HOPE VI

The goals of HOPE VI are to:

• Improve public housing by replacing severely distressed public housing projects such as high-rises and barracks-style apartments, with townhouses or garden-style apartments that blend aesthetically into the surrounding community.
• Reduce concentrations of poverty by encouraging working families to move into housing that is part of revitalized communities.
• Provide support services, such as education and training programs, child-care services, transportation, and counseling to help public housing residents get and keep jobs.
• Establish and enforce high standards of personal and community responsibility through explicit lease requirements.
• Forge partnerships that involve public housing residents, state and local government officials, the private sector, non-profit groups and the community-at-large in planning and implementing new communities.

New Brunswick’s four-phase, $45 million HOPE VI Revitalization Program has replaced 246 units of high-rise housing with 192 mixed-income, townhouse and low-rise units. This historic revitalization effort began in June 1998 with the New Brunswick Housing Authority’s (NBHA) submission of application for funding, which resulted in a $7.5 million HOPE VI grant from the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development (HUD) later the same year.

Since the beginning of the redevelopment effort, NBHA and The Community Builders (TCB) have worked closely with resident representatives, the City of New Brunswick, New Brunswick Tomorrow, and other local agencies and stakeholders to create a plan for a strong community in which people of all incomes can achieve their full potential. One of the first official steps taken by the Housing Authority was to form a HOPE VI Steering Committee, that worked to oversee the general programs and the implementation on the grant. The Housing Authority also formed a Community Task Force, which worked with the Authority to create and implement a Community Support Service Program. To this end, NBHA has held over 300 meetings with resident participation and will continue to hold such meetings throughout the implementation of this grant. Along with the construction of high-quality affordable housing, the HOPE VI revitalization effort includes an extensive resident services and community building component geared toward helping families achieve economic self-sufficiency. NBHA and TCB continue their commitment to providing residents with access to the tools they need to succeed in a flourishing, mixed-income community.

New Brunswick Homes, built in 1958, included 246 public housing units in four apartment towers. The towers were demolished in August 2001 to clear the site for Riverside Complex, the second phase of New Brunswick’s HOPE VI Revitalization Program.

Since that time, the Housing Authority, with the help of The Community Builders, Inc. who became involved as Developer for the program in early 1998, as well as the City of New Brunswick, and many other partners, has leveraged over $37 million of private and other public funds to complete this revitalization program. The program has also provided 120 additional affordable housing opportunities to residents through to Section 8 Housing Voucher Program, and has also moved 24 fromer New Bruswock Homes residents in homeownership.