Federal Agency Incentive Activities

Funding and Assistance

The U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA), Natural Resources Conservation Service (NRCS) offers financial, technical, and educational assistance for implementation of various conservation practices on privately owned landed. Using this help, private landowners, such as farmers and ranchers, can institute practices that reduce soil erosion, improve water quality, and enhance wetlands, forestlands, grazing lands, and wildlife habitat. Programs offered by NRCS help promote sustainable agricultural practices which protect and conserve valuable farmland for future generations.  NRCS also provides assistance that helps individuals and communities restore natural resources impacted by floods, fires, or other natural disasters.

The Farmland Protection Policy Act directs NRCS to administer The Land Evaluation and Site Assessment (LESA) on agricultural land. LESA is a systematic tool used to establish a farmland conversion impact rating score on the proposed sites of the Federal funded projects. This score is then used as an indicator for the project proposing agency to consider alternatives sites if the potential adverse impacts on the farmland exceed the recommended allowable level. There are no specific funds appropriated to carry out the technical assistance that NRCS field offices provide. LESA intent is to:

• Inform state and local officials of the technical assistance available to develop LESA systems and encourage their use;
• Take the lead in completing the land evaluation part of a LESA system;
• Encourage state and local officials to organize appropriate committees and to complete the site assessment part of the LESA system;
• Provide information and technical assistance with state or local site assessments, when requested by local or state officials;
• Use a LESA system as a basis for providing technical assistance to state and local officials, to protect agricultural land and for ensuring that NRCS efforts are compatible with state and local policies and programs to protect agricultural land.

In the 1996 Farm Bill, a conservation easement acquisition program (Farmland Protection Program) was authorized. Since then issues related to farmland protection, sensible growth, and livable communities have emerged to the political forefront across the nation. The opportunity exists for the Federal government to review and revise policies and regulations of this Act to ensure that the adverse impacts induced by Federal funded projects and programs are minimized. NRCS will facilitate a task force consisted of interagency representatives to review and propose a new legislation.

The Farmland Protection Program when properly funded using a tool like LESA, Special Protection Areas, and Focus Zones will provide decision makers the necessary data to systematically protect agricultural land from inappropriate and irreversible conversion to nonagricultural uses.

The Small Watershed Program provides both technical and financial assistance to help participants solve natural resource and related economic problems on a watershed basis.

The Watershed Survey and Planning Program provide technical assistance to Federal, State, local and tribal governments and agencies in the protection of watersheds. Types of technical assistance that NRCS can offer under this program are watershed planning, river basin surveys and studies, flood hazard analyses, and flood plain management assistance.

The options below are generic tools that the Environmental Protection Agency, Region III (EPA) can offer local leadership in assisting their growth management efforts. These EPA options are intended to be combined with options from other federal agencies in the Mid-Atlantic Federal Partners for the Environment (MAFPE—a partnership of 14 federal agencies that work within their respective authorities and resources to assist state and local governments by coordinating federal agency programs in a manner that supports state and local initiatives to manage growth and protect vital resources). One or more options from this combined list can then serve as the basis for a formal federal/local partnership in addressing local growth management needs.

After a county or other local government identifies growth management objectives, including areas that are appropriate for development (focus zones) and areas where development should be discouraged (special protection areas), then representatives of the local government work with one or more agencies of MAFPE in using the list of federal tools to develop an agreement tailored specifically to address growth management objectives of the local government.

Funding and Assistance

• Giving priority to local acquisition and preservation goals in allocating Federal resources available to preserve threatened habitat, open space, and farmland.
• Identifying joint priorities for supplemental environmental projects funded through enforcement of Federal and State environmental laws.
• Providing technical assistance to promote development that minimizes air and water impacts.
• Providing technical assistance to align Federal regulatory objectives with local land use decisions.
• Assisting in targeting Corps of Engineers habitat restoration funds to special protection areas.
• Targeting mitigation funding from transportation projects to local preservation and protection objectives.
• Ensuring appropriate regulatory scrutiny of development proposals located within special protection areas.
• Ensuring more intensive scrutiny of the secondary and cumulative impacts for proposed projects in special protection areas.
• Giving priority to local smart growth objectives in working with state to allocate pollution control grant funding.

• Expanded use of general or expedited permitting approaches for air, water, stormwater, wetlands fill, and other activities in "focus zones" that the County has identified as appropriate for development.
• Expanded use of individual permits and more rigorous environmental review (presumptive EIS and other environmental documentation requirements) for proposed activities in areas that the County has identified as inappropriate for development.
• Identification of certain areas within the special protection areas, known as regulatory "safe harbors", where regulatory processes will be used to strongly discourage development.
• Tailoring the allocation of air emissions and water discharge loadings to provide greater flexibility in "focus zones" targeted for development and to discourage development in areas the County deems inappropriate. Priority for the development of water discharge loadings to these targeted areas.
• Early integration of County growth management objectives in transportation planning.
• Expanded use of protection under state antidegradation policies for waters in areas locally identified as special protection area.
• Integration of local land use objectives and Federal and state regulatory requirements through County-specific or multi-county Memorandums of Understanding.
• County-based modification of the Pennsylvania State Programmatic General Permit (PASPGP) for wetlands that tailor the PASPGP to County planning objectives. Consideration of a similar permit for other states.

• Regulatory credits and incentives that recognize the clean air and clean water benefits of adherence to local growth management objectives, promotion of transit-oriented development, restoration of declining urban population centers, and brownfields redevelopment.
• Development of mitigation banking models in which the beneficiaries of accelerated permits contribute to preservation and acquisition goals.
• Targeting of brownfields redevelopment resources to County focus zones.
• Consideration of County's smart growth objectives in the review of Superfund prospective purchaser proposals seeking EPA liability protection.

1. The Rivers, Trails and Conservation Assistance staff of the National Park Service (NPS) can help local communities identify and map the special places they want to protect; create a vision for the community; bring people together to work on common goals; find ways to involve the public to make projects a success; conduct workshops to create solutions; and prepare public information materials. Communities request assistance through an application process.
2. The Chesapeake Bay Gateways and Water Trails Initiative, administered by the NPS, assists communities by; providing opportunities for technical and financial assistance for Gateways and Watertrails assistance projects; ties in to a network for disseminating information to the public; providing public support facilities along a water trail; and involves the public in restoring natural or cultural resources and provides enhanced public access to Bay-related natural, cultural or recreational resources.
3. The Heritage Area Program of the NPS can assist communities faced with threats to their way of life or their resources - such as uncontrolled development, neglect or a dramatically declining economy. The creation of Heritage Areas begin with a grass-roots effort by residents, businesses, community and political leaders to protect, preserve and promote the special qualities of their environment, history or culture. The NPS can assist communities through a planning process that will identify the significant features of their region and develop an action agenda to serve as a basis for community projects and programs.
4. The NPS Regional Science Program can provide small amounts of funding for cooperative partnership projects that benefit the natural resources of both national park and adjacent public/private lands by preventing or mitigating adverse impacts. As an example, Valley Forge National Historical Park entered into a partnership of local public and private stakeholders to fund the development of a stormwater management plan to control flooding and sedimentation in the Valley Creek, PA watershed.

The U.S. Geological Survey (USGS) is the Nation's largest water, earth, and biological science and civilian mapping agency. USGS information, gathered in every state, is critical to the Nation's well being and to its future ability to minimize the loss of life and property. We work in close cooperation with more than 2000 organizations across the country and around the world to provide reliable, impartial scientific information to resource managers, planners, regulators, and other customers.

The USGS is a member agency of the Mid-Atlantic Federal Partners for the Environment (MAFPE), a consortium of federal agencies formed to leverage their collective efforts to better meet the goals of the Clean Water Action Plan. As a member agency of MAFPE, the USGS can provide data and information to counties who are interested in partnering with federal agencies on urban growth issues. This information includes a number of environmental databases that contain data that would be useful to decision-makers and planners. Examples of this information include:

1. Topographic maps, land cover maps and other spatial data resources

2. Remotely-sensed data and imagery
3. Geologic maps and assessments, including building material and mineral resource maps
4. Data on geologic and hydrologic hazards
5. Biological and ecological assessments
6. Hydrologic monitoring network data (stream flow, ground-water levels, and water quality)
7. Drinking-water resource assessments and water-quality studies
8. A broad set of existing national and regional scientific databases

The USGS works with communities to promote a healthy environment and to provide citizens with livable and safer communities. Community leaders can rely on the USGS' impartial scientific research and information to aid in balancing competing demands for natural resources, recreational opportunities, wildlife habitat, and economic growth. The USGS assists communities with the development of decision-making tools and relevant information to plan for intelligent resource use and growth while sustaining quality of life.

Currently the USGS is collaborating with communities to address the following issues:

1. Rates and patterns of growth and development in urbanized regions to build predictive models for decision-makers showing the effects of land use changes on socio-economic factors over time and at different scales (land surface change).
2. Community measurement of the influence of urbanization on the physical, chemical, and biological characteristics of streams and groundwater by analyzing percentages of impervious surfaces, determining the occurrence and path of volatile organic compounds, and analyzing land cover trends (urban gradients).
3. The relationship between ecological quality and urban environments in order to assist communities in sustaining and restoring biodiversity for preserving quality of life in metropolitan areas (urban ecology).
4. The calculation of natural resource needs in comparison to regional and local resource supplies in order to evaluate availability and vulnerability of the supply base. These calculations are important to sound infrastructure development in metropolitan areas and address issues such as availability of natural aggregates for building construction or the location of sites for waste disposal facilities (resource needs and effects on environmental quality).
5. Natural hazards such as floods, landslides, ground subsidence, earthquakes, and vector-borne diseases.

The Department of Housing and Urban Development (HUD) has been a lead actor on livability, smart growth, and regional development issues for decades, working at the levels of neighborhood, city, region, and state. Together with many of HUD's core programs, new initiatives are addressing America's changing landscape of problems and opportunities. HUD is responding, as the journalist Neal Peirce writes, to "a compelling national interest in regions that work efficiently" and, we would add, equitably for all Americans.

Updating Our Role: A Look Back

Today's initiatives—such as Regional Connections (described below)—respond to a mandate, dating back to the Kerner Commission Report (1968), for the Federal government to enable metropolitan solutions to urban and suburban problems. In the 1970s, HUD was a leader in regional approaches to issues of sustainable development. HUD commissioned the landmark "Costs of Sprawl" report with CEQ and EPA, funded research on urban infill, and supported many of the important regional governance and tax studies conducted by the Advisory Commission on Intergovernmental Relations (ACIR). HUD also funded regional planning and management under the 701 Comprehensive Planning Assistance Program. Urban and rural regional agencies used HUD, DOT, EPA, and EDA funds to do comprehensive regional analyses and prepare strategies.

Our Current Approach—Getting "Beyond the Choir"

Our strategy is to recognize the range of good choices localities can make, to be eclectic. We are not proposing to mandate formulas for regional problem-solving or controlling growth. HUD is committed to an active, leading role in three dimensions: (1) identifying and working to remove things we do that undermine livability and effective regional action for sustainable growth; (2) identifying and expanding things we do—and adding new activities and policies—that promote sustainable, equitable growth and regions that work for all Americans; and (3) building knowledge and constituencies (deliberation) so that local choices are both informed and responsive to all those with a stake in the conversation—across lines of income, geography, race, ethnic group, or political view.

1. Existing Programs/Initiatives with Current and Potential Impacts on Smart Growth

• Community Development Block Grants: $4.8 billion. The mainstay of HUD's programs to help communities remain competitive and to create economic opportunity, especially jobs, is the Community Development Block Grant program (CDBG). The CDBG program is the Federal government's largest and most flexible tool for assisting cities, towns and States to meet local community development priorities and objectives. With its multi-faceted eligible uses, the block grant program is routinely used to rehabilitate housing, improve infrastructure, finance the creation of parks and other open-space improvements, remove blighted buildings, provide job training, and finance revolving loan funds and other community-determined priorities. For more information, visit our web site at http://www.hud.gov/offices/cpd/communitydevelopment/programs/index.cfm.
• Brownfields Economic Development Initiative: $25 million. Brownfields are vacant, abandoned, or underutilized properties whose redevelopment is complicated by the real or perceived threat of moderate environmental contamination. Many are the remnants of the American industrial revolution. While brownfields are not contaminated enough to be on the EPA Superfund list of highly contaminated sites, they are not clean enough to be redeveloped without environmental assessment or remediation. Fear of liability, lack of financing for clean-up and the availability of undeveloped greenfields impedes brownfields redevelopment. These sites remain an environmental, esthetic, legal, and economic barrier to the revitalization of our urban areas. HUD's brownfields funding, combined with loan guarantees, provides vital assistance for local efforts to begin reclaiming the nearly 450,000 brownfields that dot America's landscape. Brownfields economic development is a top priority for the U.S. Conference of Mayors, the National League of Cities, the National Association of Counties, the National Governors' Association and the Large Urban County Caucus. HUD is a principle partner in the Brownfields National Partnership. HUD is working closely with EPA, EDA and the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers in Brownfields Showcase Communities to develop models for returning brownfields back to productive uses for housing, job creation and open space. For more information, visit http://www.hud.gov/offices/cpd/economicdevelopment/programs/bedi/index.cfm.
• Growing Smart (GS) is a HUD-funded effort to modernize state and local statutes for planning and development management (many of which have not been updated for 75 years). GS will produce a legislative guidebook for State governors and legislators on the best of American planning law. The multi-year effort has already produced model legislation for state and regional planning. Twelve States have already adopted model legislation based on the Growing Smart model. Model local planning statutes and development management tools will be completed next. GS is being carried out by the American Planning Association (APA) with funding from six Federal agencies and two foundations. It includes home builders and other key interest groups. Materials can be obtained from the Growing Smart web site http://www.planning.org/growingsmart/.
• Empowerment Zones/Enterprise Communities (EZ/EC). As part of a strategy to recycle and revitalize communities rather than simply plow up more greenfields and to close the nation's "opportunity gap," HUD works with other federal agencies on the Community Empowerment Board (CEB) to help EZ/ECs attract and retain jobs, rehabilitate housing, and otherwise rebuild communities in economically depressed areas - urban and rural. Included are federal grant funds, regulatory flexibility, and tax incentives. For more information, visit our web site at http://www.hud.gov/offices/cpd/economicdevelopment/programs/rc/index.cfm.
• HOME. Roughly $1.6 billion in HOME funds are provided annually to local and State governments and community housing development organizations to produce affordable and livable housing for low- and moderate-income families. Most of these funds are used to improve existing urban neighborhoods. For more information, visit our web site at http://www.hud.gov/offices/cpd/affordablehousing/programs/home/index.cfm.
• HOPE VI provides approximately $600 million dollars annually to large urban public housing authorities to turn struggling, high poverty public housing complexes into sustainable, mixed-income communities. Redevelopment is typically at lower densities and driven by more neighborhood-friendly designs. Discussions are underway to bring "deconstruction" (recycling and selling salvageable building materials from demolished building) to HOPE VI and other programs. For more information, visit our web site at http://www.hud.gov/offices/pih/programs/ph/hope6/index.cfm.
• Community Builders. As part of a reinvented HUD, hundreds of front-line problem solvers with years of experience in building communities are now the "front door to HUD." Community Builders work in the field offices across multiple programs to help communities weave solutions that make sense. They help people access a complex array of federal and non-federal resources to rebuild communities. A key priority is to help localities work across jurisdictions and sectors - public, private, and nonprofit.
• Land Market Monitoring Symposium. Identifying potential opportunities for community reinvestment and avoiding potential adverse effects of smarter growth policies, such as shortages of affordable housing, are critical for ensuring the long-term success of smarter growth policies. Real-time monitoring of land markets can aid such efforts. In conjunction with the Lincoln Institute for Land Policy, HUD is sponsoring a symposium on developing land market monitoring systems as a tool for assisting efforts to direct growth in smarter ways. This symposium is viewed as a first step in on-going efforts to develop land market monitoring systems.
• Building Homes in America's Cities Initiative ("Million Homes Initiative"). This partnership of HUD, the National Association of Home Builders, and the U.S. Conference of Mayors is promoting the construction of one million new market-rate, single-family and multi-family homes in urban areas over the next ten years. Pilot programs will be established in 14 cities, and will be used to identify best practices and models for use in the national effort. The partnership will significantly contribute to efforts across the country to promote more infill development—a critical component of smarter growth strategies.
• Consolidated Plans and Community 2020 Planning Tools. In 1994, Andrew Cuomo, then Assistant Secretary of Community Planning and Development, led HUD's effort to establish a Consolidated Plan process that simplified the application process for HUD community development, housing and homeless assistance grants and moved the grantees forward on more sustainable development policies. The Consolidated Plan, for the first time, required, applicants to develop comprehensive community strategies. Economic, social and environmental impacts of specific projects are more readily understood and widely shared locally. In parallel, HUD developed the Community 2020 geographic information system software, a nationally awarded planning tool that includes enormous amounts of Census and other demographic and economic data, along with Federal expenditures tracked by location ("geocoded"). HUD is now developing the next phase of Community 2020 to make it an even better tool for communities. The new version will allow easier integration of outside data and make it easier for communities to use the software to plan comprehensively for all development issues. More information on Community 2020 Software is available at http://www.hud.gov/offices/cpd/about/conplan/index.cfm.

 2. Existing Programs or Special Projects with a Regional Focus

• Bridges to Work is a demonstration program connecting urban workers with distant suburban jobs through the coordinated provision of employment assistance, a reverse commute, and needed support services. "Bridges" has already informed DOT's proposed (and similar) "Access to Jobs" program. Jobs Plus, another HUD demonstration, is helping urban public housing communities to focus outward on regional job markets. So is the Neighborhood Jobs Initiative, working through outstanding community-based organizations. Private (philanthropic) funds are leveraged on all 3 demonstrations.
• Regional Fair Housing and Housing Mobility Programs. HUD has substantially increased efforts that support regional and community fair housing enforcement to eliminate racial discrimination that segregates our communities, increases poverty concentration, and perpetuates unequal access to jobs and quality of life. Based on early lessons from Moving to Opportunities and other housing mobility programs, HUD also has funded Regional Opportunity Counseling to help poor families use rental subsidies (Section 8) across wide metro areas.
• "State of the Regions" Report. To increase the information available to groups pursuing regional cooperation, HUD is co-sponsoring the "State of the Regions" report. The report, being produced by the National Association of Regional Councils, will provide baseline data on various demographic, economic, and social characteristics of geographic regions across the country. It will also contain case study data on best practices in regional cooperation.
• "Bridging the Divide" Summit. In December, 1999 HUD will convene a conference focusing on approaches to dealing with the nation's most pressing urban problems within the context of metropolitan regions. "Bridging the Divide: Making Regions Work for Everyone—Shaping the Federal Agenda" will address the highest priority issues and the most critical dimensions of the effort to promote livability, sustainability and equity within the nation's metropolitan regions. Specific topics covered will include: modernizing infrastructure in cities and suburbs, creating affordable housing near jobs, regional brownfields investment, closing the opportunity gap, mining untapped markets, and regional cooperation.
• Joint Center for Sustainable Communities (JCSC). The JCSC, an outgrowth of the President's Council on Sustainable Development, is a collaboration between the U.S. Conference of Mayors and the National Association of Counties. The primary purpose of JCSC is to act as a catalyst for local leaders to find solutions for their communities' sustainability problems by providing technical and financial assistance for activities that promote sustainable communities. Providing leadership training; matching jurisdictions in need of solutions to specific problems with those who have proven solutions; cataloguing techniques needed to initiate, lead, and implement action on sustainable communities; and disseminating information gathered through the above practices are examples of the technical assistance that the JCSC provides.
• HUD provides financial support to JCSC to support the Center's work in several areas, including the redevelopment of brownfields, the design of new collaborative growth management strategies, and the development of affordable housing in sustainable communities.
• Regional Economic Advantages. HUD is completing economic factor analyses for many of the nation's major metropolitan areas. The databases and analyses will help regions define strategies to further their economic competitive advantage. Such tools are especially useful to Empowerment Zone/Enterprise Communities and other economic development initiatives.

3. Other Important Efforts

• Selected Programs for Rural Communities. Twenty to 30 percent of HUD community programs, e.g. CDBG and HOME, Public Housing, and FHA-insured multifamily projects, are provided to rural areas and tribal organizations ($600 million in Fiscal Year 1998). As with the urban programs, the funds can be and are used for sustainable development projects, as grantees learn how to produce diverse and balanced developments. HUD also funds technical assistance to the Housing Assistance Council, National American Indian Housing Council, and through several university partnerships serving the borderland Colonias.
• Inter-Agency Coordination and HUD Research on Sustainable Communities (underway or in planning) - includes participation in the White House Task Force on Livable Communities, indicator projects, environmentally sensitive (green) building technology and codes, remote sensing of land use patterns in borderland Colonias communities, a comprehensive study of HUD impacts on local rehab activity, and more.
• Good Neighbor Initiatives. These initiatives are administered through the Department's FHA Division and include the Officer/Teacher Next Door, Dollar Home, Asset Control Area and Nonprofit Sales Programs. Each program promotes homeownership within established community revitalization areas and provides substantial discounts for participants.
• Officer/Teacher Next Door Programs - Provides law enforcement officers (with arrest powers), state certified teachers, school administrators and counselors with the opportunity to purchase FHA foreclosed properties at a 50% discount.
• Dollar Home Program - Under this policy, single-family homes that are acquired in foreclosure actions by the FHA will be eligible for sale to local governments for $1 each. These homes become available to local government entities after they have been marketed for at least six months and remain unsold.
• Asset Control Area Program - HUD encourages local government agencies to establish Asset Control Areas. Once established, current and future FHA foreclosed properties located within these areas are sold to the agency at substantial discounts for the purpose of homeownership.
• Nonprofit Sale Program - HUD offers community-based nonprofit organizations the opportunity to purchase HUD homes at a substantial discount. With this discount, local nonprofit organizations invest in property rehabilitation and re-sale to first-time homebuyers and low- and moderate-income families.

These programs promote homeownership and encourage re-investment back into established communities.

NOTE: The nation's largest housing "program" is the tax code—mortgage interest tax deduction, capital gains, Low Income Housing Tax Credit. We're still learning about the smart growth impacts and potential of these tax policies.

Tool Kit [472-KB PDF file]