From the Federal Reserve’s Community Development website:
The City of Richmond, Virginia’s Neighborhoods in Bloom (NiB) initiative invested federal grant funding in seven target neighborhoods from 1999 to 2004. The majority of the city’s federal Community Development Block Grant (CDBG) and HOME Investment Partnerships Program (HOME) funding, as well as, significant amounts of capital improvement funds and other resources were spent in the strategically selected target neighborhoods. Through NiB, the city planned to concentrate public resources in these neighborhoods until they achieved the critical mass of public investment needed to stimulate self-sustaining, private-market activity.
Oregon Hill was one of the seven target neighborhoods. Click here for the part particular to Oregon Hill.
From this article,
http://www.goerie.com/news/20171210/erie-refocuseds-lessons-at-play-in-other-cities
Richmond: Neighborhoods in Bloom
Erie Refocused recommends the development of historic preservation strategies and targeted community investment.
Virginia’s capital city, incorporated in 1742, takes pride in its many historic neighborhoods.
That was a key reason the city, in 1999, launched its Neighborhoods in Bloom program, which also marked a departure in the way the city handles urban reinvestment.
The city targeted seven specific neighborhoods with historical significance for improvements, using $6 million to $7 million each year in Community Development Block Grant and Home Investment Partnership dollars the city receives from the federal Department of Housing and Urban Development.
The city typically received $7 million to $9 million in such funds each year, so Richmond used nearly 80 percent of its annual federal housing money on the program.
Each of the neighborhoods was located near central business districts, and each was plagued by crime, poverty and blight.
In the past, Richmond used those dollars throughout the city for a variety of projects. Erie and many other cities nationwide still do.
That longtime practice, though, “had resulted in a scattered investment effect that did not reach the critical funding mass necessary to stimulate private investment activity,” according to a 2017 Federal Reserve Bank of Richmond report on the Neighborhoods in Bloom program.
“The City used a data-driven, participatory process to identify the target neighborhoods,” the report states, an approach that eventually “directly influenced additional private and for-profit investors.”
The public funding helped pay for improvements that included the renovation of more than 100 vacant homes. HUD officials reported that between 2000 and 2005, roughly 400 new and renovated houses in the targeted neighborhoods were sold.
The initiative also involved increased police patrols and aggressive code enforcement. As a result, property values throughout the targeted neighborhoods increased by as much as 63 percent, and crime decreased by 19 percent, according to Richmond officials.
Erie City Councilman David Brennan, who reviewed the Neighborhoods in Bloom program, said he likes Richmond’s approach. Brennan has also pushed for new local historic preservation strategies, another thing that Erie Refocused advocates.
“In lieu of spreading out our limited tax dollars, grants, and other funding throughout the city, the Erie Refocused guide says we should strategically target our limited funds in specified areas and neighborhoods to achieve the highest impact,” Brennan said. “The Neighborhoods in Bloom program has been proven to be successful and is supported by data.”
Charles Pool offers some corrections to the Oregon Hill portion: First of all the map is incorrect: the Oregon Hill neighborhood and historic district extends to West Cary Street to the north, and it does not stop at the expressway as shown in the article’s map. The office of the Oregon Hill Home Improvement Council (OHHIC), which was responsible for the Neighborhoods in Bloom projects in Oregon Hill, is located at 619 W. Cary Street north of the expressway. Some of the projects, such as the renovation of 117 S. Laurel Street — in part made possible by Neighborhoods in Bloom funding — were located north of the expressway. A corrected map showing the project area and Oregon Hill neighborhood extending to Cary Street is important.
The article included the inaccurate information that the Richmond Redevelopment Housing Authority (RRHA) operated in Oregon Hill during the Neighborhoods in Bloom program. I am not aware that RRHA operated in Oregon Hill, and in fact, the Oregon Hill neighborhood specifically rejected the involvement of RRHA. which was responsible for the demolition of much of the original neighboring Randolph neighborhood.
OHHIC, with important help from Neighborhoods in Bloom funding, successfully completed close to 50 renovation and new construction projects in Oregon Hill so it is unfortunate that the article did not choose one of the many successes for illustration of the Neighborhoods in Bloom program in Oregon Hill. Instead one photograph shows the Overlook Condominiums on the 700 block of Pine and Laurel. OHHIC and the Neighborhoods in Bloom had no participation with the Overlook Condos.
Your article stated that, “[T]he City did not define a target or impact area in the neighborhood. Instead, the City directed resources to the neighborhood as a whole.” This statement misses the remarkable distinction and unique success of the Neighborhoods in Bloom program in Oregon Hill. OHHIC, which is a neighborhood membership organization, insisted upon:
1). displacing no one but only purchasing property when they came on the market;
2). increasing the low rate of home ownership in Oregon Hill by selling homes to low income first time home buyers;
3). distributing the renovations and new construction throughout the neighborhood so that there would not be one confined “project area;”
4). placing an historic preservation easement in perpetuity through the Va. Department of Historic Resources on all of the two dozen renovations undertaken by OHHIC in the historic neighborhood while selling to a low income family.
This last distinction of combining affordable housing with historic preservation was truly unique to OHHIC’s program. An example of the success of this program was OHHIC’s renovation of the John Miller House, the only surviving home in Richmond built owned and occupied by free blacks before the Civil War. The Miller House was sold to a low income family and the house has an historic easement and highway marker through the Va. Dept. of Historic Resources.