Your tax dollars at work: Block grant program projects honored
To the unknowing eye, the stretch of black top with painted lines at the Fountain Valley Senior Center looks like your basic parking lot. In fact, is it a parking lot.
But through Don Feigel’s eyes, it’s been a life-saver for the people who frequent the senior center, and he says it wouldn’t have been possible without $150,600 in Community Development Block Grants issued by the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development and funneled through El Paso County.
“In order to really appreciate what the money did, you’d have to try to get through the parking lot with a cane, a walker or a wheelchair,” said Feigel, president of the center’s board of directors. “It was full of holes — very dangerous.”
The parking lot was one of six federally funded projects recognized by city and county officials Wednesday during a ceremony that paid homage to the 37-year-old Community Development Block Grant program and several of its sister programs (see list of honorees below). A slide show and several displays chronicled the many projects that the grants have helped finance in El Paso County, which has participated for three years, and the city of Colorado Springs, which has been involved since CDBG began.
Much of the grant money goes to housing and social-service projects that serve people who are disabled, elderly, low-income and/or homeless. Grants also go toward upgrading roads and sidewalks, and building public structures, such as the new library in Falcon.
The Pikes Peak Community Action Agency used its 2009-10 grant to provide rent, mortgage and utilities support to help low- to moderate-income people in rural areas stay in their homes.
“For well less than $45,000, we were able to help over 600 individuals,” said CEO Jim Faber. “The (grant) program is vital.”
The program is a target for cuts as Congress and the Obama administration wrestle with the 2012 federal budget, but city and county officials, as well as nonprofit executives, say it would be foolish to slash funding for a program that helps so many people in need.
"When you take away funding that supports so many in the community, you’re creating a gap, and there will be an even greater demand on the city that can’t be met,” said Valorie Jordan, manager of the Housing Development Division for Colorado Springs. “We’ll have even more stress on our limited resources.”
Jordan and her counterpart in the county, community development specialist Tiffany Colvert, said the grants also go further because they can leverage them to get funding from other sources. For every $1 of CDBG funding, the county has been able to get another $5 in public and private funding, Colvert said. The city gets another $3 to $4, though the number has been as high as $7, Jordan said.
Feigel wants people to know that without the grant, the senior center parking lot would never have been fixed. Administrators had tried for four years to find money for the project, with no luck. The grant paid for 75 percent of the project.
“It would be a big mistake to cut the program,” he said.
And the winners are...
Colorado Springs and El Paso County recognized several agencies, individuals and projects for their use of Community Development Block Grant money and similar grants:
Colorado Springs
• Excellence in Human Services: Salvation Army, which received $158,713 in 2010 (a $51,613 CDBG for the New Hope Center, $8,100 CDBG for the Children’s Discovery Center and $99,000 Emergency Solutions Grant for the New Hope Center Homeless Shelter)
• Excellence in Affordable Housing: Bentley Commons Housing project, a partnership involving Greccio Housing, Partners in Housing and Rocky Mountain Community Community Land Trust. A $2.1 million grant through the Neighborhood Stabilization Program was used to buy an abandoned luxury condo project and turn it into affordable housing. It has 24 units, with room for expansion.
• Leon Young Award: Bob Holmes, executive director of Homeward Pikes Peak, whose agency has used block grants for various programs for homeless people.
El Paso County
• Greatest Community Impact: Pikes Peak Community Action Agency, which received a $43,267 CDBG in 2009-10 to provide rent, mortgage and utilities support to 191 households through its Rural Families Stabilization Services program.
• Creative Service Delivery: Peak Vista Community Health Centers Mobile Health Van, which used a $92,105 CDBG to buy the van to provide medical services to people living in poverty in rural areas
• Excellence in Agency Collaboration: City of Fountain Clean & Green program ($30,000 CDBG) and Street & Sidewalk Improvements ($66,000 CDBG) for a coordinated approach to community development
• Excellence in Infrastructure Improvements: Fountain Valley Senior Center, $150,600 for parking lot and accessibility improvements
