In 2018, Hartford was named one of ten winners of the Cities of Service City Hall AmeriCorps VISTA Love Your Block competition. Cities of Service awarded each winning city $25,000 to be used for mini-grants and provides ongoing technical assistance and resources to support the efforts of citizen groups and local nonprofits to fight property blight through home repairs, lot transformations, and community cleanups.
In Hartford, 900 vacant properties hinder neighborhood development. To help address these challenges, the city’s Love Your Block program supports neighborhood projects that incorporate the principles of Crime Prevention through Environmental Design (CPTED).
The City of Hartford has long had volunteer-led commissions on a variety of issues, from parks and recreation to LGBTQ issues, and they play an important role in engaging residents and informing decision making with the views and expertise of Hartford residents. Love Your Block enables the city to expand their citizen engagement efforts.
Mayor Arunan Arulampalam
Arunan Arulampalam was sworn in as the 68th mayor of the City of Hartford on January 1, 2024.
Mayor Arulampalam is a father, husband, attorney, former nonprofit executive, and is committed to strengthening our neighborhoods and building a Hartford that works for everyone.
The son of Sri Lankan refugees, Mayor Arulampalam was born in Zimbabwe. He made a home and eventually a family in Hartford soon after graduate school. Prior to being elected mayor, Mayor Arulampalam served as the CEO of the Hartford Land Bank, where he developed a first-in-the-nation program to train Hartford residents to become local developers and tackle blight in Hartford. The Land Bank takes on the city’s vacant and blighted properties and, with the help of Hartford developers, fixes them up to encourage investment in our neighborhoods across the city.
Mayor Arulampalam also served in the Lamont Administration as Deputy Commissioner of the Connecticut Department of Consumer Protection where he went after a notorious Connecticut slumlord and fought for consumer rights and small businesses. Before then, he was a lawyer downtown at the firm of Updike, Kelly & Spellacy, P.C. Mayor Arulampalam also served on the Board of the Hartford Public Library, the House of Bread, and on the Hartford Redevelopment Authority. He earned his B.A. in International Studies from Emory University and his J.D. from Quinnipiac University School of Law.
Mayor Arulampalam lives in the Frog Hollow neighborhood in a formerly vacant and blighted house with his wife and five small kids. Mayor Arulampalam’s wife, Liza, is the Senior Minister of the First Church of Christ (Center Church) in Hartford.