Transformation is on the horizon for South Lorain, as the Lorain Metropolitan Housing Authority and the City of Lorain have been granted the esteemed HUD Choice Neighborhood Planning Grant. This enables the formulation of a comprehensive plan to ignite a transformation within Southside Gardens and the wider South Lorain community. Positioned at its core, this project aims to rejuvenate neighborhoods, safeguard affordable housing, and foster improved opportunities for residents, building upon the foundational ethos of the Choice Neighborhoods Initiative - HUD's most prominent program.

Spanning a geographical area in South Lorain, from the Republic Steel Plant in the North to the high-tension power line in the South; Broadway in the West to Oakwood Park in the East, the Planning Grant embarks on a journey to reshape both public and HUD-assisted housing. This project does not merely revolve around the impending redevelopment of Southside Gardens; instead, it extends its strategic planning to encompass neighborhood investments throughout the broader South Lorain community. These strategies, responding meaningfully to community's input, will construct a robust framework for sustainable and healthy housing, infrastructure improvisation, business development, and improved access to essential services.

More About HUD's Choice Neighborhoods and the Planning Grant

The Choice Neighborhoods program leverages significant public and private dollars to support locally driven strategies that address struggling neighborhoods with distressed public or HUD-assisted housing through a comprehensive approach to neighborhood transformation. Local leaders, residents, and stakeholders, such as public housing authorities, cities, schools, police, business owners, nonprofits, and private developers, come together to create and implement a plan that revitalizes distressed HUD housing and addresses the challenges in the surrounding neighborhood. The program helps communities transform neighborhoods by revitalizing severely distressed public and/or assisted housing and catalyzing critical improvements in the neighborhood, including vacant property, housing, businesses, services and schools.

Choice Neighborhoods Planning Grants support the development of comprehensive neighborhood revitalization plans which focused on directing resources to address three core goals: Housing, People and Neighborhoods. To achieve these core goals, communities must develop and implement a comprehensive neighborhood revitalization strategy, or Transformation Plan. The Transformation Plan will become the guiding document for the revitalization of the public and/or assisted housing units while simultaneously directing the transformation of the surrounding neighborhood and positive outcomes for families.