The Office of Sustainable Housing and Communities administers three grant programs that help communities around the country achieve its mission of creating strong, sustainable communities by connecting housing to jobs, fostering local innovation, and helping to build a clean energy economy.
Capacity Building for Sustainable Communities
This program, jointly funded by HUD and EPA, will identify intermediaries to provide additional assistance to the recipients of Sustainable Communities assistance from the two grant programs below.
Sustainable Communities Regional Planning Grants
This program provides grants to help improve regional planning efforts that integrate housing and transportation decisions, and increase state, regional, and local capacity to incorporate livability, sustainability, and social equity values into land use plans and zoning. The program supports metropolitan and multi-jurisdictional planning efforts through a consortium-based model that brings together numerous groups to inform the planning process.
Community Challenge Grants
The program provides grants to enable communities in fostering reform and reducing barriers to achieving affordable, economically vital, and sustainable communities. Such efforts may include amending or replacing local master plans, zoning codes, and building codes, either on a jurisdiction-wide basis or in a specific neighborhood, district, corridor, or sector to promote mixed-use development, affordable housing, the reuse of older buildings and structures for new purposes, and similar activities with the goal of promoting sustainability at the local or neighborhood level. This Program also supports the development of affordable housing through the development and adoption of inclusionary zoning ordinances and other activities such as acquisition of land for affordable housing projects.
