nothing but handle the money or attach conditions to it, review applications for it etc. By the time $100 of tax revenue makes it back to the locals to say,,,build a sidewalk they get about $20. The Feds have spent the rest on administration. If the money went directly to locals from taxpayers the locals would get $90 to actually spend on sidewalk. If the funds went to the States and then to the locals the amount for sidewalk would average $55 to $75 dollars. Taxes should be spent where they are raised.Way too many administrators on the Federal level