PRDOH) is pleased to announce the launch of the City Revitalization Program (City-Rev Program). The City-Rev Program allocates one billion two hundred ninety-eight million dollars ($1,298,000,000) from the Puerto Rico Community Development Block Grant Program for Disaster Recovery (CDBG-DR) to help shape and implement the future vision of communities that were affected by Hurricanes Irma and María. Through this funding, the PRDOH will support the seventy-eight (78) municipal governments and other eligible organizations to undertake a variety of recovery activities aimed at reinvigorating downtown areas, urban centers, and key community corridors. These projects will promote the redevelopment, re-greening and restoration of lost natural resources, and further incentivize private investments in restored urban areas.

Eligible projects examples:

• Rehabilitation or reconstruction of eligible buildings;
• Public infrastructure extension and/or improvements;
• Committed affordable rental housing development;
• Affordable housing ownership opportunities;
• Streetscape improvement such as sidewalks, lighting, parking;
• Façade improvements;
• As part of revitalization, where feasible, incorporating the protection and restoration of cultural and historic structures;
• Activities to eliminate architectural barriers for the disabled;
• Construction improvements to public spaces (plazas, town squares), cultural and art installations, and recreational areas and amenities;
• Actions that would clear and demolish unoccupied substandard structures that do not duplicate activities conducted under the FEMA Private Property Debris Removal (PPDR);
• Funding eligible activities under the US Department of Commerce Economic Development Administration (EDA) requiring match funding, as well as other similar matching opportunities;
• Implementing a wide range of “RE-Green” initiatives such as using green best practice in infrastructure projects and promoting a positive restorative and protective effect on the natural infrastructure;
• Improving the natural infrastructure;
• Undertaking that support community lifeliness;
• Reforestation and natural resource recovery efforts that may be undertaken via non-profit entities such as “Para la Naturaleza”, in addition to waste re-purposing and reduction initiatives that use “green initiative strategies”;
• Activities that support site development for the provision of safe, sanitary, and decent committed affordable housing opportunities that support workforce and economic development;
• Activities that consider a holistic, multi-benefit approach to downtown area, including co-location with transit-oriented development (TOD), tranfer of development rights (TDR) to increase commercial core density thereby preserving open space, increasing the walkability and use of non-motorized transit (bike lanes), and other modes that improve commercial districts;
• Establishment, rehabilitation, or retrofitting of community resources centers; and
• Activities involving strategic investments in growth nodes that lead to the redevelopment of urban areas that support the UPR Rio Piedras and Mayagüez campuses

Applicants must be one (1) of the following types of entities:

• Unit of General Local Government (Municipal Governments);
• Non-Governmental Organization (501(c)(3)) or Not for Profit Entities;

For example:
• Faith-Based or Community-Based Organizations
• Conservation or Natural Resource Organizations
• Public Schools and or Institutions of Higher Learning

• Other community-based governmental entities:
  • Example: Public Housing Authorities and/or Public Health Facilities