St. Louis NNIP partner part of winning team for Choice Neighborhoods Initiative Planning Grant

Rise, formerly the Regional Housing and Community Development Alliance and the NNIP partner in St. Louis, is part of a team that was awarded a Choice Neighborhood Initiative planning grant.  The Lead Grantee is the St. Louis County Department of Planning and the Initiative will focus on the Wellston Public Housing and the North Wellston Neighborhood (a suburb of St. Louis).

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– including schools, public transit and employment opportunities-- for the people who live there .

The St. Louis team, including Rise, were selected from among 52 applicants.

The St. Louis County Department of Planning and co-grantee Wellston Housing Authority will work closely with Rise and other team partners to execute a robust neighborhood planning process. The team will engage the community through a neighborhood advisory group, public workshops, focused work sessions, one-on-one interviews, and a needs assessment. They will also collect neighborhood, housing, and services data, conduct market analysis, develop a reporting and data management system, identify best practices, and lead residents and stakeholders through the process of creating a collective vision and actionable strategies. The result of their work will be a plan to make North Wellston a sustainable, mixed-income, healthy, and safe neighborhood where residents are actively engaged and where families choose to live.