HUD Launches Community Tour to Promote ‘Prosperity Playbook’

HUD Secretary Julián Castro on Wednesday launched a tour of five communities nationwide to promote the Department’s new “Prosperity Playbook,” which is a compilation of online resources written for and by state and local decision makers, according to an announcement from HUD.

Castro’s tour to promote the Prosperity Playbook began Wednesday in Kansas City and will continue on to Denver, San Francisco, Atlanta, and Minneapolis. The Prosperity Playbook will provide a resource to assist community leaders with thinking regionally to find solutions for providing affordable housing and economic opportunities in their respective communities.

“In too many communities across our great nation a child’s zip code determines how far they can go in life and what they will achieve,” said HUD Secretary Julián Castro. “Creating inclusive communities is not always popular and forces us to have difficult conversations about our nation’s most challenging unresolved issues of class, race and discrimination. Through these engagement sessions we hope to extract the best ideas from communities already doing great work, share these findings and lift up other communities in their efforts to increase mobility for our nation’s most vulnerable citizens.”

According to HUD, the Prosperity Playbook is a collection of the best ideas for local leaders who are committed to working together regionally to solve the most difficult issues their communities are facing. The five communities on the tour were the initial five to contribute to the Playbook. On the tour, Castro will highlight the work of local leaders who have been at the forefront of regional efforts to increase access to opportunities.

Following the five-community tour, each community that contributed to the Playbook will create a regional blueprint outlining the best practices and ideas that they believe will help them overcome specific challenges and make their communities more inclusive. HUD will then make those blueprints available online as a resource for state and local leaders to use.