Rosewood ready for revitalization

AUSTIN (KXAN) - A plan of attack is now under way to transform an east Austin neighborhood riddled with crime and drugs.

The U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development announced last week that the Austin Housing Authority would receive a $300,000 planning grant.

The authority was one of 17 housing agencies across the country to be chosen for the grant. Out of 72 total applicants, Austin was the only city chosen from across the entire state.

 The Austin Housing Authority is focusing its efforts on the Rosewood Courts public housing project, just off of East 12th Street.

The two-year grant was awarded to transform East Austin’s Rosewood neighborhood into a viable and sustainable mixed-income neighborhood, providing a wider variety of public services to community members – including schools, public transit and employment opportunities, officials said.

“With this transformation plan we will hopefully be able to positively impact those negative factors and make it a safer, healthier, and more accessible neighborhood,” said Sylvia Blanco, vice president of housing and community development with the Austin Housing Authority.

The public housing complex built in the 1930s will be center of the revitalization efforts. Some units at Rosewood Courts are still without air conditioning, and residents say the area could use more attention.

“For them to give us a grant, I think that’s a blessing,” said Edwina Reneea Edwards, a Rosewood resident of more than four years. ”Especially for people like myself, because me being an ex-drug addict myself, it’s a break and it's something different."

Austin voters, meanwhile, will soon decide whether to put millions of dollars of bond money toward affordable housing projects in Austin.

Proposition 15 on the Nov. 6 ballot calls for more than $78 million to help develop housing as well as repair existing affordable homes. Some money would be available for transitional housing -- including programs to help homeless people get off the streets.

The Austin Housing Authority has partnered with sponsors like The University of Texas, Goodwill Industries, as well as Austin Community College to help in the planning phase.

The Austin Housing Authority says after the planning grant runs out their next step will be to apply for an implementation grant to put their plan into action.

“We want to ensure that this is not going to be a plan that sits on a shelf, but we are actually going to put in motion,” said Blanco. “Right now we have the planning grant, but the implementation grant is available with upwards of $30 million.”

One-third of the Rosewood population lives below the poverty line, and the area has a violent crime rate three times that of the entire city of Austin. Now the community says they’re ready for a new beginning for a place looking for a second chance.

“I tell everybody, even people on 12th Street, everybody can change -- you have to be willing to change,” said Edwards. “Because there are opportunities out there. You just have to be willing to take those opportunities.”