The Gainesville Housing Authority on Thursday hosted its third Working Group Meeting for the East University Avenue Choice Neighborhood Plan.
Stakeholders were encouraged to share their thoughts on potential neighborhood improvements in East Gainesville. The outcomes and initiatives discussed in the working group meeting were then shared with residents for feedback at a second meeting later in the day.
In September 2023, the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development awarded Gainesville a $500,000 Choice Neighborhoods Planning Grant to help revitalize the Pine Meadows, Lake Terrace and East University neighborhoods. Over the last 16 months, local organizations in Gainesville have worked in conjunction with Collabo, an urban planning and design firm based out of Chicago, to develop a comprehensive plan. If they successfully put together a strong Transformation Plan, they will be eligible for an Implementation Grant of up to $50 million to help carry it out.
The third meeting, which Collabo Principal Director Adam Rosa led, focused on four key categories: Community ownership, opportunity, care and connection. Attendees were asked to rank different ideas within each category to get a sense of what issues and initiatives they felt were the most important.
After the vote, the community identified three top priorities: communication of funding resources, code amendments and homeownership project support.
“I always rank communication at the top,” Mayor Harvey Ward said, “There are programs that don’t get used because people have no idea they exist.”
This initiative looks to coordinate with local organizations to make funding resources more accessible to local entrepreneurs and small business owners across various communication platforms.
Organizers also hope to use this grant to develop and implement more effective programs for children in the community. Under the opportunity category, the top priority was youth and teen centers. While truancy intervention and other proposals related to youths ranked lower on the list, stakeholders such as Carla Lewis of the Greater Duval Housing Association believe that many of them go hand in hand.
“I didn’t think about [school truancy] until I saw it on this paper, but I did rank it number two,” Lewis said. “It is extremely important. If they don’t do well here, it doesn’t matter what type of programming we create. If they can’t read, if they can’t do math, all the rest of it doesn’t even matter.”
Residents of the community such as Marian Cruz share the same sentiment. While there are programs and activities curated toward younger children and meetings for adults, she feels that the 12- to 16-year-old age group has been left out.
“I think with the way things are going, our children need to engage and learn how to be part of the community. I would love for that to happen,” Cruz said.
Under the care category, mental health coordination and health services were ranked as most important. After discussion, organizational leaders came to the consensus that ensuring the current health resources were best serving members of the community, and that they were easily accessible, were top priorities.
The final category participants discussed was connection. The paramount concern was a youth and senior shuttle, followed by transit stop improvements. Like many of the other program suggestions, these two initiatives would be most effective if made together. Lewis believes that in order for a youth and senior shuttle to be an effective mode of public transportation, transit stop improvements are necessary.
“The stops in our area are usually standing stops. Some of them are in high grassy areas with nowhere to sit and are not covered by shade,” she said. “The benches are hot, and all of those things steer people away from the public transportation.”
The authority’s resident services representative, Freddie Jones, said he hopes this project will help to engage and communicate with different organizations around the community.
“[I’m looking forward to] seeing how we can collaborate more intentionally so that funding sources that are available are utilized in a way that captures all ends of Gainesville,” he said.
Malcolm Kiner, the authority’s chief operating officer, expressed his excitement toward the entire project as well.
“If we are successful with this effort, it could be catalytic for East Gainesville,” he said. “In terms of housing, in terms of economic development, in terms of bringing everybody (together).”