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Date: 12/21/2021
NORTHAMPTON – On Dec. 15, Northampton Planning & Sustainability conducted two public hearings to map out the coming months regarding Northampton’s Community Development Block Grant (CDBG) program money.
CDBG funds come from the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development (HUD). The national program provides funding to create affordable housing, suitable living environments, and economic opportunities for people with low and moderate incomes-particularly those who are 80 percent median income or below. Representatives from The Literacy Project, Forbes Library, Valley CDC, and Center for Human Development were among the organizations present to hear more about the possible projects within the program.
During much of the meeting, Wayne Feiden, director of Planning & Sustainability, presented a PowerPoint with information about eligibility requirements, as well as identifications of any housing, community and economic development needs found in Northampton.
According to Feiden, Northampton creates a consolidated plan every five years, which describes the community’s needs, resources, priorities and goals. The last plan, which details these priorities for 2020 to 2024, was developed about a year and a half ago, and currently, Northampton is creating an Annual Action Plan for the third year.
“The consolidated plan is really important because that’s our big picture,” said Feiden. “And then the action plan still follows the outline of the consolidated plan, but we have flexibility.” Currently, Northampton is working on the action plan over the next few months, which will describe what the city will do with the funds for the upcoming program year, as well as how they will reprogram funds that may have not been used in the past year.
“We have to spend at least 70 percent of our annual funds,” said Feiden, regarding the national objective. “We tend to spend closer to 85 percent of our funds.” Typically, the national objectives borne from this program include activities that benefit low to moderate income people, activities that prevent or eliminate slums or blight, and/or activities that address a serious or immediate threat to the health or welfare of the community.
According to Feiden, Northampton rarely spends money on activities that prevent or eliminate slums or blight, and before COVID-19, the city rarely spent the funds on an immediate health threat to the community. Northampton usually participates in CDBG eligible activities that benefit low to moderate income families like improving infrastructure, affordable housing, public services, economic development activities and planning and administration. Feiden used the 24 affordable rental units on Laurel Street as an example of a housing project that is usually eligible for CDBG funding.
“Those who are applying, it is going to be a little more competitive than last year in public services … one, because we don’t have COVID money, but also because the [15 percent] cap didn’t apply last year, so we were able to fund more people last year than we can typically fund,” said Feiden, referring to the percentage cap for what can be used for public services within the context of the total awarded money. Eligible public services include childcare, health care, crime prevention, recreation, substance abuse, supportive services, education and fair housing.
“We both want to preserve affordable housing and create more affordable housing,” said Feiden.
For this year specifically, the city plans to allocate anywhere between $5,000 and $15,000 to project submissions. In Northampton specifically, there is a strong focus on homelessness, youth, literacy projects, and other types of programs that deal with people in the 80 percent median income threshold. According to Feiden, the city has a little over $444,000 available for projects within the next program. The city will determine over the next couple of months how much funding they have left from previous years, as well.
“The small amounts that we get for a small agency like The Literacy Project is invaluable to us,” said Judith Roberts, the executive director of the organization. “It’s really important to our survival and really important to our students.” The Literacy Project provides free basic education and high school equivalency classesto adults at five locations in Western Mass. and online.
On Dec. 1, the city opened applications for CDBG funds for the program year, which begins July 1, 2022. Applications can be made through the website portal listed here: https://www.northamptonma.gov/Calendar.aspx?EID=8122. Deadline for submission is no later than 4:30 p.m. on Jan. 14, 2022 A public forum regarding CDBG will occur on March 29, 2022.