THE PROCESS

The Choice Neighborhoods Initiative(CNI) seeks to improve neighborhoods through efforts aimed at revitalizing, improving, and investing in a specific community. Experience shows that the most productive approach to achieving this goal is through a process of key community engagement where all present can work together in a cooperative environment.

Therefore, the success of our plan-making is tied to a program of community meetings where all participants know the purpose of each meeting and agree that specific outcomes, products, and approvals must result.  This makes the process efficient and respects the time committed by community stakeholders.

With the help of the community, the final plan will be completed in September 2025.

*All meeting dates and locations will be posted on the Events page

**All meetings will be open to the public!

THE PROGRAM

The Choice Neighborhoods program leverages significant public and private dollars to support locally driven strategies that address struggling neighborhoods with distressed public or HUD-assisted housing through a comprehensive approach to neighborhood transformation. Local leaders, residents, and stakeholders, such as public housing authorities, cities, schools, police, business owners, nonprofits, and private developers, come together to create and implement a plan that revitalizes distressed HUD housing and addresses the challenges in the surrounding neighborhood. The program helps communities transform neighborhoods by revitalizing severely distressed public and/or assisted housing and catalyzing critical improvements in the neighborhood, including vacant property, housing, businesses, services and schools. Choice Neighborhoods is focused on three core goals:

  1. Housing: Replace distressed public and assisted housing with high-quality mixed-income housing that is well-managed and responsive to the needs of the surrounding neighborhood;

  2. People: Improve outcomes of households living in the target housing related to employment and income, health, and children’s education; and

  3. Neighborhood: Create the conditions necessary for public and private reinvestment in distressed neighborhoods to offer the kinds of amenities and assets, including safety, good schools, and commercial activity, that are important to families’ choices about their community.

To achieve these core goals, communities must develop and implement a comprehensive neighborhood revitalization strategy, or Transformation Plan. The Transformation Plan will become the guiding document for the revitalization of the public and/or assisted housing units while simultaneously directing the transformation of the surrounding neighborhood and positive outcomes for families.