Source: United States Senator for New Jersey Bob Menendez
WASHINGTON, D.C. – U.S. Senators Bob Menendez and Cory Booker (both D-N.J.) announced a $5,000,000 supplemental grant from the Department of Housing and Urban Development (HUD) to improve the William Stanley Ablett Village in Camden to provide safe and improved housing for families and individuals in the city.
“The City of Camden has made great strides in improving public housing in recent years, providing families with access to quality, safe housing,” said Sen. Menendez. “During a time when housing costs are soaring, these funds I helped secure will help make large-scale repairs, energy efficiency upgrades, and modernize public housing properties in the City of Camden.”
“Affordable housing is critical to building safer and more equitable communities,” said Sen. Booker. “I’m proud to see the City of Camden receive this $5 million in federal investment toward Ablett Village. This funding will go a long way in improving the quality of life for the residents of Camden.”
The award is part of the FY 2022 Choice Neighborhood Implementation Grant Program that leverages public and private dollars to support locally driven strategies that address neighborhoods with distressed public housing and/or HUD-assisted housing through a comprehensive approach to neighborhood transformation. This program helps communities transform areas by redeveloping public and/or HUD-assisted housing and catalyzing critical improvements in the area. The supplemental grant announced today will help address pandemic-related disruptions to projects funded by the Implementation Grant last year.
Sen. Menendez has long been a leader in the fight to build more affordable housing. In March, Sen. Menendez joined a group of 17 Senate Committee Chairs and Majority Leader Chuck Schumer (D-N.Y.) in sending a letter to President Biden urging the federal government to utilize a “whole-of-government” approach to address the nation’s housing crisis. In January 2022, Sen. Menendez announced $1,429,328 million in federal grants from the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development’s (HUD) Housing Counseling Program to seven local agencies throughout New Jersey to provide funds to HUD approved housing counseling agencies to advise and assist people with buying or renting a home, defaults, foreclosure, and other financial challenges.
In February, Sens. Menendez and Booker announced a combined total of $93,830,496 from HUD to modernize public housing properties and for management improvements across 54 towns in the state of New Jersey in Atlantic, Bergen, Burlington, Camden, Cape May, Cumberland, Essex, Gloucester, Hudson, Mercer, Middlesex, Monmouth, Morris, Passaic, Union, Salem, Somerset, Sussex and Warren Counties.
In August 2021, he introduced the Livable Communities Act that encourages local communities to partner strategically to develop bold, innovative solutions that reflect their unique character, while leveraging existing assets, including access to transit to help revitalize neighborhoods, spur economic development, create jobs, and address their affordable housing needs. That same month, the Senator also introduced the Choice Neighborhoods Initiative Act of 2021, which supports locally driven strategies to revitalize underserved neighborhoods by making permanent the highly competitive Choice Neighborhoods program at the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development (HUD). Sen. Menendez also leads annual efforts in the Senate to provide funding for the Choice Neighborhoods program.
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