>> JEFF MICHAEL
A couple of other areas where this University has been involved in H.U.D.
initiatives:
Just this past year, the Charlotte region was chosen for one of the H.U.D.’s Sustainable
Communities Grant programs and awards.
UNC Charlotte is going to be an important partner on that, doing some of the research,
looking at metrics, and measuring our success.
Also in a nearby community, Salisbury, a small town here of about 30,000 people, is I believe
one of the first communities chosen for the Choice Neighborhoods Program of H.U.D.
>> THE HONORABLE SHAUN DONOVAN
Absolutely.
>> JEFF MICHAEL
Talk about those two programs for some of the people seeing this interview who maybe
aren’t as familiar with them, but may be hearing more about them in the years ahead.
>> THE HONORABLE SHAUN DONOVAN
Well, let me frame it this way, our Sustainable Communities Program is really about how do
we do a better job thinking about and planning at the federal level, in partnership with
universities like UNC Charlotte, local governments, county governments, regional entities, chambers
of commerce and others.
How do we do a better job planning what we want our cities and our regions to look like.
Too often, in the past, we’ve had a federal response, which is well the transportation
department is going to work to put in roads over here, the housing department is going
to put in housing over here, there might be schools put in.
And there’s been so little coordination between them, and what we’ve ended up with
is the average family, American family now spends over 50 cents of every dollar they
earn just on housing and transportation combined.
And for our businesses, it’s five times more expensive to move goods on our roads
and on our transportation systems than it was even 25 years ago.
This was exacerbated by the housing crisis that we saw where we had sort of what I call
a drive to qualify culture.
You couldn’t afford a house in Charlotte?
Well, drive a half hour outside the city, maybe you could afford a house there.
Maybe you couldn’t afford it there, drive another half hour until you could finally
find something you could afford.
But what we weren’t thinking about is the cost to families of those transportation alternatives
and frankly, the way families were cut off from jobs and other things they needed to
access opportunity to step up that ladder of opportunity.
>> JEFF MICHAEL
It’s all related.
>> THE HONORABLE SHAUN DONOVAN
And so, what we’ve done is to work very closely with universities, with local governments,
with the business community, to say instead how do we bring our planning together?
What does Charlotte want Charlotte to look like?
What’s the vision for this community as it grows?
And certainly Charlotte has been a successful city over the last few decades.
What should that growth look like?
And how do we make sure that growth happens in a way that Charlotte’s going to be competitive
going forward?
I worked for Mike Bloomberg as mayor of New York City, and one of the things he realized,
you know in the old economy, it used to be that companies would decide where they wanted
to relocate.
In Charlotte, you might’ve had a rail hub.
Or Atlanta, you might have been on a lake like Chicago, or close like Birmingham, Alabama.
You might’ve been close to iron ore or something that really fed those businesses.
Companies moved there, people followed to get jobs.
In this economy, where we’re more of an information economy, companies are following
people.
People are deciding where they want to live.
Particularly graduates of UNC Charlotte or other well educated folks, they’re deciding,
hey I want to live in a place where there’s a good quality of life, where I’m not going
to get rid of my car but I can walk to a restaurant, to a movie, my kids can get to school on a
bicycle.
I can get home in 15 minutes and spend more time with my kids.
I’m a father of two young boys.
I don’t want to spend two hours commuting every day.
And so, more and more as an economic development driver, cities and regions like Charlotte
are saying hey, how do I create neighborhoods that people want to live in and how do I take
advantage of the infrastructure, the existing neighborhoods that are already there, rebuild
them and create an opportunity for families to live close in to where jobs are.
And that’s really the partnership that we’ve put together.
A five million dollar grant to this region, including UNC Charlotte as one of the partners.
We were very excited about your participation in that and frankly, the partnership of a
strong research university was one of the things that made us confident that this was
the right grant and we only awarded one out of ten, so it was very, very competitive around
the country.
Choice Neighborhoods is a little bit the neighborhood version of what I just described.
Too often in the past, where we’ve built public housing, we haven’t thought about
the whole lives of families, particularly poor families living in disadvantaged neighborhoods.
So we might build new bricks and mortar, but nobody was worried about making sure there
was a good school there, or where the health clinic’s going to be.
What about criminal justice?
Is it going to be a safe neighborhood?
So what Choice Neighborhoods is trying to do is the same thing, bring together the federal
response, coordinate it, make it more efficient and effective by bringing these pieces together
and then work with local communities, whether they be small communities like the award we
made here, or a city like Charlotte to work together to say let’s bring all of these
pieces together.
We’re going to rebuild the housing and create decent safe housing.
But at the same time, were going to make sure there’s a top quality school.
We’ve brought in the Justice Department and their Burn Criminal Justice Program, which
helps create community policing and other innovative efforts to create more safe streets.
We’ve brought in community health clinics from Health and Human Services.
All of those pieces have been brought together.
We’re trying to create, as the name would suggest, a neighborhood of choice, a neighborhood
where families choose to live, where they want to live, and where they believe raising
their children, they’re going to have real opportunity, you know.
It’s tragic that in too many communities around this country, you can predict the lifespan
of a child by their zip code and that’s just not right and Choice Neighborhoods is
trying to turn that around.