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The Council of State Community Development Agencies (COSCDA) announced the recipients of its annual awards at the 2024 Annual Conference in Reno, Nevada. The awards are designed to provide our members with national recognition for excellent projects.
This award recognizes an individual COSCDA member who had made the most significant contribution to the work and mission of COSCDA during the last five years.
Heather Lagrone has served as a COSCDA board member and the Committee Leadership Chair of Disaster Recovery since 2021. She actively participates in COSCDA board meetings, workshops, and conferences where she serves as session moderator, presenter, and trainer.
Heather is always willing to participate and provide input on COSCDA policy positions. She frequently visits Capitol Hill to conduct outreach related to disaster recovery. Heather consistently offers her and her staff’s expertise to aid other states and territories. She counsels other states regarding the administration of CDBG-DR funds and provides technical assistance to any grantees in need of help. Heather shares resources such as standard operating procedures, work instructions, Action Plans, and schedules one-on-one meetings to talk through various subjects or unique challenges other states are experiencing.
Heather advocated for the development of a COSCDA Disaster Recovery Bootcamp to help build disaster recovery staffing capacity across the nation. She provided significant input and contributions towards the development of the first COSCDA DR Bootcamp held in Denver, Colorado in 2023. Heather was actively involved in the second delivery of the COSCDA Disaster Recovery Bootcamp that was hosted October 2024 in Austin, Texas.
Heather embodies the COSCDA mission. Her constant desire to advocate for common community development goals of the states through her involvement in the development of policies and recommendations on community development issues related to disaster recovery.
She keeps members informed through the disaster recovery committee meetings on federal and state legislative and administrative developments that may affect them. Heather enhances the capacity of the states to deal effectively with community development issues through participating in COSCDA webinars, presentations, and training. She encourages and assists states in the development and implementation of their programs and facilitates the exchange of information by readily offering up existing guidance and materials developed in Texas.
This award recognizes innovative activities, policies or programs that have been implemented at the state level, which have demonstrated success in solving community needs.
The Louisiana Office of Community Development – Disaster Recovery (LOCD-DR) has successfully showcased the implementation of FORTIFIED construction standards through various projects, with the Les Maisons de Bayou Lafourche development in Lockport, Louisiana, being a prime example. This 9-acre development, spearheaded by Gulf Coast Housing Partnership (GCHP) under the Louisiana Strategic Adaptations for the Future (LA SAFE) program, illustrates the efficacy of these standards. Construction began in August 2020 and concluded on October 29, 2021. The project, funded by $7 million in Community Development Block Grant-National Disaster Resilience funds from the Louisiana Housing Corporation and the Office of Community Development, totaled $10.9 million.
Les Maisons de Bayou Lafourche, a 35-unit resilient multifamily housing development, withstood the impact of Hurricane Ida, suffering only minor damage despite being 90% complete at the time of the storm. This outcome demonstrates the robustness of FORTIFIED construction standards, which are advanced guidelines aimed at enhancing the durability of buildings against natural disasters by using stronger materials and innovative design techniques.
Key players in this project included Gulf Coast Housing Partnership as the developer, VergesRome Architects, Dana Brown & Associates as landscape architects, Energy Efficient NOW as energy consultants, and general contractors Level Construction & Development and Grant Ethridge Construction. Major funders included the Louisiana Housing Corporation, LOCD-DR, R4 Capital, Federal Home Loan Banks of Atlanta and Dallas, Cedar Rapids Bank & Trust, Sterling Bank, Regions Bank, and Home Bank.
The development features 16 duplex and tri-plex homes with 35 one, two, and three-bedroom apartments. Twenty-eight units are designated for families earning 50 to 60 percent of the area median income, six units are market-rate, and one unit is for an on-site manager. Additionally, five units are designed for mobility impairments, and three for sensory impairments, with preferences for veterans, individuals with disabilities, and seniors.
The success of Les Maisons de Bayou Lafourche in withstanding Hurricane Ida has proven the practical benefits of FORTIFIED construction standards, setting a precedent for their adoption nationwide. The transferability of these standards to other states can be facilitated through uniform building codes, best practices, training programs, incentives, public awareness campaigns, legislative support, collaborations, research, adaptability to local conditions, and pilot programs.
Louisiana’s leadership in resilient housing began with a $98 million grant from HUD’s National Disaster Resilience Competition, of which $47 million funded LA SAFE. This initiative, launched in 2017, aimed to develop strategies in response to coastal land loss and increasing flood risks. The Les Maisons de Bayou Lafourche project is one of 12 pilot projects under LA SAFE and incorporates advanced resilient construction techniques, making it the first government-funded housing project in Louisiana with such features.
The collaboration between LOCD-DR and the Insurance Institute for Business and Home Safety (IBHS) to create the FORTIFIED Multifamily standard was pivotal. It extended the resilience benefits previously limited to single-family homes and commercial buildings to multifamily developments. The Les Maisons de Bayou Lafourche project served as a crucial pilot, helping to refine and demonstrate the practicality of these standards.
The project’s success also influenced other programs like the Piggyback Resilient Mixed-Income (PRIME) programs, which incorporated lessons learned to improve guidelines, certification processes, and compliance monitoring, ultimately leading to more resilient housing developments.
This award recognizes state programs that have demonstrated, during a sustained period, positive results in improving the lives of lower income persons in various program areas.
The CDBG-funded Colonia Economically Distressed Areas Program (CEDAP) represents a priority of the Texas legislature to ensure that CDBG funds are available to provide first-time water and wastewater connections to low- to-moderate-income households. The program was established at a time when the state funding often used for first-time utility construction in distressed areas (known as EDAP) was not permitted to be used on private property, including construction of house-to-line connections. In 1996, the legislature instructed the State CDBG program to make colonia funding available to ensure that LMI households were able to connect to the new infrastructure. Even after the restrictions on state bond funding were eased, CDBG and EDAP continue to partner to ensure that LMI households did not bear the cost burden of accessing the system, with CDBG funding both the construction costs and connection fees for eligible households.
Center Point Project:
Kerr County officials have been motivated to improve living conditions and especially sanitary sewer infrastructure for decades, and have steadily worked with multiple stakeholders to piece together solutions for each community. The feasibility study for Center Point described the situation as:
Many [on-site septic systems] in Center Point are totally out of compliance with current TCEQ standards, and serve properties that are too small to accommodate updated systems; or are in close proximity to water wells for domestic use. The location of the Center Point Community in Eastern Kerr County subjects it to growing pressure of suburban development from San Antonio. This continuing pressure for development utilizing septic tanks and individual wells is rapidly depleting the ground water resources and posing significant proliferation of septic tank seepage into streams and rivers.
With extensive collaboration between state agencies, local officials, and grant professionals, the County constructed a system to serve the entire Center Point community, including three phases of funding through the Texas Water Development Board (TWDB) from at least two funding sources, four phases of CDBG funding for connections, 33 miles of collection lines, multiple lift stations, and access easements across nearly 60 properties.
Working with so many partners required flexibility. The CDBG program managed the grants as individual contracts, yet kept an eye to the big picture and allowed more extensive amendments than typically permitted when the anticipated construction phases did quite line up. The TWDB staff worked with CDBG staff to document construction progress, meet grant expenditure deadlines and program requirements, and avoid duplication of benefits, and County staff and their consultant team maintained communication and compliance with all programs, including accepting financial impacts when original plans had to be revised. Ultimately, the project was successful because each entity was dedicated to the mission of improving conditions for this community.
The City of Lancaster, a core city within South Central Pennsylvania, implemented a homebuyer project design that provides affordable housing for low to moderate income families. The city and the developer, SACA Development Corporation, a division of the Spanish American Civic Association, utilized vacant, blighted land for construction of nine standard dwelling units that include three bedrooms and two baths or three bedrooms and one & ½ baths. One of the units is an accessible unit designed to meet the mobility needs of its occupants.
Project Impact
Lancaster City is rich in heritage, history, and culture and covers approximately seven square miles with 56,000 residents. The city is located within driving distance of major East Coast areas such as Philadelphia, Baltimore, Washington DC and New York City.
Conestoga North is a redevelopment project in Lancaster City’s southeast area located at Chesapeake Street near South Duke Street. The overall project was broken into two phases. The homes are owner-occupied, with purchase subject to income guidelines published by the U.S. Housing and Urban Development.
The project was built on a formerly vacant piece of land that had never been developed. The land was blighted, covered with underbrush and trees and contained many tons of illegally dumped garbage and trash over the years of its existence. All units were built in compliance with DCED and locally adopted housing standards as well as energy saving construction (HUD’s Green Building Standards and the City adopted International Residential Code for One- and Two-family Dwelling).
Phase One was completed in late June 2021 and created nine new homebuyer units for low to moderate-income families. Phase Two of the Conestoga North townhomes was completed in 2023 and created an additional nine new homebuyer units for low to moderate-income families. All 18 units were sold in the price range of $155,000 – $177,000 and are all occupied.
Project Support
Support from local and state partnerships to advance this affordable low-income housing project was funded by a mix of public and private partnerships including grants from:
With assistance from Community First Fund, SACA, a Community Housing Development Organization (CHDO) acquired the site on Chesapeake Street. Phase One and Phase Two were both CHDO set-aside funded projects.
Project Funding
Funding support was provided from a broad range of multiple sources committed to affordable housing in a collaborative effort.
The project leveraged:
A total of $3,680,000 dollars was invested in Conestoga North Project – Phase Two.
During the pandemic the team at Alaska Housing Finance Corporation (AHFC) underwent a digital transformation starting with the development of a comprehensive portal for managing client data during rent relief. From there, the systems and processes evolved to address the needs of the Housing Stabilization and Recovery program in which Emergency Rental Assistance funds were utilized to help people escape homelessness. It was this program that gave rise to the idea of Dynamic Capacity Modeling, a new method of budgeting that automatically calculates and adjusts the number of people a service provider can assist based on their total award and their total obligations. This method allows partners to cut down on administrative costs and maximize the number of participants they are able to help in their programs.
Through Dynamic Capacity Modeling, calculations are done in real-time, removing the need for service providers to try to project their expected spend rates themselves. Not only is Dynamic Capacity Modeling extraordinarily flexible, it is the catalyst responsible transforming all AHFC programs. But wait, there’s more! In order to better integrate existing technology with client needs, AHFC shifted from a contractor approach to working internally with AHFC’s own IT department to optimize management of the portal systems. We also leveraged technology, cross-department collaboration, and an iterative development approach to incorporate feedback from stakeholders to make changes and enhancements before going live. This process continues while the portal is active to improve user experience, data quality, and program management.
Dynamic Capacity Modeling Explained
Picture an electric vehicle (EV); the first thing that it needs is to charge. This represents the initial funding budget and allocation of slots in a program. The potential range of the car depends on how it is driven, the topography of the trip, and the various built-in efficiencies designed to preserve or extend the charge. These variables are calculated behind the scenes, leaving the driver with one simple metric: the remaining distance the EV can travel. Dynamic Capacity Modeling calculates and synthesizes budgeting variables for AHFC’s partners in much the same way.
Dynamic Capacity Modeling maximizes the number of people AHFC’s partners can help while incentivizing them to remain under budget. There is some complicated math involved, and a lot of behind-the-scenes activity provided by the system, but similar to an EV, the only thing the grantee has to worry about is the range, or rather the number of available slots, prominently featured on their portal dashboards.
Meeting the Need
Like most states, at the start of the pandemic, Alaska’s government and AHFC employed contractors to help build out a method to administer the Rent Relief funds. However, Alaska insisted on using tailored technologies to build something truly unique to their needs. This community specific mindset is at the core of AHFC’s push towards a more data-driven model for our programs. To this end, AHFC worked closely with a contractor to build a bespoke portal system for the Housing Stabilization and Recovery program. After AHFC’s team developed the equation that makes Dynamic Capacity Modeling possible, there were some challenges integrating it with the contractor-built system. While successful, the first iteration of the portal system was too specific and rigid to adequately manage and address our legacy programs’ dynamic situations and community needs.
Enter AHFC’s own IT department! A major consideration for this system was its longevity and application to legacy programs, as well as ensuring the IT team could maintain and enhance the system in its current state. Once management of these systems transferred to AHFC’s IT department, they were able to simplify the portal for users while making it flexible enough to fit other programs. AHFC decided to continue to work internally with IT to build a new system around Dynamic Capacity Modeling, which would be the first piece of a larger initiative to shift all AHFC programs towards this newly designed budgeting system.
The H3C project is a GCHP Health + Housing pilot development located in Central City, New Orleans, supported by financial backing from MCO, Aetna, and CVS Health. The project’s name underscores its commitment to Health, Culture, Community, and Commerce, core principles of the Central City neighborhood. H3C is a model of creative problem-solving and innovation, seamlessly integrating housing and health services to enhance resident well-being. The project features an on-site Federally Qualified Health Center (FQHC) managed by DePaul Community Health Centers, offering comprehensive medical and behavioral services, a pharmacy, and Medicaid enrollment assistance. This integration aims to improve health outcomes in the community.
H3C provides diverse housing options to accommodate various income levels, including Permanent Supportive Housing and market-rate units. It includes 92 apartment homes for seniors aged 55 and older, with amenities tailored to this demographic, such as fitness groups and IT training. The project emphasizes community-oriented design with interconnected buildings, courtyards, and rooftop spaces that encourage social interaction and physical activity. H3C is Louisiana’s first Fitwel-certified building, signifying its commitment to health and wellness standards.
The project also incorporates art and sustainability initiatives, like a mural promoting healthier habits and apartments equipped with ion water meters for leak detection. These elements showcase H3C’s holistic approach to community development. Importantly, H3C’s design and operational framework are adaptable to other regions, with transferable aspects like the integration of healthcare and housing, diverse unit types, and community spaces.
H3C faced significant challenges, including economic and health inequalities in a region with high income disparity and low life expectancy. Limited federal and state funding, along with the impact of COVID-19 on supply chains and material costs, necessitated innovative financing solutions and strategic cost management. Despite these hurdles, H3C managed to overcome these obstacles through support from Medicaid Managed Care Organizations like Aetna and meticulous financial planning.
The project has significantly impacted the local community, revitalizing a former dairy processing plant site near New Orleans’ Central Business District. It has contributed to economic development in the Oretha Castle Haley corridor, reducing crime and vacancies while increasing jobs and population. The on-site health center is expected to serve 5,500 patients annually, growing to 10,000 over a decade, primarily serving Medicaid recipients and the uninsured. The strategic location ensures residents have access to essential services and amenities, enhancing their quality of life.
H3C addresses the affordable housing shortage in New Orleans, with all 192 apartments designated for individuals earning 60 percent or less of the area median income. It includes units reserved for project-supported vouchers and formerly homeless individuals, providing crucial economic relief and stability. The project also meets community needs by offering healthcare in a designated Health Professional Shortage Area and addressing sustainability with energy-efficient features and water conservation measures.
The project’s success is bolstered by widespread support from local stakeholders, government agencies, and private foundations. Strategic financial management during the COVID-19 pandemic, including opportunistic procurement and competitive negotiations, helped manage increased development costs. The funding structure, comprising loans, grants, equity, and private contributions, along with operating subsidies like Section 8 vouchers, ensures ongoing affordability and support for residents.
H3C stands as a model of innovative, community-focused development, addressing critical needs in affordable housing and healthcare while promoting sustainability and well-being. It offers a scalable framework for other regions, demonstrating the potential for large-scale developments to revitalize communities and improve residents’ lives.
630 Eye Street, N.W.
Washington, D.C. 20001
(202) 293-5820