New Hampshire Housing Finance Authority was awarded a $1,000,000 three year Community Challenge Planning Grant from the US Department of Housing and Urban Development to create the New Hampshire Community Planning Grant (CPG) Program. The CPG Program will offer a competitive matching grants for New Hampshire communities to conduct work on local regulations that will foster sustainable community development. Among the expected benefits to be delivered by the CPG Program are:

• Building of codes for energy-efficient rehabilitation of older structures; corridor planning to increase mixed-income housing near employment nodes, pedestrian- and transit-oriented development;
• Affordable housing and economic development connecting housing and transportation investments and local adoption of the "Community Revitalization Tax Relief Incentive";
• Support for local communities in the creation of form-based codes; mixed–use and inclusionary zoning, lot-size averaging, and infill development;
• Implementation of "Neighborhood Heritage Districts" in cooperation with the NH Preservation Alliance; and,
• Outreach projects to resident-owned manufactured housing parks to identify effective means of involving residents in the local planning process.

Grant application information may be found on the New Hampshire Citizen Planner website at http://extension.unh.edu/cp/updates.html. Grant applications must be postmarked by June 15, 2012.

If you would like more information about the program, please contact Ben Frost, Director, Public Affairs at bfrost@nhhfa.org.

Read HUD press release about the grant