Community Development Block Grant Funds Research Articles

Cities Where Women Rule: Female Political Incorporation and the Allocation of Community Development Block Grant Funding

While individual women representatives in government have been found to behave differently than men, the causal connection between the increased presence of women in elected offices and the production of women-friendly policies is tenuous at best. This study leverages the variation in women's office holding, government structures, and policy outputs found in American cities to address that puzzle. It argues that when women obtain leadership positions in municipal government and when the positions they hold have greater power relative to other municipal positions, cities will be more likely to produce policy outputs that are often associated with women's interests and needs. Utilizing an original city-level dataset and modeling women's presence as mayors and policy outputs endogenously, the results reveal that empowered female executives in municipal governments influence expenditure decisions made as part of the federal Community Development Block Grant program. The findings suggest that political scientists should consider not only the presence of an underrepresented group, but also the relative amount of power that group has when assessing the effects on substantive representation.

Where Does the Bucket Leak? Sending Money to the Poor via the Community Development Block Grant Program

Since the inception of the Community Development Block Grant (CDBG) program in 1975, cities and large urban counties have been entitled to funding based on a formula designed to approximate community need. As with any such federally funded and locally administered program, there is a tension between federal and local control. At the federal level, one of CDBG's main goals is to benefit low- and moderate-income (LMI) people and places. While a substantial literature assesses how well CDBG funds are targeted to needy recipient jurisdictions, evidence on how funds are distributed within recipient jurisdictions is much more limited. In this article, we examine the distribution of CDBG funds relative to the share of LMI people at the council-district and neighborhood levels in Chicago, Illinois, and Los Angeles, California, for 1998 – 2004. In Los Angeles, we find that relatively poorer council districts receive more than they would were funds distributed following the share of LMI people. In contrast, Chicago's relatively poorer council districts receive lower funding than predicted by their share of the LMI population. This difference across council districts within the cities is partially explained by the greater sensitivity of allocations in Chicago to the location of high-income households. Despite these disparities, policy answers are not obvious; any policy that aims to enhance CDBG's reach to LMI people must contend with the erosion of broad-based political support that this would engender.

CDBG Disaster Recovery Assistance and Homeowners' Rebuilding Outcomes Following Hurricanes Katrina and Rita

The Community Development Block Grant (CDBG) program has played an important role in the federal government's response to natural disasters, providing a tool for delivering disaster recovery assistance to affected states and localities. This article provides an overview of the CDBG program's role in disaster recovery. It then examines the use of CDBG funding to support housing recovery in Louisiana and Mississippi following Hurricanes Katrina and Rita. We use FEMA damage assessments, state administrative program data, and on-site observation of properties' rebuilding outcomes to examine the coverage and sufficiency of CDBG grants as well as the rebuilding outcomes of grant recipients' properties. We find that a substantial share of CDBG recipients faced rebuilding or repair costs that exceeded their total funds from insurance, CDBG grants, and other sources. We also find that reception of a CDBG grant does not guarantee that a homeowner's property is rebuilt. Depending on the program option, anywhere from 7% to 48% of grant recipients who opted to rebuild had not done so as of early 2010. Finally, the results provide limited support for concerns about the use of compensation grants to provide CDBG assistance. Homeowners' responses to a telephone survey indicate that some grant recipients used CDBG funds for purposes other than rebuilding and that the use of compensation grants may have exposed homeowners to higher rates of contractor fraud. The article discusses the implications of these findings for the future use of the CDBG program for disaster recovery.

Federally Sponsored Local Economic and Community Development: A Look at HUD's Section 108 Program

The Section 108 program operates the loan guarantee portion of the Community Development Block Grant (CDBG) program. Specifically, Section 108 allows CDBG grantees to transform a portion of their CDBG funds into federally guaranteed loans large enough to pursue physical and economic revitalization projects that can renew entire neighborhoods. This article presents findings from an analysis of Section 108 projects funded in fiscal years 2002–2007, including financing details, funded activities, and project outcomes. The study is designed to answer the following three core issues: (1) What types of projects are being funded, and what is the nature of those projects? (2) How are Section 108 projects funded, and how are they repaid? (3) What outcomes did the investments produce? In sum, the study team found that Section 108 is an important tool for community development because it allows jurisdictions to pursue larger projects with outcomes that cannot be funded through annual CDBG grants; yet, the complexity and size of Section 108 projects mean that local capacity and support are vital to the successful planning and completion of these projects.

Community Development Block Grants at 40: Time for a Makeover

This article reviews the origins and evolution of the Community Development Block Grant (CDBG) program, the federal government's largest program providing direct assistance to local governments. The article examines the program's changing national policy context over its 40-year history, as manifest in presidential, executive, and legislative deliberations over the program's national goals and objectives, as well as the key components of the program's policy design and administrative structure. The article also explores how the decisions affecting policy design adopted at the national level play out at the local level, through an examination of the choices communities have made regarding uses of CDBG funds and the social and geographic targeting outcomes that have been obtained. The article then revisits the extent to which the CDBG program conforms with the basic characteristics of block grants. The article concludes with several recommendations for revising CDBG that will provide a policy tool better aligned with the new community-building paradigm that has emerged over the past two decades, with its emphasis on collaborative, comprehensive, community-based initiatives.

The Role of the CDBG Program in Rural America

The stated goal of U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development's Community Development Block Grant (CDBG) program is “to develop viable urban communities by providing decent housing and a suitable living environment and expanding economic opportunities, principally for persons of low and moderate income.” While it may be perceived that CDBG exclusively assists urban or inner-suburban communities, the program also makes funds available to many smaller and less populated portions of states under the rubric of “nonentitlement” areas. Some research suggests that CDBG is the largest community and economic development program in rural America. Overall, there has been very little study of the CDBG program in terms of rural geography or funding.This research explores several basic questions. (1) To what degree do nonentitlement CDBG service areas actually comprise rural population and land (as opposed to suburban and exurban communities)? (2) What proportion of nonentitlement CDBG funds reaches rural communities and, in particular, economically distressed areas? The results indicate that a majority of the nation's nonentitlement service areas are largely rural in nature. On the other hand, over 40% of the population in nonentitlement areas actually reside in the suburbs. Similarly, most CDBG nonentitlement funds go to rural and small-town communities, with over a third of funds supporting projects in high-poverty communities. However, the degree to which these awards are large enough to make an important and sustainable impact within a rural community is difficult to assess.

The Community Development Block Grant: Does it Work?

The federal government operates hundreds of programs intended to stimulate regional economic development and revitalize communities. The largest of these, the Community Development Block Grant (CDBG), has awarded $118 billion since 1974 to thousands of localities. Where communities lack sufficient revenues due to an eroded tax base or economic stagnation, CDBG is intended to provide stop-gap funding for crucial infrastructure, public safety, housing, and social service projects. In addition, it is argued that CDBG can help stimulate economic development through business loans and commercial revitalization projects intended to attract residents and investment to the community. However, there is little evidence that the program accomplishes its stated aims.The wide scope of the program, the lack of consistent data, and the varied applications of CDBG funds hamper formal evaluations. Where beneficial outcomes are observed, evaluators must also address the problem of causality. Did CDBG cause the development? What would have happened in communities if they had not received funds? Claims of effectiveness tend to rest on intermediate measures, such as the number of jobs created, houses built, or dollars leveraged. These metrics are not evidence of success. They indicate how funds were spent, not the objectives achieved by the program. Economic assessment of one of CDBG's achievements-the Poplar Nehemiah Homeownership project in North Philadelphia-reveals the new development did not spur revitalization. Though it is of only one particular use of CDBG funds, the analysis reveals how the application of CDBG funds in a blighted neighborhood interferes with market signals, and the limitations of local planning due to the knowledge problem.

Black Political Power Reassessed: Race, Politics, and Federal Funds

An increase in the number of black elected officials and community need did not result in more resources for the black community. Instead, there was a decrease in Community Development Block Grant (CDBG) funds allocated to the black community in Milwaukee, Wisconsin. African-American council members did not vote as a racial bloc and they supported using CDBG funds to pay for city services instead of neighborhood projects. The biracial political coalition that Blacks counted on to help them was often time divided. The city bureaucracy that controlled CDBG funding used practices that often worked to the disadvantage of black community.

Housing Quality and Neighborhood Redevelopment: A Study of Neighborhood Initiatives in Phoenix, Arizona

The last few years have witnessed efforts to eliminate the Community Development Block Grant (CDBG) program in Congress. Critics of the CDBG program have pointed to the dearth of studies documenting successful impacts in affected neighborhoods. This article examines the impact of the use of CDBG monies in Phoenix, Arizona. Using housing condition surveys from 1994 and 2004, six Neighborhood Initiative Areas (NIAs) are examined to determine the effect that CDBG targeted funds had on housing quality in these areas between 1994 and 2004. The study documents dramatic improvement in housing conditions in these targeted areas as a result, in part, of the CDBG funding.

John Warner Smith

John Warner Smith with Charles Henry Rowell Click for larger view Figure 1 John Warner Smith Photo by Dave Herman, © 2006 [End Page 1389] ROWELL: How much, in pre-Katrina days, did the state of Louisiana depend upon the economy of the city of New Orleans? How much did New Orleans depend upon the economy of the state? My asking these questions assumes that each economy depended upon the other. Did they? SMITH: Absolutely. Before Katrina we had a civilian labor force of roughly two million workers. About six hundred thousand of those jobs were in the New Orleans metropolitan statistical area. Nearly a third of the state's labor force was basically in that region. Of that six hundred thousand or so jobs, nearly half were wiped out by Hurricane Katrina. The jobs that were lost were in sectors that were the engine of New Orleans. When you knock out the tourism business, you cripple New Orleans and the state of Louisiana. For example, just the other day hotels in New Orleans had a ninety percent occupancy rate, but the occupants were different than they were before Katrina. They aren't tourists. They are mostly evacuees, construction workers, and other folks working on the recovery. These are not the people who come as tourists who eat, drink, sleep, and spend millions of dollars in New Orleans every year. There is a saying that, "So goes New Orleans, so goes the state of Louisiana." In the rebuilding process, we have held job fairs all over the state of Louisiana. We held a couple of job fairs in New Orleans for the Louisiana Restaurant Association. The restaurants were trying to come back. They were trying to open the doors, even though they had limited menus and limited food service, but they struggled to find workers. Our agency partnered with the State Department of Transportation and started a free bus service from Baton Rouge to New Orleans for anyone who wanted to get on it and look for work, go to work, or just go to New Orleans to inspect their property. Fortunately, we were able to link some workers with job opportunities. We've been doing this for a couple of months now. The ridership is probably about six hundred or so a day—not a big number, but for those three hundred to get on, come back, and be able to hold a job, it's certainly helpful. Don't forget that we were also hit in southwestern Louisiana by Hurricane Rita a month after Katrina. I am talking about Lake Charles, the Cameron Parish area, and, to some extent, Jefferson Davis Parish and Beauregard Parish. Those parishes were very dependent on the petrochemical industry and there were some job losses there. Much of that area has recovered, but the lower part of the region, Cameron Parish in particular, is probably similar in devastation to St. Bernard Parish in the southeast. Cameron Parish is going to [End Page 1390] be a long time recovering. The economy there was heavily dependent upon the fisheries and seafood processing industry. There are still some challenges in the service sector in general, with businesses struggling to find workers. Many of those workers went to Texas. Many of them ended up in Houston and Dallas, and are still there because they can't find housing in their home parishes. So, the impact of the storm is still being felt in that corner of the state, even though the petrochemical industry has bounced back somewhat. ROWELL: What can the federal government do at this time to assist the state of Louisiana? SMITH: We are receiving federal funds for workforce training. The U.S. Department of Labor has given us sixty-two million dollars of National Emergency Grant funds. This grant will initially provide temporary job assistance to evacuees, and then provide more comprehensive training that will move trainees into permanent jobs. Federal community development block grant funding might be available at some point. The federal government has...

The politics of evaluation research: A case study of community development block grant funding for human services

This paper examines the ramifications of conducting evaluation research within a very politically sensitive area. The evaluation project discussed in this paper involved an assessment of six human service agencies within a city that were receiving Community Development Block Grant (CDBG) public service funds. The city's Office of Policy Planning and Management (OPPM) contracted for this research in order to evaluate the CDBG funded agencies and to provide technical assistance so they could make informed policy decisions concerning the allocation of the Seventh Year Community Development public service funds. The Department of Housing and Urban Development (HUD) had stipulated that there be a 20% limitation in CDBG public service funding. The city involved in this study had allocated over 25% of its CDBG funding to public services. Thus, the city was over the stipulated limitation and was therefore requested by HUD to either justify the expenditure or cut back its allocation of funds to the 20% level. As a result of this mandate by HUD, the city requested and received a technical assistance grant from HUD. This paper provides a specific example of how the conduct of evaluation can become entwined in the politics of human service agencies and their funding sources, Moreover, the implications of this experience for evaluation as a field of endeavor are explored.

The Allocation of Funds to Small Cities under the Community Development Block Grant Program An Evaluation

Abstract A uniform point system is used by HUD area offices to determine which small city applicants (including suburbs and rural towns) are to receive funds under the Community Development Block Grant (CDBG) program. This evaluation of the point system, based on data for twenty-five states, indicates that: (1) small cities as a group receive considerably less CDBG funding relative to their need than do larger cities and urban counties, (2) tremendous variations exist in the intensity of competition across states, (3) need plays a relatively unimportant role in determining which applicants are funded, (4) the discretionary power of the area offices is the dominant factor in funding decisions, and (5) community flexibility in project design is severely constrained by the point system. These characteristics are inconsistent with the spirit of the “new federalism.” Suggestions are offered both for modification of the point system and for successful strategies to obtain funds