The Council of State Community Development Agencies (COSCDA) announced the recipients of its annual awards at the 2025 Annual Conference in Springfield, Illinois. The awards are designed to provide our members with national recognition for excellent projects.
The 2025 COSCDA James Reeves Member Contribution Award winner is Cindy Stone, the Director of Community Development Programs for the Maryland Department of Housing and Community Development. Cindy is a longtime COSCDA member who has dedicated many years and countless hours to our organization. A current member of the COSCDA board, she has been an invaluable asset to her colleagues and to COSCDA staff. She has also had an extraordinary impact on her state of Maryland, and her legacy will be felt across the state for many years to come.
Providing funding to help youth enter the workforce with training and skills development, this program encourages self-sufficiency and independence, and addresses the shortage of skilled trade workers in Kansas. Through the CDBG Youth Job Training (YJT) Grant Program, these students didn’t just learn about construction in a classroom, they build a real, livable home from the ground up.
The program is funded by the Kansas Department of Commerce’s CDBG program, and requires at least 51% of student participants to be from low- to moderate-income families, ensuring opportunities go to those who need them most. The program’s impact goes beyond the build site. Students gain practical skills, teamwork, and the pride these students have in their work is clear.
As Dr. Marlon Thornburg, President of Coffeyville Community College shared, “Initiatives to expand career training opportunities while addressing community needs, such as housing shortages, are a win-win for all of our constituents.” For more program information, visit kansascommerce.gov/cdbg/youth-job-training.
The Bruni Public Health Center is a simple, yet effective solution for the lack of health care facilities in the Quad-Cities area of Webb County. This 3,200 s.f. facility was constructed in an area without access to routine healthcare. Webb County includes a mid-size urban area (Laredo) surrounded by rural communities and is considered a Medically Underserved Area by the federal Health Resources and Services Administration. The Center is operated by Webb County’s Public Health Department, Indigent Health Services Program.
The Bruni Public Health Center offers routine health services such as immunizations; routine lab work; testing for TB and COVID-19; health classes; and other specialized services as providers are available. In addition, the Community Action Agency offers assistance with a variety of social services resources through the facility. In 2025, the County expanded services through a partnership with OnMed LLC to provide CareStation telemedicine services. The OnMed CareStation is available to the public at no cost to the county or patients. The Bruni facility was funded through a $500,000 CDBG grant; the County committed to a 50% match and ultimately contributed nearly $400,000 of local funds. The expansion into telemedicine services includes private funding via a partnership with OnMed.
Over the last year, AHFC connected staff and systems to rural community partners to help build housing they’ve needed for years but have been unable to advance by themselves. The Last Frontier Housing Initiative model follows the trend in recent years to connect newer partners through shared infrastructure (in this case, AHFC) that enables them to do more than they could in isolation. It’s modern, it’s needed, and it’s working for Alaskans living and working in five of the most isolated places in America.
Alaska has high development costs, there are sponsor capacity issues, and there are a number of challenges that make development and expanding housing opportunities complicated. About 80% of Alaskan communities (350 total) have a population of less than 1,000 people. You can’t drive to many of those communities. Through the Last Frontier Housing Initiative, the state took some of the lessons learned from the pandemic to leverage key partners – approaching local governments with funding for housing. All five local governments the state approaches agreed to work with them, and the first housing units are already available.
Escalante Meadows has completed a Rental Assistance Demonstration (RAD) conversion of public housing to become permanent supportive housing for Veterans, households experiencing homelessness, and other vulnerable individuals. There is a total of 80 units: 3 Veterans Affairs Supportive Housing (VASH), 9 RAD, and 63 Section 8 units. The Escalante Meadows development team experienced challenges related to engineering, architectural and environmental that involved creative problem-solving solutions. Other states are encouraged to consider using federal Housing Trust Fund (HTF) dollars and other funding programs to model California’s Housing for a Healthy California Program or consider requiring the use of their respective state funds to build permanent supportive housing for those who are chronically homeless.
The total development cost of $58.7 million is funded by:
The HTF/HHC Program funding leveraged $54.1 million in public and private financing for Escalante Meadows, and increased and preserved the California affordable housing stock for individuals and households experiencing homelessness at or below 30 percent of the Area Median Income (AMI), pursuant to program requirements.
The unprecedented nature of Hurricane Katrina necessitated flexibility and innovation when determining the best use of disaster recovery funding on the storm-ravaged Gulf Coast and, indeed, throughout the state. State and community leaders were challenged to think beyond the boundaries of past disaster recovery programs and explore revolutionary strategies, partnerships, and opportunities.
In January 2015, the Mississippi Gulf Coast Community College (MGCCC) received a $12,075,000 Katrina CDBG Economic Development award to construct a nursing school and simulation center and consolidate its nursing and healthcare programs into a single, state-of-the-art, centrally located campus at the Tradition Development on Highway 67 in Biloxi, Harrison County, Mississippi. The project provided benefit to low- to moderate-income (LMI) persons through job creation and providing training and support services to financially disadvantaged students.
The facility includes a 4,812 square foot hospital space, teaching and learning laboratory that can accommodate a variety of settings, such as emergency, obstetric/pediatric, critical care, medical and surgical, and community/home health. The Bryant Center offers multiple class formats to meet the needs and schedules of its diverse student body. Accomplishments and recognition for the program include: