Mayor Edwin M. Lee today joined the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development (HUD) to announce two planning grants for the Choice Neighborhood Initiative (CNI) for the City’s HOPE SF public housing transformation projects: $300,000 for Potrero Annex/Terrace in the Potrero community and $300,000 for Sunnydale in the Visitacion Valley community. The CNI planning grant funding will allow each team to build upon their existing community engagement and planning work to craft comprehensive, community-driven plans to transform these public housing developments into thriving mixed-income neighborhoods.

“San Francisco made a bold step by launching HOPE SF and I thank HUD for supporting us in this journey to transform our City’s most distressed public housing sites into thriving communities,” said Mayor Lee. “These grants will allow us to create the type of transformation plans for Sunnydale and Potrero that are good for residents and good for our City. The future is bright for the transformation of public housing in San Francisco, and we will continue to work with all of our partners to make sure these projects move forward.”

“While many of these grantees have already collaborated to get to this stage, this funding enables them to take their initial discussions further to plan out strategies to build stronger, more sustainable communities that will address distressed housing, failing schools, rampant crime, and all that plagues the nation’s poor neighborhoods,” said HUD Secretary Shaun Donovan. “HUD’s Choice Neighborhoods Initiative represents the next generation in a movement toward revitalizing entire neighborhoods to improve the lives of the residents who live there.”

HUD’s Choice Neighborhoods Initiative promotes a comprehensive approach to transforming distressed areas of concentrated poverty into viable and sustainable mixed-income neighborhoods. Building on the successes of HUD’s HOPE VI Program, Choice Neighborhoods links housing improvements with necessary services for the people who live there – including schools, public transit and employment opportunities.

HOPE SF is the City’s innovative initiative to revitalize the City’s most distressed public housing sites into mixed-income communities without displacing existing residents and while providing residents with services that will allow them to thrive in the transformed communities. San Francisco in 2011 also received a $30.5 million CNI implementation grant for the Alice Griffith/Eastern Bayview HOPE SF redevelopment.

As a part of the City’s HOPE SF Initiative, over the last few years, both the Sunnydale and Potrero teams have been working with residents, community members, businesses, community-based organizations and other stakeholders to develop a neighborhood transformation plan that includes revitalized housing, quality services and a plan for improving the surrounding neighborhood. This award complements this process by delivering critical funding to craft a comprehensive community plan that will be well positioned well for federal funding that could complement the other public and private financial resources necessary to implement these projects.

The Sunnydale and Potrero HOPE SF transformation projects seek to transform 785 and 606 existing public housing units respectively, into thriving, mixed income communities. The Sunnydale transformation project is led by Mercy Housing and the Related Group. Bridge Housing is leading the Potrero transformation project.

“Sunnydale and Potrero have unique challenges – that is why is it is particularly exciting to celebrate our commitment to putting our money where our mouths are,” said District 10 Supervisor Malia Cohen. “I am committed to improvements for Sunnydale and Potrero – I will continue to work toward safer streets, more resources, stronger commercial corridors and opportunities for education and employment for the residents. Thank you HUD for believing in our City’s comprehensive approach to improve public housing, support our residents and invigorate our neighborhoods.”