America’s cities, suburbs and rural communities are most competitive when they are planned not as individual communities but as metropolitan regions, according to Department of Housing and Urban Development Secretary Shaun Donovan. 

This is why the Obama Administration’s fiscal 2013 budget asks Congress to resume funding for Sustainable Communities grants.

The requested $100 million is for grants to support the goals of the interagency Partnership for Sustainable Communities with the Environmental Protection Agency and the Department of Transportation. 

Donovan said the grants are helping metropolitan and rural communities undertake a new wave of transportation zoning, building code, and land use reform, and aligning housing and transportation investments, so that they can be responsive to the needs of regional economies.

“This is particularly critical at a time when the average household is paying 52 cents of every dollar it earns on housing and transportation and when congestion on our roads is costing us five times as much wasted fuel and time as it did 25 years ago,” he stated.

[For info on the transportation portion of the federal budget, click here]

HUD’s proposed Budget for FY 2013 makes an essential contribution to the Administration’s broader effort to speed economic growth and provide a level playing field and real opportunity for all Americans. At the proposed funding level of $44.8 billion, $1.4 billion—or 3.2 percent over FY 2012—this Budget will create or support hundreds of thousands of direct and indirect jobs.

HUD is requesting $150 million for the Choice Neighborhoods program. This appropriation would provide competitive Implementation Grants in the range of $30-$40 million to transform 4-6 neighborhoods. In addition, up to 10 percent of the funding request will be available to local partnerships for Planning Grants to initiate a comprehensive neighborhood planning process centered around distressed assisted and/or public housing.

Speaking of the Sustainable Communities grants, Donovan said previous grants are making an impact. In Austin, Texas, a $3.7 million Regional Planning grant provided in FY 2010 is helping link its long-term regional transportation plan to 37 mixed-income communities near transit and job centers. This grant will help 3,000 small, family-run businesses expand or open a second location. Provided that each of these businesses hires at least one new worker who has been unemployed for a year or more, this work is expected to create more than 7,000 permanent jobs and save the taxpayer $1.25 billion.