Choice Neighborhood is a HUD funded program focused on three core community goals:
- Housing: Replace distressed public and assisted housing with high-quality mixed-income housing that is well-managed and responsive to the needs of the surrounding neighborhoods;
- People: Improve outcomes of households living in the target housing related to employment and income, health, and children’s education; and
- Neighborhood: Create the conditions necessary for public and private reinvestment in distressed Neighborhoods to offer the kinds of amenities and assets, including safety, good schools, and commercial activities, that are important to families’ choices about their community.
The Little Rock Choice Neighborhood area to benefit under this grant covers a three-square mile area southeast of Downtown Little Rock including MHA housing sites Sunset Terrace, Madison I & II, newly proposed Madison Heights IV and additional scattered sites. The Sunset neighborhood is challenged with physical distress, high crime rates and high poverty rates. In addition, this neighborhood has been declared a food and medical desert. The focus of the program is to create synergistic strategies to reverse these debilitating trends.
The Housing Plan will modernize 74 severely distressed public housing units at Sunset Terrace; rehab 241 units at Madison Heights I & II, rehab 13 units at Central and Stephens and construct 42 of multi-family housing at Madison VI, as well as 18 scattered multi-family units in Choice Neighborhood.
