The Denver Residential Block Beautification Program is a grant system for public area improvements within certain neighborhoods.

Eligibility Areas

The program is available to residential blocks with 51 percent or more of the residents are low or moderate income based upon census block group data. The actual monetary threshold is not stated in the informational brochure that I have. The neighborhoods that are eligible coincide with neighborhoods I recognize from Piton foundation maps that have recently had ~25% of residents under the poverty line. So, it's basically a way for poor people in poor neighborhoods to get some grant money to improve the public lands on their street. Examples of the public land are the curbs, sidewalks, and the "street lawn" which is the area of plantings that is between the curb and the sidewalk.

Eligible projects

Eligible projects include a variety of things such as sidewalk replacement where there are cracks, curb cuts to make sidewalks more wheelchair and stroller accessible, and to either install or remove trees from the street lawn.

You can also get the city to install sod in your street lawn. You can not get the city to install other plants in the street lawn.

This is the "Denver" residential program, but the use of the word "Denver" in the title is about the end of the regional personalization that was given to this program. Denver is a dessert. Sod is not a good idea. If you go to the Denver Water site you can see that the major issue for them is water conservation. They have articles on the limit for number of days watering per week, about "Xeriscape" a type of gardening in low water environments that was invented specifically for the Colorado dessert environment, and rebates for the purchase of new "low water use" systems.

So, while the folks at Denver Water are trying to figure out how to motivate customers to use less water, the folks in the Block Beautification Program are working to make sure each resident uses more water than necessary. Great work, guys.