For the City of Rochester, money is tight, and the needs are big. And city officials will have to make some tough decisions soon.

Some parts of the city are stable, and housing values have been rising. Some areas - including downtown - are experiencing strong development. Other areas seem to be at a tipping point; they could become more stable, perhaps with some public investment, or they could decline.

And some neighborhoods continue to struggle, with deteriorated and abandoned houses.

How should the city encourage more improvement in its neighborhoods? And should it try to spread its resources among all of them? Or concentrate on a few? If it concentrates on a few, which few should they be?

City officials have drafted a new housing policy - based on an intensive study released last year - that will guide its decisions. And starting next week, the Department of Community Development will hold a series of public meetings before submitting a final policy to City Council for approval.

The draft policy contains a long list of goals, including preserving the city's better housing stock, encouraging the redevelopment of older buildings and the creation of new housing, demolishing abandoned and obsolete housing, breaking up concentrations of poverty, counseling homeowners to prevent foreclosure, and creating a more collaborative relationship with landlords - the city's largest small-business group.

But city officials will have to try to meet those goals with a limited budget, says Julio Vazquez, the city's Commissioner of Community Development. Not everyone will get what they want, he says.

Federal community-development funds are about half what they were 10 years ago, Vazquez says. "The problem is, our needs have expanded," he says. "We have some difficult problems to address, which means we are going to have to leverage off of other public and private funding sources to stretch what we are able to do."

Some of the city's decisions about neighborhood investment are certain to create controversy. Previously, officials have offered financial help for neighborhood improvement throughout the city. The 2007 housing study concluded that spreading resources that thin was ineffective.

The proposed new housing policy recommends a "focused investment" strategy, and city officials want to direct funds to three to four areas of the city. The Duffy administration and City Council seem in agreement on that policy. The issue will be which neighborhoods are chosen.

Vazquez has recommended the Upper Falls, Marketview Heights, Plymouth-Exchange, and Jay-Orchard Street neighborhoods. The 2007 study describes those areas as "depreciated and distressed."

But many City Councilmembers want to aim investment at what the study calls "transitional" neighborhoods: areas that have strong potential for improvement or have made some progress but are at risk of slipping back.

"You've got center city going through some great revitalization with new housing units, the new Paetec headquarters, and this latest announcement from ESL moving to downtown," says City Councilmember Carolee Conklin. "But we are looking at the outer-ring neighborhoods, which are still mostly stable, but some are at risk. If we can invest there to keep them moving forward, we can work inward. What we don't want to do is lose the gains those neighborhoods have already made."

Also a concern, says City Councilmember Lovely Warren, who chairs the Housing and Community Development Committee: making sure that the improvements being made in one neighborhood are the same quality as those made in others.

"And just because the focused investment strategy will direct funds to certain neighborhoods, that doesn't mean we won't still be helping homeowners," she says. "I don't want to leave people with that impression." There will continue to be a small amount of money available to qualified homeowners throughout the city, she says.

The city will hold four meetings to discuss the draft housing policy and its goals: Tuesday, February 19, at Dazzle Theatre, 112 Webster Avenue; Wednesday, February 20, at Cornell Cooperative Extension, 249 Highland Avenue; Thursday, February 21, at Aquinas Institute, 1127 Dewey Avenue; and Monday, February 25, at Phyllis Wheatley Community Library, 33 Dr. Samuel McCree Way.

A meeting to discuss the selection of neighborhoods for targeted investment will be held on Wednesday, February 27, City Hall, 30 Church Street.

All five of the meetings start at 7 p.m.