ALBANY — For the second year, Albany residents will receive funding to improve their homes and surrounding communities.
Mayor Kathy Sheehan and the city’s Love Your Block Team announced that 57 applications for neighborhood projects will receive supplies, resources and volunteers for home beautification projects and other community improvements.
The Love Your Block program, founded in 2009, is run by Cities of Service, an independent organization working nationally to help city leaders and residents work together to improve their communities. Cities of Service is based at John Hopkins University in Baltimore and is supported by both Bloomberg Philanthropies and AmeriCorps.
“Love Your Block is investing in people who are already invested in our neighborhoods,” Sheehan said. “People who are already so in love with their block… that they want to ensure that we are working together to bring the resources that are necessary to help improve those blocks.”
The program helps Albany homeowners, community groups and local nonprofits by addressing urban blight in underserved neighborhoods, including the South End, Arbor Hill, West Hill and neighborhoods in North Albany. These are areas in the city that were subjected to racist redlining practices dating to the late 1930s that designated these neighborhoods, highlighted in red on maps, as too “hazardous” for real estate investment, namely home mortgages. For generations, this left many Black and brown residents sidelined from the economic opportunity created by homeownership and also contributed to racial segregation within American cities.
Councilman Owusu Anane explained that funding the beautification of homes will ultimately expand support to otherwise neglected areas.
“A home is a home, and looks are everything,” Anane said. “The role of government, I believe, is to correct the historical injustices that many of our…
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