University gets $400k HUD grant

The Winston-Salem State University’s Center for Community Safety (CCS) has received a three-year $400,000 U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development grant to address health care, crime prevention and education issues in the Belview and Happy Hill neighborhoods south of the campus. The grant comes through HUD’s Community Outreach Partnership Center program and will draw faculty and students from the university into a variety of active projects to revitalize and strengthen these neighborhoods. Through the HUD grant, CCS is spearheading a much larger role for WSSU in community revitalization as a means of sustaining neighborhood stability. “Though our primary mission is in crime prevention,” said Sylvia Oberle, executive director of the CCS, “we recognize that education, housing, neighborhood revitalization and health care are inextricably linked to efforts to keep neighborhoods and residents safe and to strengthen communities for the long term. This is an excellent partnership for the entire university and for the community.” The grant will enable CCS to establish a WSSU Community Academy in Belview and Happy Hill to provide after-school tutoring and enrichment activities for elementary and middle-school students, parenting skills classes, English as a Second Language (Latino) adult literacy classes, and computer skills training, drawing upon resources from WSSU’s School of Education. The CCS will also direct a housing analysis through WSSU’s School of Business and Economics, sponsor workshops on housing issues and home ownership, and develop a corps of trained housing advocates to assist residents with housing issues. Part of the grant will be used to assist Happy Hill residents to take full advantage of revitalization opportunities through HUD’s Hope VI project in Happy Hill Gardens. Because of residents’ concerns about youth becoming involved in crime in the neighborhoods, the grant will enable WSSU student interns to develop better programming for Youth Crime Watch, a recently established leadership development program, and also expand WSSU’s summer youth sports program to include more teen-age males. The CCS will also work with the Winston-Salem Police Department to conduct workshops for residents in crime prevention and community policing and help develop a neighborhood crime prevention plan. Finally, students in WSSU’s nurse-practitioner program will conduct health screenings and community health fairs for neighborhood residents, and other WSSU faculty and students will teach residents about potential home environmental health hazards and conduct home environmental health audits. The grant will be coordinated by CCS and activities will be concentrated at the Community Outreach Partnership Center, to be established at the Belview Recreation Center, with a branch at the Simms Recreation Center in Happy Hill.