CLINTON ADMINISTRATION AWARDS $498.3 MILLION TO TRANSFORM PUBLIC HOUSING NATIONWIDE

"HUD's Hope VI grants are a step towards achieving my Administration's goal of helping people help themselves to improve their lives and their communities through hard work," President Clinton said. "By providing job training and improving the quality, management and safety of public housing, we are giving hope to communities that have previously known despair."

Cuomo said the vast majority of the 3,400 public housing authorities around the nation do a good job providing safe and affordable housing to low-income families. However, some older public housing developments have deteriorated over the years, becoming magnets for crime and roadblocks to efforts to revitalize the surrounding area.

"We are creating a new concept of public housing for the new century," Cuomo said. "Besides removing blighted public housing from the urban landscape, we will breathe new life into cities by building safe neighborhoods that will attract more businesses, more jobs and more residents."

In addition, HUD is using the HOPE VI grants to help make welfare reform succeed, Cuomo said.

"Besides providing families in need with improved housing, we will help them move from welfare to work so they can climb out of poverty under their own power," Cuomo said.

Around the nation, 6,284 units of public housing will be built or modernized with the new HOPE VI grants, creating successful residential co mmunities that will help revitalize surrounding neighborhoods, Cuomo said.

In addition, 7,772 substandard public housing apartments will be demolished with the grants.

HUD's assistance will be tailored to carry out plans developed by local communities as part of President Clinton's overall urban policy.

The HOPE VI funding will pay for:

• Making physical improvements to existing public housing.

• Building new public housing.

• Demolishing some of the nation's most deteriorated public housing.

• Job training and employment programs to help public housing residents and other low-income people move from welfare to work.

• Fighting crime and drugs in public housing through President Clinton's "One Strike and You're Out" policy, which is keeping criminals from moving into public housing and evicting those already there.

• Improving the management of public housing.

• Helping working public housing residents and other poor working families become homeowners.

HUD has demolished about 30,000 units of the worst public housing and will demolish another 70,000 (for a total of 100,000) by the end of the year 2000 to change the physical landscape of public housing.

Despite these demolitions, the supply of affordable housing will increase under the Clinton Administration's transformation.

About 40,000 of the 100,000 public housing units being demolished are in such bad shape that they are vacant. As a result, only about 60,000 occupied apartments are being demolished. These apartments will be replaced by about 40,000 new units of public housing and by 61,000 rental vouchers that will allow poor families to rent housing in the private market.

As a result, the number of affordable housing opportunities supported by HUD will increase by about 40,000. Public housing residents displaced by demolitions are given the opportunity to receive vouchers or to move into new public housing.

It would cost more to rehabilitate the 100,000 worst units than it will to carry out plans to replace them with new public housing and vouchers.

The following housing authorities received grants under the HOPE VI program:

ALABAMA

• Jasper Housing Authority -- $120,000 -- to demolish all 24 units of the Carver Courts public housing development.

CALIFORNIA

• San Francisco Housing Authority -- $23.2 million -- to revitalize the Valencia Gardens public housing development.
• Sacramento County Housing Authority -- $50,000 -- to demolish 10 contiguous units of a scattered site development at 14th Avenue.

CONNECTICUT

• Stamford Housing Authority -- $26.4 million -- to revitalize the Southfield Village public housing development.

DISTRICT OF COLUMBIA

• District of Columbia Housing Authority -- $20.3 million --to rebuild and redesign the Valley Green and Skytower communities.

FLORIDA

• Tampa Housing Authority -- $32.5 million -- to build a new 900-unit development on the sites of the Ponce de Leon and College Hill public housing developments.
• St. Petersburg Housing Authority -- $27 million -- to redesign the 446-unit Jordan Park public housing development.
• Orlando Housing Authority -- $6.8 million -- to revitalize the public housing development formerly known as Orange Villa.

ILLINOIS

• Peoria Housing Authority -- $16.1 million -- to revitalize Colonel John Warner Homes.

MARYLAND

• Housing Authority of Baltimore City -- $31.3 million -- to revitalize the George B. Murphy Homes and Emerson Julian Gardens public housing developments.

• Kansas City Housing Authority -- $6.5 million -- to replace Heritage House, a nine story public housing development for the elderly.

MONTANA

• Helena Housing Authority -- $1.1 million -- to construct 14 one- and two-bedroom single and multi-family rental units for public housing residents to replace 14 units demolished in 1995.

NEW JERSEY

• Housing Authority of Elizabeth -- $28.9 million -- to revitalize the Pioneer Homes and Migliore Manor public housing developments.
• Housing Authority of Jersey City-- $32.1 million -- to build new townhome rental and homeownership units.
• Housing Authority of the City of Paterson -- $21.6 million -- to revitalize the Christopher Columbus Homes public housing development.

NEW YORK

• Buffalo Municipal Housing Authority -- $28 million -- to revitalize Lakeview Homes.

NORTH CAROLINA

• Housing Authority of the City of Winston-Salem -- $27.7 million -- to revitalize the Kimberly Park Terrace public housing development.
• Sanford Housing Authority -- $65,000 -- to tear down 13 of 75 units at the Garden Street Apartments public housing development.

OHIO

• Cincinnati Housing Authority
-- $720,000 -- to demolish all 144 units of the Grandview Apartments public housing development.

PENNSYLVANIA

• Allegheny County Housing Authority -- $15.8 million -- to build 178 new rental and homeownership units at McKees Rocks Terrace.
• Chester County Housing Authority -- $16.4 million -- to build 261 new rental and homeownership units at 400 Oak Street, Broadview Court, Hillcrest Drive, and Rosemont Court.
• Philadelphia Housing Authority -- $26.4 million -- to build 300 new rental and homeownership units for a cross-section of incomes and lifestyles.

TENNESSEE

• Knoxville Community Development Corporation -- $22.1 million -- to build 255 new rental and homeownership units at College Homes.
• Metropolitan Development and Housing Agency in Nashville -- $13.6 million -- to reconfigure 152 units at Vine Hill Homes.

TEXAS

• Housing Authority of the City of Houston -- $21.2 million --to complete the revitalization of the historic Fourth Ward.

VIRGINIA

• Richmond Redevelopment and Housing Authority -- $26.9 million -- to revitalize the Blackwell public housing development.
• Portsmouth Redevelopment and Housing Authority -- $24.8 million -- to revitalize the Ida Barbour public housing development.