For America’s cities and regions, this seems the worst of times. But take a look at their partnership with the federal government. It’s a rapid turn for the better.
Check virtually any local budget and the dark side slams you in the face. Tax receipts are taking a deep dive while cities’ needs, from sheltering the homeless to employees’ health coverage to rising pension costs, are on the upswing. With slow recovery in jobs and property values, mayors and county officials will have a torturously tough job well into this decade.
But check the Obama administration’s fiscal 2011 budget, together with companion moves the White House is making to coordinate federal assistance to cities and metro regions. There’s a silver lining to these “worst” times.
One example: The budget asks Congress to approve $1 billion for the new National Housing Trust Fund — a key way for communities to fill the yawning shortage of affordable housing for their lowest-income residents.
Plus, the administration is asking for an extra $85 million to finance 10,000 added housing vouchers. In a break from many recent years, it has requested 100 percent of the actual operating costs for public housing. A consolidated $350 million rental housing initiative would, it is claimed, preserve 300,000 otherwise threatened assisted housing units. Community Development Block Grants would be funded at close to $4 billion. And the administration is asking Congress to make permanent its Build America bonds program, designed to cut cities’ costs for infrastructure projects.
Compared to the cities-come-last budget decisions of the George W. Bush years, the contrast is vivid. But there are decisive innovations in the Obama urban approach.
First, there is the Obama crew’s steps to work around the “silos” of separate federal departments to make aid revenue streams for communities work in mutually reinforcing ways.
The radical idea of closely collaborating agencies emerged last June with an unprecedented agreement by the Department of Housing and Urban Development and the Department of Transportation, plus the Environmental Protection Agency. Their “Partnership for Sustainable Communities” aims to embrace better quality and energy-efficient housing, access to adequate public transit, good jobs, quality schools, safe streets and environmental protections — regardless of which department is technically responsible.
The goal is to have the federal government “speak with one voice” in its field operations.
The partner agencies are now moving forward on this agenda. HUD, for example, has a new Office of Sustainable Housing and Communities, guided by Deputy Secretary Ron Sims, who learned the ropes of metro-area coordination as King County, Wash., executive, and directed by Shelley Poticha, former president of the policy group Reconnecting America.
Add in President Obama’s pitch for $1.8 billion worth of speeded-up federally supported “New Starts” for local transit lines, plus over $10 billion for high-speed rail that would invigorate many metro areas’ economies, plus the Transportation Department’s $1.5 billion “TIGER” grants for innovative local projects, and one sees a belated but crucial 21st century city- and neighborhood- building policy coming into focus.
It even reaches the Agriculture and Health and Human Services Departments — Obama seeks $400 million to fight the twin scourges of obesity and joblessness in poor communities through a Healthy Food Financing Initiative. Fresh, more nutritious foods would be delivered to inner-city “food deserts” by helping new farmers markets take root and constructing new supermarkets.
This administration seems to truly believe that investing smartly in troubled neighborhoods can dramatically increase life prospects.
The danger now is that it could all wither in recriminations over taxes, deficits or a Tea Party-style political backlash.
