Introduction:
Municipalities often face conflicting pressures for managing growth: protecting the area’s natural resources and character, while meeting the housing needs of current and future residents. The Housing and Conservation Planning Program (HCPP) will enable municipal leaders to get valuable financial and technical resources to help them develop local plans to make their communities better places to live, and to bring citizens together to help shape the future of their community.

Grant Types:
The Program will award technical assistance grants to interested communities within four planning stages, each stage leading up to the implementation of a growth and development strategy that addresses housing and conservation together in an interrelated manner. These include:

1. Study housing and natural resource values, locations, and economic impacts;
2. Develop and adopt a town-wide Growth and Development Strategy;
3. Amend the master plan to be consistent with that Strategy; and
4. Implement the strategy through audits of and revisions to zoning, subdivision and site plan regulations.