Ridley Circle and the Marshall-Ridley Choice Neighborhood Initiative (CNI)

What is CNI?

The Choice Neighborhood Initiative allows the Department of Housing and Urban Development (HUD) to give grants to local communities in order to transform neighborhoods into sustainable, mixed-income communities with access to economic opportunities. The CNI has three core goals that focus on housing, people, and neighborhood. This can be done by renovating housing, investing in the communities, increasing access to education, and providing job-finding assistance. The act has proposed up to $1,000,000,000 of grant money to be used for the fiscal year 2026 (D-MO-5, 2025).

CNI in Newport News: Marshall-Ridley Choice Neighborhood

Focusing on Newport News, historically, the Marshall-Ridley Neighborhood was home to black shipyard workers and administrators, which grew to a thriving community at the beginning of the 20th century (Newport, 2019). The Marshall-Ridley Choice Neighborhood received a $500,000 CNI Planning Grant in 2016 and a $30 million Implementation Grant in 2019 (Newport, 2019). This money is being utilized to improve the Marshall-Ridley area by creating more housing options, access to community services, and recreational/green spaces.

One main step in the CNI process is the transformation plan that highlights the ways that Marshall-Ridley will be transformed, based on community member opinions and needs. An important part of this plan is the ‘People Plan’, which focuses on improving access to health services, reducing food insecurity, increasing access and quality of early education, strengthening career/job readiness, boosting employment opportunities, and overall fostering self-sufficiency in the community (Newport News Redevelopment & Housing Authority). The Marshall-Ridley Choice Neighborhood sent out a Needs Assessment Survey to residents and community members to determine exactly what was truly needed. Many residents expressed a need for increased access to health insurance, which is vital for community longevity. The survey results showed that residents in the Ridley area have less health insurance coverage than the surrounding neighborhood (Newport News Redevelopment & Housing Authority). Looking at the map above, it is very apparent that the Marshal-Ridley Neighborhood is located in close proximity to the coal export terminal (on the left side of the image). In an area that is located close to a coal export terminal, access to health insurance is necessary for residents who are being affected by particulate matter from coal dust in the air and in their homes.

Updates on Marshall-Ridley CNI

• Earlier this year, the Newport News Early Childhood Development Center (NNECDC) was opened, which will provide education for around 200 children. This facility will provide high-quality, accessible education to families in the area.
• This summer, the Legacy Landing, a mixed-income housing development in Newport News, had its official ribbon-cutting.

Marshall-Ridley Before CNI

The Marshall-Ridley Neighborhood has existed for decades as a majority black neighborhood in Southeast Newport News. The neighborhood was impacted by decades of segregationist housing policy and practices, which impacted the tax value of the houses, the education in the area, and the economic opportunities available for residents. Marshall-Ridley has a long history with redlining and housing segregation. Despite housing segregation being abolished in 1968, the Home Owners’ Loan Corporation was able to rate neighborhoods from “highly desirable” to “hazardous” , determining if the area would be too risky for refinancing (Hankerson, 2020). It is clearly seen in paperwork from that time that black residents were rated much lower than their white counterparts, meaning they lost their homes or their homes would fall into disrepair.

Specifically, the Marshall-Ridley neighborhood was rated “hazardous” (Hankerson, 2020). After the Great Depression, public housing projects were created as part of the New Deal, and the waiting list for black neighborhood projects was much longer than white neighborhood projects (Hankerson, 2020). As economic recovery increased, the federal government helped developers secure funding for neighborhoods, but many had rules that only allowed white homeownership. Marshall-Ridley was rated by federal housing officials as red, or “dangerous”, and was seen as an area with “no pride of homeownership” due to the fact that 95% of the residents in the area were black (Hankerson, 2020).

The hope is that the Choice Neighborhood Implementation will create mixed-income housing that is affordable for very low-income residents, but residents fear that this will not deal with the racial and economic problems that the neighborhood was created on (Hankerson, 2020).

Neighborhood Leadership Insitute (NLI)

If you are a resident of Newport News or a community member in the area you can join the NLI to learn the skills and knowledge necessary to become a community leader (Newport, 2019). In this 12-week experience, you will receive everything you need to help your community receive the changes it deserves. For more information call 757-926-8081 or learn more here.

2024 Comprehensive Housing Study

In 2024, the City of Newport News, in cooperation with Urban Planners consultants, released their Comprehensive Housing Study, which aimed to tailor “... housing priorities, policies, and intervention strategies” for community leaders, stakeholders, and city decision-makers. The report highlights in the “Key Findings” four unique issues to Newport News’ housing policies, and suggests recommendations moving forward. Their findings include the following (page 6-7):

• Newport News is not keeping pace with its share of regional population growth.
• Newport News benefits from significant current and emerging opportunities for expanding the housing market.
• Housing affordability challenges stem more from low household incomes rather than abnormally high housing costs.
• Newport News is using flexible zoning and redevelopment opportunities to transform underutilized sites and smaller lots while preserving neighborhood character.

Results acknowledge Newport News’ limited population growth between 2010-2020 (3.1% growth), and the net negative “household migration” between 2017 and 2021”. Specifically, reports from households moving into the city report lower incomes by -11.7% than those moving out from the city. As a result, many households are unable to afford “...high quality housing in the current market”. While at first glance the Newport News area may seem affordable, it’s not for locals.

However, there is promise in an expanding housing market. The report cites the reliance on the military community and defense industry, which is dominant in the Hampton Roads community. The City sees potential in offering a wide range of housing options, from single-family homes to townhomes, multi-family garden apartments, and mixed-use apartment buildings. Using "flexible zoning”, Newport News hopes to preserve traditional aesthetics the city was built on, and develop “underutilized sites like outdating shopping malls, former department stores, and surface parking lots”.

Given the findings, the study concluded four recommendations under 1) policy and planning, 2) redevelopment and revitalization, 3) affordability and accessibility, and 4) partnerships and collaboration.

Policy and Planning

In hopes of meeting demand, housing policy aims to accommodate the elderly, and attract young working people and families, it’s in the interest of Newport News to construct a variety of housing types, at the “right size” with “...attainable sale prices” (page 8).

The policy and plan also includes supporting “...zoning and land use modifications that expand and encourage diverse housing types…”, including the “missing middle”