The Senate Committee on Banking, Housing and Urban Affairs recently hosted a hearing on Choice Neighborhoods. The event was focused on Sen. Robert Menendez’s (D-N.J.) Choice Neighborhoods Initiative Act of 2011 (S. 624), which would officially authorize the program.
Witnesses included Dr. Susan Popkin, director of the Program on Neighborhoods and Youth Development at the Urban Institute, and Maria Maio, executive director of the Jersey City Housing Authority. Most witnesses who testified discussed how linking housing with human services could aid distressed communities in a way siloed efforts have not. Popkin’s research findings “suggest that Choice Neighborhoods and other new comprehensive community redevelopment efforts that seek to improve the well-being of low-income residents in distressed neighborhoods need to provide services and support that will help address the complex challenges many of these families face in moving toward self-sufficiency.”
You can view a webcast of the hearing and read witness testimony on the Committee’s website here.