EOHED Programs and Grants - Communities and Municipalities

The Administration recognizes the importance of communities as engines of economic growth. EOHED focuses on supporting neighborhoods and spaces, and recognizes that infrastructure plays an outsized role in supporting quality of life for residents and providing opportunities for businesses.

Table of Contents

Community One Stop for Growth

Several programs administered by the Executive Office of Housing and Economic Development, the Department of Housing and Community Development, and MassDevelopment are now part of the Community One Stop for Growth. The One Stop single application portal and collaborative review process of community and economic development grant programs that make targeted investments based on a Development Continuum. This process streamlines the experience for the applicant and better coordinates programs and staff on engagement and grant making. It also reorients the State from a passive reviewer of funding requests to an active partner in economic growth strategy, priorities, and investment. 

One Stop programs are denoted below with an *. 

Infrastructure

Mass Broadband Institute - MBI's mission is to make affordable high-speed Internet available to all homes, businesses, schools, libraries, medical facilities, government offices, and other public places across the Commonwealth.

Community Development Block Grants - Massachusetts CDBG Program is a federally funded, competitive grant program designed to help small cities and towns meet a broad range of community development needs.

Housing Choice* - This competitive capital grant program is open to municipalities that have achieved the Housing Choice Designations. Grants fund infrastructure improvements in those communities that have shown commitment to advancing sustainable housing production.

Last Mile - The Last Mile Infrastructure Grant program provides funding for eligible towns for municipally-owned broadband networks. 

Seaport Economic Council - Seaport Economic Council grants are awarded on a competitive basis, and offer flexible funding to empower communities to bring forward the best ideas and projects for cultivating and stimulating the maritime economy and job growth.

MassWorks* - The MassWorks Infrastructure Program is a competitive grant program that provides the largest and most flexible source of capital funds to municipalities and other eligible public entities primarily for public infrastructure projects that support and accelerate housing production, spur private development, and create jobs throughout the Commonwealth.

Massachusetts Dredging ProgramThe MA Dredging Program provides construction-phase funding to coastal municipalities for saltwater dredging. Grants are competitively awarded with a focus on shovel-ready projects that support the economic vitality, vibrant waterfronts, maritime safety, or ecosystem health of Massachusetts’s harbors.

I-Cubed - The Infrastructure Investment Incentive Program (“I-Cubed”) is an innovative public-private partnership created to spur economic development and job growth in the Commonwealth through support for large-scale private real estate development projects with significant new public infrastructure requirements estimated to be in the range of $5 million to $50 million.

People & Places

Credit for Life - Through an extensive application process, the Treasurer’s Office of Economic Empowerment awards high schools across the Commonwealth funding to expand or establish financial education programs.

Operation Money Wise - This program supports Massachusetts non-profit organizations, public agencies, and higher education institutions that promote financial literacy and empowerment to members of the Military, Veteran, Family and Survivor Community (MVFSC) across the state.

Chapter 43D - Expedited Local Permitting - This program offers communities a tool to promote targeted economic and housing development.

Community Investment Tax Credit Program (CITC) - CITC is designed to enable local residents and stakeholders to work with and through community development corporations (CDCs) to partner with nonprofit, public, and private entities to improve economic opportunities for low and moderate income households and other residents in urban, rural, and suburban communities across the Commonwealth.  

MA Downtown Initiative (MDI)* - This program offers a range of services and assistance to communities seeking help on how to revitalize their downtowns.

Urban Agenda* - The Urban Agenda grant program offers funding, on a competitive basis, to local partnerships in selected urban communities, to implement projects that are based on creative collaborative work models with the goal advancing and achieving economic progress.

Community Empowerment and Reinvestment Grant Program - This program seeks proposals for projects and programming located within eligible communities that entail community-driven responses to community-defined economic opportunities, and that build leadership, collaboration, and capacity at the local level. The Administration recognizes that some communities face unique challenges, and that the path to success lies in tapping into and strengthening the unique local assets that they already possess.

New Markets Tax Credit - The New Markets Tax Credit (NMTC) Program was created to stimulate investment in designated low-income communities. 

Site Readiness* - The Site Readiness Program, administered by MassDevelopment, aims to increase the Commonwealth’s inventory of large, well-located, project-ready sites; to accelerate private-sector investment in industrial and commercial projects; and to support the conversion of abandoned sites and obsolete facilities into clean, actively-used, tax-generating properties.

Real Estate Services* - MassDevelopment provides a full range of real estate services in communities across the Commonwealth. 

Commonwealth Places* - Commonwealth Places provides a creative funding mechanism to advance community placemaking projects throughout Massachusetts. The statewide program will help fund place-based, community-driven projects – art installations, parks, bike trails, markets, and more – that revitalize downtowns and neighborhood commercial districts.

TDI Equity - MassDevelopment uses its TDI Equity Investment Program to support properties with potential to spur transformative development in and around a TDI District.

Brownfields* - The Brownfields Redevelopment Fund finances the environmental assessment and remediation of brownfield sites in Economically Distressed Areas (EDAs) of the Commonwealth.

Underutilized Properties Program* - This new grant program, administered by MassDevelopment, funds projects that will improve, rehabilitate or redevelop blighted, abandoned, vacant or underutilized properties to achieve the public purposes of eliminating blight, increasing housing production, supporting economic development projects, increasing the number of commercial buildings accessible to persons with disabilities.

Rural and Small Town Development Fund* - This new program funds capital projects exclusively for qualifying Rural and Small Towns, including the construction, modernization, or major repair of physical infrastructure; the acquisition of property or interests in property; the purchase of long-lived equipment; or feasibility, engineering or schematic designs for capital projects.

Community Planning Grant Program* - Community Planning grants may be used for a variety of activities related to land use, including the development of a Master Plan, Housing Production Plan, Zoning Review and Updates, Urban Renewal Plan, Land Use Plan, Downtown Plan, Parking Management Plan, Feasibility Study, or Other Strategic Plan.

Regions & Hubs

Regional Economic Development Organizations - Working with the Office of Business Development, REDOs facilitate regional projects that grow businesses and the Massachusetts economy. Their successes attract new employers and foster existing businesses.

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