The Choice Neighborhoods Initiative, a signature program in the Obama Administration’s Neighborhood Revitalization Initiative, aims to transform neighborhoods with distressed public or assisted housing and extreme poverty into healthy, mixed-income communities with quality affordable housing, effective supportive services, high-performing schools, reduced violent crime rates, transportation options, and access to jobs. To achieve these goals, Choice grantees focus simultaneously on renovating or redeveloping a housing development, investing in community infrastructure, and providing quality supportive services to residents. This presentation will incorporate early findings from the first two years of Choice by the first five implementation grantees in Boston (Quincy Corridor), Chicago (Woodlawn), New Orleans (Iberville/Tremé), San Francisco (Eastern Bayview), and Seattle (Yesler).  The Urban Institute and MDRC conducted a process study of early implementation and collected qualitative and quantitative data to observe progress and establish baseline conditions for the housing, residents, and neighborhoods.

The U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development’s (HUD) experience with HOPE VI suggested that revitalization of distressed housing developments alone was not enough to transform the neighborhoods in which they were located. Choice attempts to provide a comprehensive vision and set of goals for neighborhood transformation. Grantees are expected to address housing, people, and neighborhood needs and improve education opportunities and public safety. HUD’s expectation was not that the five-year grants themselves (of $20-$30 million) would transform neighborhoods but that grantees would coordinate with needed partners, leverage other public and private resources, and spur needed systems change to transform these communities. To understand these dynamics and baseline conditions, Urban Institute and MDRC conducted document review, numerous interviews with key stakeholders, resident focus groups, a survey of physical block conditions, and a household survey of residents of the target development and broader neighborhood. Additionally, the research team employed researchers who were located near each site and immersed in the local context to make regular contact with grantees and observe working and public Choice meetings.

This presentation will describe the progress that the grantees have been able to make towards the ambitious goal of comprehensiveness and how well grantees are able to manage priorities across domains. Our study looks at several factors including: city and neighborhood context; the types of organizations and institutions that serve as lead grantees; the grantees’ prior experiences; the level of municipal political leadership to support coordination, leverage and systems change efforts; and the presence of other comprehensive neighborhood revitalization efforts