Financing Community Change through the President’s FY 2011 Budget

President Obama’s FY 2011 Budget offer’s a blueprint of the President’s priorities, highlighting investments that, if appropriated, would advance important community change efforts to improve results for families living in low-income neighborhoods. CSSP's financing community change work focuses on the following neighborhood-based strategies: 3rd grade reading success, workforce development, asset building, community development, and resident engagement. (Future postings will focus on each strategy more in depth.) Here we highlight funding streams in the FY 2011 budget that would support these strategies:

• American Graduate Initiative: The budget supports legislation that has passed the House and is pending in the Senate that would reform student lending to eliminate by eliminating the Federal Family Education Loan subsidy for private lenders and provide loans directly to students. The savings would be used for a range of education priorities, including supporting community colleges and building/ expanding partnerships between labor and education to increase access and completion of education and training programs.
• Choice Neighborhoods: $250 million to advance HUD’s goal of transforming high poverty communities where public and assisted housing is concentrated into sustainable, mixed-income neighborhoods with quality services, education and employment opportunities, affordable housing, and accessible public transportation.
• Early Learning Challenge Fund: The budget supports this pending legislation, which would provide grants to states to help build comprehensive, high quality learning systems for children birth to age 5 across all early care and learning settings.
• Investing in Innovation Fund: $500 million to expand this program which provides competitive grants for expanding the implementation of, and investment in, innovative and evidence-based practices, programs, and strategies that improve K-12 achievement and close achievement gaps, decrease dropout rates, increase high school graduation rates, and improve teacher and school leader effectiveness.
• New Markets Tax Credit: The budget proposes to extend this program, which provides tax incentives to private investors that provide capital for small businesses and community development projects in low-income communities, for two years (through the end of 2011) at an annual credit volume of $5 billion.
• Partnership for Sustainable Communities: $150 million from HUD to sustain a collaboration between HUD, Department of Transportation, and EPA to stimulate comprehensive regional and community planning efforts that integrate transportation and housing investments to produce greater regional and local sustainable development patterns.
• Partnership for Workforce Innovation: $321 million through the Departments of Education and Labor to establish a this new initiative that would permit the agencies to coordinate competitive grants to states and localities to improve services, and support innovative approaches to workforce activities including job training and sector partnerships.
• Promise Neighborhoods Initiative: $210 million to support this place-based strategy that would integrate school reform with strong family supports and effective community services across neighborhoods.
• Race to the Top: $1.3 billion to advance innovative reforms in the four areas of standards and assessments; data systems; recruiting, retaining, and developing effective teachers and principals; turning around low-achieving schools.
• Second Chance Act: $100 million for the DOJ to administer grant programs designed to help communities develop and implement comprehensive, collaborative strategies to address reentry challenges and reduce recidivism.
• Social Innovation Fund: $60 million to promote promising innovative practices in non-profits, helping them muster evidence of what works and build their scale and capacity to address challenges facing low-income families.
• TANF Emergency Contingency Fund: An additional $2.5 billion and one-year extension to this ARRA funded measure that provides additional funding to states for increased expenditures in basic assistance, short-term non-recurrent benefits, and subsidized employment. The budget request also calls for a 100 percent reimbursement for subsidized employment activities.  

The budget request was sent to Congress on February 1, 2010. Congress will use the request as a guide in developing the FY 2011 appropriations bill. Fiscal year 2011 begins on October 1, 2010.

For news on federal budget policy, see CSSP’s Policy for Results blog post, A Fiscally Sustainable Budget.

More information on the federal budget can be found at the Office of Management and Budget. In addition, the following resources may be helpful:

Administration Reverses a Decade of Indifference – Budget Proposal Expands Quality Child Care and Early Education Opportunities, CLASP

Despite Spending Freeze, Obama Budget Invests in Children, First Focus

Preliminary Analysis, Fiscal Year 2011 Budget Request, National Skills Coalition

Summary and Analysis of President Obama’s Education Budget Request, New America Foundation

Summary of President Obama’s Fiscal Year 2011 Budget for Housing and Community Development Programs, Enterprise Community Partners, Inc.