On November 2-3, 2017, nearly 100 Choice Neighborhoods Implementation Grantee representatives participated in the Choice Neighborhoods: Celebrating Six Years of Revitalizing Communities conference. This conference featured high quality sessions that addressed common challenges and highlighted innovative practices from grantees and national experts. Topics included: neighborhood transformation; public safety; employment; school readiness; Critical Community Improvements; placemaking; housing development; and case management for relocated residents. Choice Neighborhoods grantees and their partners are strongly encouraged to take advantage of these exciting lessons and content by viewing the session videos and materials below.
AGENDA |
View the November 2017 Conference Agenda | |||
WELCOME |
Watch the Choice Neighborhoods Director’s Welcome Message View Neighborhood Transformation Pictures from 2010/2011 – 2013 Grantees |
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SESSION |
Tales of Transformation (a.k.a. How Things Really Get Done) |
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Each Choice Neighborhood has unique stories of hard-won successes. In this panel, representatives from two Choice Neighborhoods share reflections on how they are using specific tactics and strategies to achieve key outcomes. Representatives from Pittsburgh’s Choice Neighborhood describe how their team is successfully revitalizing their community by working with longtime neighborhood residents, improving existing properties, and strategically locating new developments to spark further growth. Representatives from Seattle’s Choice Neighborhood provide an in-depth look at how their team has worked to bolster student proficiency and graduation rates by strengthening collaboration among education partners.
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 Representatives from Pittsburgh and Seattle (left to right) discuss lessons learned during their Choice Neighborhoods Implementation Grants |
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SESSION |
Policing in Neighborhood Revitalization:How to Strengthen Relationships and Problem-Solve with Police |
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Both Choice Neighborhoods communities and police are committed to improving public safety, yet they often have different ways of viewing safety challenges. This session explores how Choice Neighborhoods can strengthen their relationship with police by understanding their perspective and effectively partnering with police to problem-solve. Presenters include a metropolitan-area Police Commander and a public safety expert who has worked extensively with the U.S. Department of Justice’s Innovations in Community Based Crime Reduction (formerly the Byrne Criminal Justice Innovation) grantees.
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 Representatives from LISC Community Safety Initiative and the Denver Police Department (left to right) share their experiences in neighborhood safety efforts. |
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SESSION |
Connecting to Employment: Empowering Residents and Creating Pathways to Self-Sufficiency |
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How can residents who have been disconnected from stable employment successfully reconnect? Hear from a representative from Jobs for the Future and several Choice Neighborhoods partners about innovative approaches they are using to help create pathways to long-term jobs. These comprehensive approaches include tools to address individual life circumstances, emotional barriers, or past experiences that complicate people’s ability to find and keep stable employment, in addition to more traditional workforce readiness tools. Presenters also share strategies for how to form strong links to employers and specific job opportunities.
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 Lucretia Murphy from Jobs for the Future (right) discusses employment strategies with grantee partner panelists from Starforce, Urban Strategies, and EMPath (left to right). |
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SESSION |
Ready for Kindergarten: What It Takes to Ensure Success from the Start |
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Young children’s early experiences and environment have a profound impact on later life outcomes. This panel focuses on what works, including quality early education and family supports, and how Choice Neighborhoods grantees and their partners can play a critical role in fostering a comprehensive approach to school readiness. As part of this conversation, presenters from the National League of Cities highlight their recently released Early Learning Community Action Guide, which outlines practical steps communities can take to create a “school-ready” neighborhood.
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 Panelists from the Department of Education, National League of Cities, and the San Antonio Eastside Promise Neighborhood (left to right) discuss how communities can improve outcomes for very young children and their families. |
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SESSION |
Formulating Effective Critical Community Improvements (CCI) Plans |
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Critical Community Improvements (CCI) can help accelerate neighborhood revitalization and address community priorities. This session sheds light on what makes an effective CCI plan and how HUD reviews grantees’ proposals. Representatives from Norwalk’s Choice Neighborhood discuss how their team developed their CCI plan, why they chose certain CCI activities, and lessons they have learned as they have moved forward with implementation.
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 Choice Neighborhoods Implementation Grantees discuss lessons learned from the Critical Community Improvements session |
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SESSION |
The Power of Placemaking |
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The Sacramento Choice Neighborhood, with technical assistance from the architecture and planning firm MIG, recently developed a placemaking strategy for the largely industrial and physically disconnected River District–Railyards neighborhood. The goal of their placemaking strategy is to build a positive neighborhood identity and improve linkages to existing amenities. This session highlights the principles of placemaking and details the stakeholder engagement and asset mapping that Sacramento used to create a placemaking strategy for the neighborhood. The speakers also share how they coordinated projects already underway and how they translated placemaking ideas into a set of Critical Community Improvements.
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Representatives from MIG and Sacramento answer a participant’s questions on placemaking. |
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SESSION |
Developing Housing Within a Neighborhood Context |
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Each new housing development is impacted by its neighborhood’s current conditions and has the potential to spark change in those conditions. In this session, representatives from the New Orleans Choice Neighborhood describe how their team succeeded in designing and developing mixed-income housing in the Iberville/Tremé community that respects the neighborhood’s history and location while also supporting its increasing popularity. The panelists also discuss more ways that high-quality housing can facilitate broader revitalization in distressed neighborhoods.
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Grantee teams discuss conference take-aways, including how housing can impact neighborhood change. |
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SESSION |
Relocated Case Management: How to Continue Case Management and Service Delivery After Relocation |
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Once residents relocate, your case management and service delivery model must transition from working with residents who live in one development to engaging residents who live all over the city. In this session, two Choice Neighborhoods partners discuss what to do before and after relocation to continue to reach residents and provide high-quality services. Representatives from Louisville share how they used a continuous quality improvement process to quickly engage more than 80 percent of residents in case management before relocation. Representatives from Memphis discuss how they created zones, employed resident ambassadors, and worked with partners to reorient case management and services after residents had relocated.
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Representatives from HUD and from the Louisville and Memphis grantees (left to right) share strategies for engaging residents in case management before and after relocation. |
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