Harvard University’s Ash Center for Democratic Governance and Innovation has included several housing initiatives in honoring 25 innovative government-related programs.
They range from an effort to keep people out of homelessness in New York to the development of homeownership units in one of the poorest parts of America, the Pine Ridge reservation of the Oglala Lakota in South Dakota. The center has singled out the Homebase Program of New York for helping people in imminent danger of homelessness. The program crunches data from the city’s shelter system to help identify such people and prevent homelessness and is based on an earlier data collection used to deter crime.
The center has also named the Neighborhood Revitalization Initiative of the Department of Housing and Urban Development, a program that leverages several federal departments “to revitalize the nation’s most distressed neighborhoods.” The effort targets not just housing but also crime, failing schools and health disparities.
New York’s Office of Financial Empowerment has also been recognized. It is helping low-income people by increasing access to financial education and counseling and connecting households to affordable bank products. The EPA’s Re-Powering America’s Land Initiative is an attempt to build infrastructure to rescue degraded land.
According to the center, HUD’s Sustainable Communities Initiative is targeting 142 communities in an attempt to link jobs with transportation and housing. HUD is partnering with the Department of Transportation and the Environmental Protection Agency on this effort.
HUD’s Office of Native American Programs noted that one community that will benefit is the Oglala Lakota. It said the Oglala Lakota nation “is leveraging a Regional Planning Grant to catalyze an economic transformation of their community while holding true to their cultural values.”
The end goal is a 34-acre development designed to promote homeownership among tribal members. Also, the Thunder Valley CDC on the reservation will enhance programs for healthy food, active living, mental health and spiritual health.
The Ash Center named a total of 25 government programs as semi-finalists for awards which will be given later this year. Four finalists and the Innovation in American Government Award winner will be named in the fall.
