Housing & Community « Blueprint Communities »

Purpose

Developed and implemented by FHLBank Pittsburgh starting in 2005, the purpose of the Blueprint Communities initiative is to create momentum for revitalizing older communities and neighborhoods by:

• Building strong local leadership, collaboration and development capacity;
• Serving as a catalyst for revitalization by developing sound local and regional planning skills, which include clear community vision statements, effective goal-setting strategies, comprehensive implementation plans and performance evaluation measures; and
• Encouraging coordinated investments in targeted communities by public and private funders.

Objectives

The objectives of the Blueprint Communities initiative are to:

• Foster a team approach to community revitalization in order to ensure successful planning and implementation;
• Provide each participating community team with basic training in critical community planning and development skills to help envision and implement the revitalization of their community; and
• Encourage communities to approach revitalization holistically and create revitalization plans that take into account the physical, economic and social needs of their community.

Community Benefits

Community teams selected to participate in the Blueprint Communities initiative will receive the following benefits:

• Basic training focused on developing individual and collective leadership capacity and providing the skills needed to create an effective plan for community revitalization;
• Access to a variety of technical assistance resources while in training, and for a term after training, that will help not only create an effective revitalization plan, but also provide the necessary local capacity to ensure the plan is successfully implemented; and
• Access to a variety of funding opportunities to help implement community plans, including priority access to some FHLBank Pittsburgh products.  

FHLBank Member Involvement

To promote a team approach to community revitalization, and to ensure a good cross-section of community involvement, one of the Blueprint Community team members must be a member of FHLBank Pittsburgh, whose service area includes the Blueprint Community.

As mentioned above, Blueprint Community teams will have priority access to certain FHLBank Pittsburgh products to support the implementation of their revitalization plans. For example, working with their FHLBank team member or other members serving their community, small businesses in their footprint will have priority access to the Banking on Business (BOB) product for expansion or start-up. In addition, FHLBank’s Affordable Housing Program (AHP) will also provide funding preference for housing projects proposed in Blueprint Communities by awarding additional points in the program’s competitive scoring system to applications for Blueprint Community projects.

Current Blueprint Communities

Current lists of active Blueprint Communities in Delaware, Pennsylvania and West Virginia can be found on the Blueprint Communities website.

The Blueprint Communities website referenced above also provides more detail on the history of the initiative and the parameters for community participation.

Resources

Go to the dedicated web site

• Blueprint Communities Census Tracts (pdf).