WASHINGTON -- Andrew Cuomo, an assistant secretary of the Department of Housing and Urban Development, is to announce in Baltimore today a nationwide competition among communities for $1 billion in federal funds for programs to tackle homelessness and rebuild blighted neighborhoods.
The competition is patterned after one overseen by Mr. Cuomo last year in which President Clinton named Baltimore as one of six "empowerment zones" eligible to receive up to $100 million in federal tax breaks.
One major difference, however, will be an accelerated timetable. The empowerment zone competition took the better part of a year. This time, cities and localities will have 45 days to submit applications on how they would spend the money -- and what in the way of cash, land, buildings, city personnel and volunteers they will contribute. After that, HUD has 120 days to announce the awards.
Mr. Cuomo's 1 p.m. visit at the Johns Hopkins University's Berman Auditorium was originally scheduled to be the formal ceremony for the designation of Baltimore as an empowerment zone. Yesterday, however, HUD announced that he would also use the occasion to kick off the new competition.
"The lion's share of that money -- about $900 million of it -- is for the homeless," Mr. Cuomo said in an interview last night. "But it is the homeless, writ large. It is people who are on the verge of homelessness, it is people who are one paycheck away from homelessness. The programs [developed by the cities] can be housing services, training or jobs for low-income people."
Mr. Cuomo is to be joined at today's meeting by Mayor Kurt L. Schmoke and Lt. Gov. Kathleen Kennedy Townsend, a point he mentioned several times in the interview.
"You know who the lieutenant governor of Maryland is, don't you?" he said. As it happens, Mr. Cuomo is married to another daughter of former Sen. Robert F. Kennedy -- and Ms. Townsend is his sister-in-law.
But Mr. Cuomo, a longtime advocate for the homeless, had other reasons to sound ebullient about his meeting in Baltimore today.
At a time Republicans in Congress are taking aim at a variety of Democratic programs, this money appears to have been spared.
Last week, Mr. Cuomo watched nervously as the House Republicans pared away at the HUD budget. "But they didn't touch this money," he said.
For his part, Mr. Schmoke has been under fire during the past week over a HUD-related issue. The Sun recently detailed myriad problems with a $25.6 million no-bid public housing repair program. In response to allegations that much of the work was substandard and that the city was billed too much, the mayor replied that "only federal funds, not local tax dollars" were used.