DEPARTMENT: Department of Planning and Community Development (DPCD)
DEPARTMENT HEAD: John Dugan
COUNCIL DISTRICTS IMPACTED: Council Districts 2 & 3
SUBJECT:
Promise Zone Designation
SUMMARY:
The Promise Zone initiative will revitalize high-poverty communities in the city by attracting private investment, improving affordable housing, improving educational opportunities, creating jobs, reducing serious and violent crime, and assisting local leaders in navigating federal programs. Promise Zone offers children the safe, healthy environment they need to succeed, residents with quality choices of where to live and incentivize private stakeholders to invest within Promise Zone.
BACKGROUND INFORMATION:
Building on previous efforts that provided proven tools to combat poverty in partnership with private business and federal, state, and local officials; faith-based and non-profit organizations, in his 2013 State of the Union Address, the President laid out an initiative to designate a number of high-poverty communities as Promise Zones, where the federal government will partner with and invest in communities to create jobs, leverage private investment, increase economic activity, expand educational opportunities, and improve public safety.
Communities will compete in a transparent process, and be required to demonstrate the strength and effectiveness of their local commitment, to become Promise Zones. Each designated Promise Zone will be asked to identify a set of outcomes they will pursue to revitalize their communities, develop a strategy supporting those outcomes, and realign resources accordingly. For communities selected, the federal government will partner to help the Promise Zones access the resources and expertise they need.
The Obama Administration will designate 20 communities over the next four years - including up to five this year - with an intensive and layered approach to revitalizing communities.
This approach incl...
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