Ford Foundation Invests $200M For Metro Program

Posted under Industry News on May 20, 2010

The Ford Foundation has announced a five-year, $200 million effort to help “transform the way that cities, suburbs and surrounding communities grow and plan for the future” by anchoring housing, transportation, and land-use policy to promote economic growth.

The program also aims to build on successful collaborations and policy innovations Ford has supported in communities throughout the country, providing models that can be adopted and adapted in other metropolitan regions.

The initiative was announced Tuesday by Ford Foundation President Luis A. Ubias as local, state, and federal leaders gathered to discuss communities that once relied solely on the auto industry for jobs and growth. Urbinas said metropolitan communities should plan together and collaborate on challenges that include affordable housing, infrastructure investments, education and job creation.

“Economic growth requires that cities and suburbs work together,” Urbias said. “The notion that suburbs can thrive while city centers atrophy has proved damaging to our nation. We now know that metropolitan areas share a common economic destiny.”

The foundation said all the urban revitalization work it funds will reflect this metropolitan approach. It seeks to help communities move away from competing for public and private funding toward collaborating on regional initiatives, making limited resources go further.

George McCarthy, director of Metropolitan Opportunity at Ford, said the aim is to unite policymakers and innovators: “When investments in these major systems are planned with an understanding of how they intersect and impact the lives of all people in a region, the result can be transformative.

Strategic investments include:

  • Transportation projects, including the M1 rail in Detroit, the redevelopment of the Claiborne corridor in New Orleans, and the construction of 25 transit villages along BART in San Franciscos Bay Area.
  • Creating permanent affordable housing in communities including New Orleans and the Bay Area. Specifically, Ford pointed to shared equity homeownership, where families receive a public subsidy to buy a home agree to share the equity they earn with government, which then makes those funds available to another family.
  • Create land bank authorities: Programs in metropolitan Detroit, Flint, Mich., New Orleans and other areas enable communities to revitalize blighted areas and increase quality housing opportunities, the foundation said in a news release. This includes funding for the Center for Community Progress, a national resource center for communities that provides training and technical assistance for any metropolitan region that wants to develop its own land bank authority.

The foundation aims to serve as a “national convener and advocate for innovation” that will “bring people together from across the country to share ideas and inform the national policy dialogue by demonstrating what is working on the ground.” It will also work to bring more partners and funding to these longstanding metropolitan issues, including not just philanthropic dollars but government and private sector funds, as well. Ford is supporting the Living Cities collaborative of financial and philanthropic institutions to lead a broad national effort to advance innovation, build systemic capacity in cities, and get new players and resources to the table.