Archinect - News

U.S. residential construction is accelerating, but not all regions are feeling it

2021-07-21T13:48:00-04:00

Residential construction in the United States is accelerating, despite the high costs of materials caused by the COVID-19 pandemic, according to new data released by the U.S. Census Bureau and the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development (HUD). Within their report, which focuses on new residential construction in June 2021, the government bodies noted that housing permit authorizations, housing starts, housing under construction, and housing units completed, are all significantly higher than June 2020.

The report notes that last month, almost 1.6 million housing units were authorized with permits, marking a 5% decrease on the month previous, but a 23% increase on the number of permits issued in June 2020. Meanwhile, over 1.64 million housing units started the construction process last month, an increase of 6% from May, and a 29% increase on June 2020.

Overall, there was a 14% increase in the number of housing units under construction in June 2021 versus June 2020, markin...

They need much more: $90 Million granted for affordable housing in Tribal communities

2021-04-14T11:50:00-04:00

The U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development (HUD) has announced over $90 million in grants allocated for affordable housing in Tribal communities. The funds, distributed to 24 Tribes and Tribally Designated Housing Entities (TDHEs) are intended to support the construction of new houses, the rehabilitation of existing housing, and the delivery of vital infrastructural projects.

Awarded as part of HUD’s Indian Housing Block Grant (IHBG), the funds are expected to support the construction of approximately 350 housing units. Commenting on the funding, HUD Secretary Marcia L. Fudge said “this past year was a stark reminder of just how important access to safe, stable housing is — especially in Tribal communities disproportionately impacted by the COVID-19 pandemic. The funding HUD is awarding today will support much needed affordable housing investments in Indian Country.”

The Make It Right Foundation's proposal for Native American housing in Montana. Credit: GRAFT

The new...

President Biden takes executive steps to undo discriminatory housing policies

2021-01-28T14:15:00-05:00

President Joe Biden signed an executive order on Jan. 27 directing his administration to end policies that enable discrimination in housing and lending, and acknowledging the federal government’s role in erecting systemic barriers to fair housing.

According to Kriston Capps, writing for Bloomberg CityLab, "Biden’s executive order tasked the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development to review two key rules implemented under the Trump administration. One of those rules governs how cities assess and enforce efforts to reduce segregation, a Civil Rights-era mandate that Trump repeatedly mischaracterized as an attempt to 'abolish the suburbs.' The other rule polices discrimination in rental housing and mortgage lending, standards that were relaxed under former Housing Secretary Ben Carson."

White House wants to use empty commercial space for affordable housing

2020-07-02T12:23:00-04:00

President Donald Trump’s administration is looking at ways to convert a glut of commercial real estate resulting from the coronavirus pandemic and ensuing lockdowns, into affordable housing, Housing and Urban Development Secretary Ben Carson said Wednesday.

HUD Secretary Ben Carson gave remarks on the unlikeliness of things going back to how they were before the pandemic, citing the greater number of people that will work from home in the future. As a result of that new reality, Carson said, according to Bloomberg, "That's going to free up a lot of commercial space, which can be converted to affordable housing to take some of the pressure off."

The HUD Secretary encouraged city officials and local councils to begin pursuing projects in this area, stating that the federal government would provide support to help make moves in this direction occur.

Former HUD secretary Shaun Donovan is running for mayor of New York City

2020-02-10T13:15:00-05:00

Shaun Donovan, the former Secretary for the United States Department of Housing and Urban Development under President Barack Obama, has filed papers to run for mayor of New York City in the upcoming 2021 election.

Donovan is vying to succeed current New York City Mayor Bill de Blasio, who has served two terms as the city's mayor.

Donovan, The New York Times reports, is a native New Yorker who served as HUD Secretary between 2009 and 2014, a period that includes the aftermath and recovery from Superstorm Sandy. Donovan also served as a deputy assistant HUD secretary under President Bill Clinton and as the New York City Department of Housing Preservation and Development under Mayor Michael Bloomberg. Donovan's tenure at HUD followed that of Julian Castro, who himself recently ran for higher office as a Democratic presidential contender.

In a statement published by The New York Times, Donovan writes, “As a lifelong New Yorker, I've committed my life to public service and focused on ...

HUD continues to whittle away at the Fair Housing Act

2020-01-21T16:24:00-05:00

The Fair Housing Act [...] prohibits not only intentional segregation, but also policies and practices whose effect is to discriminate for no defensible reason, even if there is no evidence of a racial motive. Lawyers describe such actions as having a “disparate impact” on minorities. Now, however, the Trump administration is about to put into effect procedures to make it virtually impossible to prove disparate impact, no matter how egregious a discriminatory policy or practice may be.

Richard Rothstein, author of the influential book The Color of Law: A Forgotten History of How Our Government Segregated America, presents an opinion piece in The New York Times highlighting the latest multi-pronged efforts on the part of the United States Department of Housing and Urban Development (HUD) to dismantle the effectiveness and legal significance of the Fair Housing Act under the administration of President Donald Trump.

The latest efforts aim to make filing lawsuits arguing that policies and practices generate acts of de-facto racial segregation more difficult and onerous.

Trump administration to help L.A. homelessness efforts. But there's a catch

2020-01-17T11:29:00-05:00

Housing and Urban Development Secretary Ben Carson told Mayor Eric Garcetti in a letter last Thursday that Trump officials are prepared to offer Los Angeles an array of resources, including emergency healthcare services and federal land. However, Carson also suggested in his letter that the government expects changes from L.A. in how it manages homelessness...he wrote, “the city and county of Los Angeles must partner with our efforts and make necessary policy changes.”

The offer follows recent talks between senior Trump administration officials, Mayor Garcetti and Los Angeles County Supervisor Kathryn Barger, reports the Los Angeles Times. It includes potential provision of emergency healthcare services, supplemental emergency shelters and transitional housing, federal land, assistance for law enforcement and "voucher utilization support," writes Times reporters Dakota Smith, Benjamin Oreskes, and Noah Bierman. Moreover, Carson outlined a number of stipulations, including reallocating funding, "empowering and utilizing local law enforcement," and reducing regulations to expedite the construction of affordable housing.

Federal government takes another step away from "affirmatively furthering fair housing"

2020-01-13T14:14:00-05:00

The history of housing discrimination in this country is in significant part a history of deliberate government policy, not market forces or individual choice. Ghettos such as those in Chicago, Detroit, Cleveland and Baltimore, in fact, reflect federal policies of the mid-20th century that made segregation a condition for federal support of various kinds. That was social engineering of the most shameful sort.

The Washington Post editorial board sounds off on a recent plan advanced by United States Department of Housing and Urban Development (HUD) Secretary Ben Carson that seeks to further weaken Obama-era "affirmatively furthering fair housing" regulations.

According to the editorial, the wording of the 2015 ruling has been changed by Carson to shift its focus from advancing "meaningful actions" to "replac[e] segregated living patterns with truly integrated and balanced living patterns," according to The Washington Post, with a new focus on "advancing fair housing choice within the program participant’s control or influence."

The change is one of many recent retreats on the part of the current presidential administration aimed at reversing progressive housing reforms enacted before 2016.

HUD planning to allow anti-trans discrimination in homeless shelters

2019-05-24T14:51:00-04:00

The United States Department of Housing and Urban Development (HUD) is moving to allow federally-funded homeless shelters to deny people admission based on their gender identity.

A proposed HUD rule will allow federally-funded shelters to establish policies “consistent with state and local law” with regards to how shelters “consider an individual’s sex” when they are being admitted by facilities where people are placed into same-sex or gender-segregated accommodations. The ruling will also allow shelters to use a range of factors in making gender determinations, including “privacy, safety, practical concerns, religious beliefs, any relevant considerations under civil rights and nondiscrimination authorities, the individual’s sex as reflected in official government documents, as well as the gender which a person identifies with.”

According to LGBTQ advocates, the proposed rule will effectively gut the Obama-era Equal Access Rule, a 2012 directive that sought to “ensure core [HUD] pr...

NYCHA in danger of a federal takeover

2019-01-02T14:50:00-05:00

According to the United States’ General Accounting Office, receiverships in housing authorities generally result from “longstanding, severe, and persistent management problems that led to deterioration of housing stock.” NYCHA, who took the public advocate’s top spot for the city’s worst landlord in 2018, faces mounting repair costs in excess of $25 billion and has exhibited failures eliminating mold and lead paint, among a laundry list of other nightmarish woes for its tenants.

Mayor Bill De Blasio and the Department of Housing and Urban Development have until the 31st of January to agree on how to run the agency. If that does not happen and Ben Carson declares New York City Housing Authority in substantial default, NYCHA which oversees housing for over 400,000 New Yorkers might be taken over by the federal government.

In the case of an administrative receivership, NYCHA’s affairs would be taken over by HUD, which could potentially involve working together as partners. However, if placed into a judicial receivership, NYCHA would be appointed a receiver, ranging anywhere between HUD officials and private firms, that after personal assessment would have full authority to change the agency and manage its properties to their liking, backed by the court.

Fair Housing Act ruling now vulnerable with Justice Kennedy’s retirement

2018-06-28T15:49:00-04:00

Justice Anthony Kennedy wrote the most important decision on fair housing in a generation. He’ll almost certainly get to see it overturned in his lifetime. When Kennedy announced his long-rumored retirement on Wednesday, he shined a spotlight on the tenuous political balance of the U.S. Supreme Court. Famously a swing vote, Kennedy sided with the court’s four liberal justices on defining decisions on reproductive rights, same-sex marriage, the death penalty, and other hot-button social issues.

The "disparate impact" ruling of the Fair Housing Act is now being reconsidered by HUD. This could lead to the department repealing altogether, despite the fact that the Supreme Court already affirmed its constitutionality. Justice Kennedy's legacy of further integrating society is vulnerable to be overruled under Trump.

Ben Carson recommends raising rents for low-income Americans receiving rental assistance

2018-04-26T14:45:00-04:00

Housing and Urban Development Secretary Ben Carson has announced a proposal to raise rents for low-income Americans relying on federal housing subsidies.

Currently, families and individuals living in subsidized housing are traditionally asked to spend 30% of their adjusted income on rent, with a cap on rent for the program's lowest earners at $50 per month. According to the Washington Post, Carson's new initiative would raise the standard for tenants to 35% of their gross incomes, with the cap on rent for the poorest families rising to $150 a month.

Though the 30-percent rule for measuring affordability has long been accepted as the standard rule of thumb, for families at lower income brackets, even this percentage is way too high when factoring in other necessary expenses as well as the need to save for emergencies. Increasing this by 5% would put further strain on millions of households already burdened by our current system, and would likely force many into homelessness.

In addit...

Fluxus assists HUD manufactured housing regulatory reform

2018-04-04T13:24:00-04:00

The U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development (HUD) has asked for public comments on the current and planned standards for manufactured housing. This action is taken following an executive directive to reduce the U.S. government’s overall regulatory complexity.

In January HUD announced a review of manufactured housing rules seeking public comments on identifying regulations which stifle affordable housing.

Fluxus LLC, a prefabricated building technology platform, has submitted the following comment for the HUD Regulations Division’s consideration in current and planned manufactured housing rules. The group identifies two main issues and offers two recommendations each to address these issues:

Problem Statement No. 1
The definition of HUD-code Manufactured Homes constrains its potential applications typologically, programmatically and aesthetically. According to the definition below, the HUD-code Manufactured Homes applies only to dwellings with an attached permanent chassis on which they are transported to the site in one or more sections.

Recommendation
1. Focus on creating outcome and performance based standards to replace overly prescriptive design standards.
2. Focus on code development cost of ownership not cost of construction

Problem ...

HUD announces delay of AFFH, an Obama-era rule combating housing segregation

2018-01-08T14:24:00-05:00

Last week, HUD published a notice in the Federal Register announcing its intentions to suspend enforcement of the rule until 2020, the New York Times reports. The notice “tells cities already at work on the detailed plans required by the rule that they no longer need to submit them, and the department says it will stop reviewing plans that have already been filed,” according to the paper.

In 2015, the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development, under the Obama administration, issued legislation intended to bolster the enforcement of the Fair Housing Act, a decades-old law designed to combat segregation across the country. The new, Affirmatively Furthering Fair Housing rule, required cities and towns that receive federal funding to examine their local housing patterns for racial bias and to design a plan to address any measurable bias.

However, HUD announced last week, issuing a notice, that it is will be suspending enforcement of the AFFH, now giving cities until 2020 to submit their evaluations. The notice also states that the department will stop reviewing plans that have already been filed by cities.

While the decision does not necessarily repeal the Obama-era legislation, fair housing experts believe the suspension effectively guts the ruling and significantly waters down the government's assessment tools for fair housing by delaying enforcement. Communiti...

A look at the alarmingly long wait times for Section 8 housing in U.S. cities

2018-01-04T13:59:00-05:00

Stacker was one of 188,000 people who applied for 20,000 spots in the voucher waiting line for the Housing Authority of the city of Los Angeles. And that line won’t be moving quickly. The Housing Authority’s Section 8 director, Carlos VanNatter, said only about 200 vouchers become available here every month, basically when a pay raise makes someone ineligible or someone dies.

While the national average wait time for Section 8 vouchers is currently more than two years (with nearly half of all housing authorities having closed their lists to new applicants), the situation in big cities like New York and Los Angeles is so dire that residents have to apply for a coveted spot on the waiting list via a lottery held every few years. And there's no sign of easing: "President Donald Trump's proposed 2018 budget would slash more than $6 billion from the U.S. Housing office, or HUD, which funds Section 8," Marketplace reports.

"Dismantling of the administrative state" under Ben Carson

2017-08-24T13:23:00-04:00

HUD has emerged as the perfect distillation of the right’s antipathy to governing. If the great radical-conservative dream was, in Grover Norquist’s famous words, to “drown government in a bathtub,” then this was what the final gasps of one department might look like.

In his new piece for New York Magazine, Alec MacGillis examines Ben Carson's turbulent and confusing time at HUD. He describes in detail, the situation at the headquarters, the Trump Cuts, and the secretary's July trip to Baltimore.

He had been chosen for a job he had few qualifications for by a man who had few obvious qualifications for his own job, and he was now being left to his own devices to defend the dismantling of the department he was supposed to run, with an underpopulated corps of deputies at his side.

HUD has long been something of an overlooked stepchild within the federal government. Founded in 1965 in a burst of Great Society resolve to confront the “urban crisis,” it has seen its manpower slide by more than half since the Reagan Revolution. (The HUD headquarters is now so eerily underpopulated that it can’t even support a cafeteria; it sits vacant on the first floor.) But HUD still serves a function that millions of low-income Americans depend on — it funds 3,300 p...

Poverty is "a state of mind," states HUD Secretary Ben Carson

2017-05-25T17:36:00-04:00

Poverty is largely “a state of mind”, housing secretary Ben Carson has claimed, dismaying observers who had modest hopes for his tenure. Carson, the neurosurgeon who heads the agency charged with helping low-income Americans gain access to affordable housing, told Sirius XM radio: “You take somebody who has the right mindset, you can take everything from them and put them on the street, and I guarantee in a little while they’ll be right back up there.”

"And you take somebody with the wrong mindset, you can give them everything in the world, they’ll work their way back down to the bottom," Carson continued. The remarks were widely condemned by experts on poverty and homelessness.

As the Secretary of the Department of Housing and Urban Development, Carson is in charge of providing affordable and public housing to the disenfranchised. According to almost universal consensus by experts, poverty is not a choice, but rather a condition attributable to a range of a factors, from where you were born to the color of your skin to bad luck.

Most Americans will live below the poverty line at some point in their life, research by the US government has discovered. In 2015, 13.5% (43.1 million) Americans lived in poverty. This far exceeds most other wealthy countries. And, according to the National Low Income Housing Coalition, "the United States has the greatest share of renters (28.5%) who are severely cost burdened, spending more than half of t...

Ben Carson gets stuck in an elevator during a tour of a public housing complex

2017-04-12T12:24:00-04:00

With limited funds, many American affordable housing projects aren’t in great shape. Their fate is ever more tenuous with the impending budget cuts to the Department of Housing and Urban Development proposed by the Trump Administration. In an ironic twist of fate, the often-sorry state of affordable housing was brought to the attention of the controversial new secretary of the HUD, Ben Carson, when he and his wife were trapped in an elevator at a Miami public complex on Wednesday, as reported by the Miami Herald. The couple were stuck for a full fifteen minutes before firefighters freed them.

Neurosurgeon Ben Carson officially confirmed to run HUD

2017-03-02T13:09:00-05:00

Urban policy experts and progressive activists have expressed intense concern that Carson, in keeping with his strong conservative positions, will seek to cut money for government assistance programs and wear down the social safety net. The Trump administration has recently signaled that many government agencies can expect budget reductions in favor of increasing defense spending.

Realizing the latent dream of every neurosurgeon to one day run the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development, Ben Carson has been officially confirmed by the U.S. Senate to start operating on the HUD. Although his plans for the agency are vague, Carson has spoken of being against granting "extra rights" to any community.

Senator Elizabeth Warren voted to support Carson's confirmation in committee before voting against his actual confirmation, explaining in a written statement that "Dr. Carson’s answers weren’t perfect. But at his hearing, he committed to track and report on conflicts of interest at the agency. If President Trump goes to his second choice, I don’t think we will get another HUD nominee who will even make these promises — much less follow through on them.”

A HUD official has been fired for criticizing Trump

2017-02-17T18:13:00-05:00

A top aide to President Trump’s housing secretary nominee, Ben Carson, was fired and led out of the department’s headquarters by security on Wednesday after writings critical of Mr. Trump surfaced in his vetting, according to two people briefed on the matter. Shermichael Singleton, who was one of the few black conservatives in the Trump administration, had been working at the Department of Housing and Urban Development since Jan. 23 as a senior adviser.

“My party in particular has allowed itself to be taken over by someone who claims to be a Republican but doesn’t represent any of our values, principles or traditions,” wrote Shermichael in The Hill in October of last year.

^ Take a listen to a recent Archinect Sessions episode with our guest Emily Hunt Turner as she talks about her experience working at HUD as a lawyer.

Empathy Deficit; Archinect Sessions #96

2017-02-09T17:36:00-05:00

This week on the podcast we are joined by Emily Hunt Turner. Emily gives us an update on her restaurant/non-profit startup All Square, as we previously featured in her Working Out of the Box feature. We also talk about her time working as a lawyer for the Department of Housing and Urban Development, as she detailed the challenges and struggles in the past, and concerns with the direction of the department moving forward.

Listen to episode 96 of Archinect Sessions, "Empathy Deficit":

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Trump begins presidency by increasing taxes for (middle-class) homebuyers

2017-01-20T19:11:00-05:00

IN ONE OF the first official acts of his presidency, Donald Trump has increased taxes on a million middle-class homebuyers. The Department of Housing and Urban Development on Friday reversed a scheduled 0.25 percent cut in mortgage insurance premiums issued by the Federal Housing Administration (FHA). For a mortgage worth $200,000, this adds $500 to a homebuyer’s annual costs. These insurance fees are effectively a tax on middle-class homeownership.

Don’t want Ben Carson to become Secretary of HUD? Sign this letter

2017-01-09T14:32:00-05:00

A growing list of urban planners, designers, architects, and scholars are putting their weight behind a petition intended to prevent Dr. Ben Carson from becoming the next Secretary of the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development (HUD). He has no prior experience with housing and holds widely-unpopular positions on public housing and other issues. For instance, Carson has described the Fair Housing Act as “socialist”, suggesting he would not enforce it.

Here's how the letter, which is still being edited and written collaboratively, begins:

We, the undersigned, are strongly opposed to the appointment of Dr. Ben Carson as the next Secretary of the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development. Apart from his personal views on a variety of political and social issues, we consider Dr. Carson completely unqualified to anticipate or promote appropriate solutions to the pressing housing and urban needs facing our country.

Created in 1965 to further the nation’s housing and urban...

5 housing experts offer opinions about Ben Carson's direction as HUD head

2016-12-06T14:09:00-05:00

What are the likely policy goals of a neurosurgeon appointed secretary of the Department of Housing and Urban Development by a man who can't stop disappointedly tweeting at Alec Baldwin? "There’s not a dearth of qualified Republicans for that job, so if you choose somebody with no background in housing, it says something about your priorities,” says Julia Gordon, executive vice president of the National Community Stabilization Trust, according to an article in NextCity. Various other housing experts, including Barbara Sard and Benjamin Dulchin, voiced concern about the man with no actual federal housing experience, although former HUD official Maurice Jones was cautiously optimistic, saying that "whatever agenda or whatever priority they have, I look forward to learning what that is." The article goes on to note that:

"a Washington Times op-ed by Ben Carson published in July 2015 indicates that he either does not understand or does not support the AFFH rule [Affirmatively Furtherin...

HUD-winked: Ben Carson takes on housing for Trump and ZHA distances itself from Patrik Schumacher on Archinect Sessions #90, ft. special guest Marc Miller

2016-12-01T15:46:00-05:00

When president-elect Donald Trump nominated Ben Carson to lead the department of Housing and Urban Development, the response was resoundingly: huh?

The neurosurgeon came onto the national political scene in 2015, during his run for the Republican nomination, but after Trump took the presidency and started throwing around the idea of offering a Cabinet position to Carson, a spokesperson said "Dr. Carson feels he has no government experience, he's never run a federal agency. The last thing he would want to do was take a position that could cripple the presidency." Despite all that, Carson is now (almost definitely officially) secretary of HUD (which he knows just enough about to seriously backtrack the agency's work as pushed by Obama). So here we are.

Special guest Marc Miller joins us on the podcast to discuss the implications of Carson's inexperience for HUD, as well as chew on the latest Schumacher-induced controversy: when the architect promoted the privatization of public space an...

What Ben Carson's federal inexperience means for HUD

2016-11-30T16:08:00-05:00

If Carson wants to dramatically change the nature of HUD, all he needs to do is nothing — a course of action he seems temperamentally inclined to accept. Under Carson, HUD could stop enforcement of that "socialist" Fair Housing Act. It could stop prodding local governments to increase access to homes. It could look the other way when local ordinances sequester government-mandated affordable housing away from those with enough pull to say "not in my backyard."

Related on Archinect:

President-elect Trump offers HUD post to Ben Carson

2016-11-23T13:19:00-05:00

U.S. President-elect Donald Trump has offered the post of secretary of housing and urban development to former presidential candidate Ben Carson, who will consider it over the Thanksgiving holiday, a Carson spokesman said on Tuesday. "The president-elected asked him to consider it and he's considering it," Carson spokesman Armstrong Williams said. Carson, a retired surgeon, dropped out of the 2016 presidential race in March and backed Trump.

More on the US Department of Housing and Urban Development:

Turning down tenants because of criminal records may be discrimination, says HUD

2016-04-04T17:36:00-04:00

In new guidance, released Monday, HUD tells landlords and home sellers that turning down tenants or buyers based on their criminal records may violate the Fair Housing Act. People with criminal records aren't a protected class under the Fair Housing Act... but blanket policies of refusing to rent to anybody with a criminal record are de facto discrimination, the department says — because of the systemic disparities of the American criminal justice system.

"Because of widespread racial and ethnic disparities in the U.S. criminal justice system, criminal history-based restrictions on access to housing are likely disproportionately to burden African-Americans and Hispanics." - New HUD guidance on criminal records and the Fair Housing Act

For related coverage, check out these links:

NYC to receive $176 million in federal funds for flood-protection proposal

2016-01-22T15:25:00-05:00

[Through a national competition by the Department of Housing and Urban Development,] The money would be used to help fortify a stretch of shoreline from Montgomery Street on the Lower East Side to the northern tip of Battery Park City. Specific measures have not yet been determined, but could include adding sea walls and temporary flood walls that could be deployed before a storm, and building grass berms that could double as recreational areas.

Not to be confused with the Rebuild By Design competition-winning proposal, "The BIG U", from 2014.

Rebuild by Design Wins Innovation Award

2015-06-09T13:37:00-04:00

Each year, the Administrative Conference of the United States (ACUS) bestows its Walter Gellhorn Innovation Award to a federal agency with the best model practice that can be adopted government-wide. Today, ACUS announced that the 2015 Walter Gellhorn Innovation Award is being presented to U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development's Rebuild by Design Competition.

There's something of a mise-en-abyme quality to a competition winning an award, but it's a good occasion to remember the Rebuild by Design was, after all, not quite your regular competition. Organized in the aftermath of Hurricane Sandy and funded primarily by the US Department of Housing and Development and the Rockefeller Foundation, the competition gathered some of the brightest names in architecture and the six winning proposals will actually be implemented.

Harriet Tregoning, HUD's Principal Deputy Assistant Secretary for Community Planning and Development, states, "We're absolutely thrilled to receive this recognition on behalf of the many partners who came together to think of new ways to consider the challenge of how we prepare for natural disasters."

Take a look at winning projects here.