HUD USER

Submit your ideas on HUD’s Innovation of the Day (IOD), HUD’s online hub for collecting and disseminating innovative housing, community development, built environment, and urban practices from around the world. IPI is planning a Global Innovation Summit later this year to lift up these solutions that transform the built environment and improve communities.

HUD has entered into a Memorandum of Understanding (MOU) with the Netherlands’ Ministry of Infrastructure and the Environment to exchange best practices around disaster mitigation, sustainable and integrated planning, and water management infrastructure. The MOU’s goals are to create new community development strategies that place a premium on sustainability and ‘livability’ principles; pursue infrastructure and water management strategies and climate resilience and preparedness, including new approaches to flood protection systems and ‘building with nature; and to leverage private and philanthropic investments to maximize public investments in urban development and long-term disaster mitigation.

IPI is partnering with HUD’s Office of Sustainable Housing and Communities (OSHC) and HUD’s division of Public and Indian Housing (PIH) to engage philanthropy and socially-responsible investors to retrofit public housing to not only reduce energy and resource consumption, but to develop interventions that stimulate resident access to green jobs, occupant health improvements, and long term structural resiliency.

IPI has entered into an agreement with The University of Pennsylvania’s Institute for Urban Research (Penn IUR) to work with the Partnership for Sustainable Communities (PSC), which includes HUD, the Department of Transportation (DOT), and the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA), to develop performance measurement tools and sustainability indicators aligned with the PSC’s Livability Principles. A website is being created to allow communities to measure their sustainability progress on a variety of measures. IPI is working with Penn IUR and members of the PSC to convene practitioners to analyze the usefulness of performance metrics, while finding innovative solutions to evaluate indicators for all types of communities.

The Sustainable and Inclusive Communities Initiative seeks to engage governments, entrepreneurs, social institutions, financiers, communities, private industry, and other organizations to develop and foster innovations to generate affordable, inclusive, and sustainable communities. The Departments of Housing and Urban Development and State, through the Energy and Climate Partnership of the Americas, have created a multi-year strategy to source ideas at work in communities around the world—and then mobilize the skills and resources to scale-up models to sustainably support the housing demands of an 80% urbanized population. The initiative aims to build a global an online platform and offline networks to propel innovation and investment in sustainable and inclusive housing programs. HUD will then internalize the innovations to advance public private partnerships and policy within the United States.

In an effort to dramatically boost public/private partnerships and philanthropic support for strong community development plans across the country, HUD piloted a new web platform in November 2011. The platform —Partner.HUD.gov— is an open source site that displays contact information, partnerships, geographic areas, and funding amounts; and allows users to easily find and support local transformation efforts. Click on the Choice Neighborhoods link here for more on Choice Neighborhoods Planning and Implementation Grantees, as well as Choice Neighborhoods Competitive Runners-Up.

The Department of Housing and Urban Development, in partnership with the Council on Foundations’ Public-Philanthropic Partnership Initiative, announces the inaugural annual Secretary’s Award for Community Foundations as part of the Council’s annual Fall Conference for Community Foundations. The Secretary’s Award for Community Foundations recognizes excellence in public-philanthropic partnerships that have both transformed the relationship between the sectors and led to measurable benefits in terms of increased economic employment, health, safety, education, sustainability, inclusivity and cultural opportunities, and/or housing access for low and moderate-income families.

Impact investing is an emerging sector of the economy in which investors seek to maximize both financial and social return. Investments are made in organizations or businesses that address pressing widespread societal problems (such as poverty, affordable housing, health and education, and environment). Given the potential strength of this emerging sector and its ability to promote widespread social and financial benefits, HUD –IPI will survey this opportunity and assess its role in catalyzing this market.