LULU GARCIA-NAVARRO, HOST:
Yes, there's a lot going on in Washington this week. But - and you may be relieved at this - we're going to start this hour outside the Beltway. Richmond, Va. - it's a hundred miles south of D.C., and it's already feeling the effects of the Trump administration's agenda. On the campaign trail, Donald Trump said fixing America's cities, like Richmond, was one of his priorities.
(SOUNDBITE OF DEBATE)
PRESIDENT DONALD TRUMP: I will be a president for all of our people, and I'll be a president that will turn our inner cities around.
GARCIA-NAVARRO: But now President Trump has taken aim at a program credited with helping transform whole neighborhoods in many cities across the country. Here's White House Budget Director Mick Mulvaney talking about Community Development Block Grants, one of the programs cut in the president's proposed budget.
(SOUNDBITE OF PRESS CONFERENCE)
MICK MULVANEY: We've spent a hundred and fifty billion dollars on those programs since the 1970s. We can't do that anymore. We can't spend money on programs just because they sound good and...
GARCIA-NAVARRO: We wanted to take a closer look at one neighborhood where federal dollars, through these block grants, have been put to work.
MARION CAKE: My name is Marion Cake, and I'm the Director of Neighborhood Revitalization with project:HOMES.
GARCIA-NAVARRO: We're in the Richmond neighborhood of North Church Hill in a gray pickup truck, an F-150 to be exact. Cake says, in the 1990s, this historic area was hollowed out by crime and neglect. People fled, leaving boarded-up houses and blight.
CAKE: Its history isn't unique. It's suffered a lot of decline and disinvestment in the latter part of the last century. It took a long time for it to reach rock bottom, and it's taking a long time for it to come back.
GARCIA-NAVARRO: The Department of Housing and Urban Development, known as HUD, gave Richmond about $6 million last year to support nonprofits, like project:HOMES, that turn neighborhoods like North Church Hill around. The way it works, says Marion Cake, is that they buy up abandoned houses and make them nice enough to attract people back to the area. It costs more to renovate or rebuild these homes than they sell for. That's where the HUD money comes in.
CAKE: We'll do enough houses in a block to stabilize it, get owner-occupants in there, and then we'll move on to the next one. And typically the private developers can come behind us once we do that.
GARCIA-NAVARRO: So the idea behind this, I'm assuming, is that once you get a few places that are done up and once you get families in there and people who are invested in the neighborhood, they attract other people then and other investment.
CAKE: That's right.
GARCIA-NAVARRO: And that's how - that's like...
CAKE: That's right.
GARCIA-NAVARRO: ...A seed that basically can revitalize the whole neighborhood.
CAKE: That's exactly right. But somebody's got to be first.
GARCIA-NAVARRO: These homes are marketed specifically to people who otherwise couldn't afford a high-quality home near the center of town.
CAKE: From us, they get an opportunity to own a house. And from them, we get neighborhood stability.
GARCIA-NAVARRO: Today, North Church Hill is transformed. Cake says projects like his are part of the reason.
Let's take a look.
As we walk around, Cake points out how few abandoned houses are left. Instead, the rowhouses and single-family homes are brightly painted with neat lawns, porch swings and potted flowers.
Private builders are doing up some of the houses now, and a new supermarket is moving into the area. Projects like this aren't without their controversies, though. Budget hawks like Mick Mulvaney say it's not clear how efficiently tax dollars are spent. There are also questions about gentrification and social equity. Project:HOMES' newest buyer is Amy Weber.
AMY WEBER: Nice to meet you. I'm Amy.
GARCIA-NAVARRO: I'm Lulu.
She lives with her husband and three sons in a three-bedroom, open-plan, two-story home with a red front door and a big backyard. Weber says her family makes about $56,000 a year.
WEBER: We both have worked for InterVarsity Christian Fellowship - it's a faith-based nonprofit that works on college campuses. And then now that we've moved here, I am staying home for a little while.
GARCIA-NAVARRO: They used to live in a two-bedroom, 700-square-foot apartment.
Do you think you could have afforded something like this in any other part of the city or anywhere else?
WEBER: Here in Richmond, absolutely not, not unless it was maybe far away. But even then...
GARCIA-NAVARRO: Even then, yeah.
WEBER: ...Without this program, we probably wouldn't have been able to own in this neighborhood. Or if we did, it would have been a major fixer-upper (laughter)...
GARCIA-NAVARRO: Yeah.
WEBER: ...That was going to require...
GARCIA-NAVARRO: A lot of work...
WEBER: ...A lot of work...
GARCIA-NAVARRO: ...And a lot of money.
WEBER: ...And a lot of money, which we didn't have.
GARCIA-NAVARRO: What did it feel like to own your first home? This is your first home that you've owned?
WEBER: It is. It feels wonderful. We're so grateful that we can start paying a mortgage and, you know, build equity in a home.
(SOUNDBITE OF CONSTRUCTION)
GARCIA-NAVARRO: Across the street, the latest and last house in the current phase of the project is being built. Marion Cake says they hope they can keep the project going. Twenty-five percent of people in Richmond live in poverty. Many neighborhoods still need direct intervention, and he says his project still needs federal funding.
CAKE: It is the only way that I'm aware of to do this painstaking, piece-by-piece re-assembly of a neighborhood. OK. So we just went 10 blocks. That took us 17 years. Any project that takes that amount of time and is that complex is going to require an established administrative infrastructure and stable funding. And HUD provides both.
GARCIA-NAVARRO: City Hall is also worried about the future of federal funding.
MAYOR LEVAR STONEY: It's a serious concern for me.
GARCIA-NAVARRO: That's Mayor Levar Stoney. He's a Democrat and Richmond's youngest-ever mayor, elected at the same time as Donald Trump. Stoney has also made a lot of promises about re-energizing the inner city.
STONEY: What you saw today was the resurging Richmond, a revitalized community that you look back maybe 20 years ago, and it was not a place you would want to raise a family, not a place that you would want to buy a home. Today, there's a good 10 square blocks of new development. And I've gone to business leaders in our city and said - you know what? - I don't expect help from the federal government moving forward. But this is where - a great opportunity for the private sector to step up.
GARCIA-NAVARRO: And what's been their response?
STONEY: They're ready - I mean, they're at the ready.
GARCIA-NAVARRO: Republicans would say this is a good thing. We want to see cities take more responsibility, go to the private sector for the things that they need. You going to the private sector, isn't that really making their case?
STONEY: We pay taxes to the federal government. We deserve to get some of them back as well, particularly for those who are struggling. No locality, particularly localities like inner cities like Richmond, can bear the whole burden of this. Yes, the private sector has and will step up even more. But there should be an expectation for the federal government to do their part as well.
GARCIA-NAVARRO: On HUD funding, the Trump administration disagrees. And that fight isn't the only one looming for Levar Stoney. There's education and infrastructure, immigration and civil liberties, all stretching well beyond North Church Hill.
STONEY: Here in Richmond, I see us controlling our destiny. We're not going to allow our destiny to be controlled by someone who is focused on divisiveness a hundred miles away.
GARCIA-NAVARRO: We'll be returning to Richmond in the coming months to see how his plans for the city and his relationship with Washington unfold. Transcript provided by NPR, Copyright NPR.
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