Georgia Tech graduate student Jesse Zaro-Moore (MCRP Class of '14) has been awarded the 2013 Edward McClure Award for the best master's student paper in urban and regional planning from the Association of Collegiate Schools of Planning (ACSP). Zaro-Moore's paper, "Notes from the field on NSP1, NSP2, and NSP3: Policy Alternatives for Mitigating the Effects of Foreclosed and Abandoned Properties on Neighborhoods," was prepared in Professor Dan Immergluck's course on government and housing markets. Zaro-Moore is the third Georgia Tech student to receive the distinguished award over its 27 year history. Alumnus Stan Fitterman (MCRP '88) and Troels Adrian (MCRP '10) received the McClure award for Mortgage redlining in metropolitan Atlanta and Funding Supportive Housing in Georgia, respectively.

Zaro-Moore's winning paper was completed for a policy analysis assignment in which students were asked to develop a framework for analyzing a planning policy and to evaluate the impact of the policy based on the framework. The policy chosen by Zaro-Moore, the Neighborhood Stabilization Program (NSP), began in 2008 under the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development (HUD) in cooperation with the federal government's stimulus plan. At that time, Zaro-Moore worked for a HUD grantee in Macon, Georgia, where he witnessed first-hand the benefits and limitations of the program through its first iteration.

Through this experience, Zaro-Moore noticed that the highly charged political environment surrounding the administration of the NSP created barriers to responding to stakeholder feedback. Through a carefully constructed policy evaluation matrix that incorporated administrative operability, equity, political viability, community benefits, sustainability, affordability, and risk, the three iterations of the program were analyzed to draw lessons for potential future iterations. Zaro-Moore found that the program, designed to rehabilitate and sell homes to qualified applicants, had to walk a tight line between meeting a need for affordable housing and avoiding a backslide into market conditions experienced during the most recent recession due to a lack of middle income housing. Recommendations developed through his examination of Macon's locally-minded tailoring of the NSP include the removal of Community Development Block Grants (CDBG) as a vehicle to deliver stimulus funds in order to create a less constricted policy and the need to distinguish more clearly between neighborhood stabilization and neighborhood revitalization to more effectively define program objectives and provide increased flexibility in applying funds to locally defined problems. 

While the 2013 award was announced at the ACSP Administrator’s Conference, November 14-17, Zaro-Moore will be presented the award in the fall of 2014. The award recognizes superior scholarship in a paper prepared by a master’s student in an ACSP-member school, and submissions may address any topic of investigation generated in city planning-related coursework. Zaro-Moore plans to present his paper at the 2014 ACSP Annual Conference.