Manchester holds public hearing on HUD consolidated plan; residents press for affordable housing, homeless services and public facilities

City of Manchester planning officials held a public hearing to gather community input for the city’s U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development (HUD) five‑year consolidated plan and the FY2026 annual action plan, staff said.

The hearing focused on how the city should use federal and other funds — including Community Development Block Grant (CDBG), HOME investment partnership (HOME) and Emergency Solutions Grant (ESG) dollars — to address affordable housing, homelessness, neighborhood infrastructure and support services over the next five years.

The consolidated plan “is we’re telling HUD what we’re going to be doing for the next 5 years,” Todd Fleming, community grants administrator with the City of Manchester Planning and Community Development Department, told attendees. The annual action plan, Fleming said, describes projects the city will carry out in the coming fiscal year.

Why it matters: HUD entitlement grants and related funds shape what housing, shelter and neighborhood improvements the city can pay for. At the hearing residents, service providers and staff described both immediate needs — more supportive and sober shelter capacity, accessible public restrooms and better street and sidewalk maintenance — and longer‑term priorities such as adaptive reuse of vacant buildings for affordable units and housing condition upgrades.

What staff described - Funding streams and amounts: Fleming said the city receives annual entitlement funds and discussed three main federal sources used by the city: CDBG (amount discussed in the hearing as approximately $1,630,000), HOME (a figure mentioned during questions of about $750,000), and ESG (not awarded to the city in the last cycle, the hearing noted). Fleming also cited American Rescue…