IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/a/taf/houspd/v24y2014i1p46-90.html
   My bibliography  Save this article

Community Development Block Grants at 40: Time for a Makeover

Author

Listed:
  • Michael J. Rich

Abstract

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.

Suggested Citation

  • Michael J. Rich, 2014. "Community Development Block Grants at 40: Time for a Makeover," Housing Policy Debate, Taylor & Francis Journals, vol. 24(1), pages 46-90, January.
    • Handle: RePEc:taf:houspd:v:24:y:2014:i:1:p:46-90
    DOI: 10.1080/10511482.2013.865656
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: http://hdl.handle.net/10.1080/10511482.2013.865656
    Download Restriction: Access to full text is restricted to subscribers.
    File URL: https://libkey.io/10.1080/10511482.2013.865656?utm_source=ideas
    LibKey link: if access is restricted and if your library uses this service, LibKey will redirect you to where you can use your library subscription to access this item
    ---><---

    As the access to this document is restricted, you may want to search for a different version of it.

    References listed on IDEAS

    as
    1. Joseph Gyourko & Edward L. Glaeser, 2008. "Rethinking Federal Housing Policy," Books, American Enterprise Institute, number 50499, September.
    2. repec:aei:rpbook:34784 is not listed on IDEAS
    3. John Weicher, 2012. "Housing Policy at a Crossroads: The Why, Who, and How of Assistance Programs," Books, American Enterprise Institute, number 24963, September.
    Full references (including those not matched with items on IDEAS)

    Citations

    Citations are extracted by the CitEc Project, subscribe to its RSS feed for this item.
    as


    Cited by:

    1. Varady, David P. & Kleinhans, Reinout & van Ham, Maarten, 2015. "Community Entrepreneurship in Deprived Neighbourhoods: Comparing UK Community Enterprises with US Community Development Corporations," IZA Discussion Papers 8777, Institute of Labor Economics (IZA).

    Most related items

    These are the items that most often cite the same works as this one and are cited by the same works as this one.
    1. Olsen, Edgar O. & Zabel, Jeffrey E., 2015. "US Housing Policy," Handbook of Regional and Urban Economics, in: Gilles Duranton & J. V. Henderson & William C. Strange (ed.), Handbook of Regional and Urban Economics, edition 1, volume 5, chapter 0, pages 887-986, Elsevier.
    2. Loïc Bonneval & Florence Goffette‐Nagot & Zhejin Zhao, 2022. "The impact of rent control: Investigations on historical data in the city of Lyon," Growth and Change, Wiley Blackwell, vol. 53(4), pages 1646-1667, December.
    3. Pedro Gete & Franco Zecchetto, 2018. "Distributional Implications of Government Guarantees in Mortgage Markets," The Review of Financial Studies, Society for Financial Studies, vol. 31(3), pages 1064-1097.
    4. Dan Andrews, 2010. "Real House Prices in OECD Countries: The Role of Demand Shocks and Structural and Policy Factors," OECD Economics Department Working Papers 831, OECD Publishing.
    5. Andrii Parkhomenko, 2018. "The Rise of Housing Supply Regulation in the US: Local Causes and Aggregate Implications," 2018 Meeting Papers 275, Society for Economic Dynamics.
    6. John I. Carruthers & Gordon F. Mulligan, 2013. "Through the Crisis," Economic Development Quarterly, , vol. 27(2), pages 124-143, May.
    7. David López-Rodríguez & María de los Llanos Matea, 2019. "Recent developments in the rental housing market in Spain," Economic Bulletin, Banco de España, issue SEP.
    8. Stephen Malpezzi, 2023. "Housing affordability and responses during times of stress: A preliminary look during the COVID‐19 pandemic," Contemporary Economic Policy, Western Economic Association International, vol. 41(1), pages 9-40, January.
    9. Tang, Edward Chi Ho & Leung, Charles Ka Yui & Ng, Joe Cho Yiu, 2018. "Does an Oligopolistic Primary Market Matter? The Case of an Asian Housing Market," MPRA Paper 93680, University Library of Munich, Germany.
    10. Fetter, Daniel K., 2016. "The Home Front: Rent Control and the Rapid Wartime Increase in Home Ownership," The Journal of Economic History, Cambridge University Press, vol. 76(4), pages 1001-1043, December.
    11. Marion Steele & Francois Des Rosiers, 2009. "Building Affordable Rental Housing in Unaffordable Cities: A Canadian Low-Income Housing Tax Credit," C.D. Howe Institute Commentary, C.D. Howe Institute, issue 289, May.
    12. David Albouy & Mike Zabek, 2016. "Housing Inequality," NBER Working Papers 21916, National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc.
    13. Edward Glaeser & Joseph Gyourko, 2018. "The Economic Implications of Housing Supply," Journal of Economic Perspectives, American Economic Association, vol. 32(1), pages 3-30, Winter.
    14. Deng, Yongheng & Gyourko, Joseph & Li, Teng, 2019. "Singapore's cooling measures and its housing market," Journal of Housing Economics, Elsevier, vol. 45(C), pages 1-1.
    15. Michael D. Eriksen & Amanda Ross, 2015. "Housing Vouchers and the Price of Rental Housing," American Economic Journal: Economic Policy, American Economic Association, vol. 7(3), pages 154-176, August.
    16. Miguel-Ángel López García, 2023. "Controles de alquileres," Hacienda Pública Española / Review of Public Economics, IEF, vol. 246(3), pages 165-206, September.
    17. John Carruthers & Gordon F. Mulligan, 2012. "The plane of living and the precrisis evolution of housing values in the USA," Journal of Economic Geography, Oxford University Press, vol. 12(4), pages 739-773, July.
    18. Charles Ka Yui Leung, 2015. "Availability, Affordability and Volatility: The Case of the Hong Kong Housing Market," International Real Estate Review, Global Social Science Institute, vol. 18(3), pages 383-428.
    19. Hyunseung Oh & Choongryul Yang & Chamna Yoon, 2024. "Land development and frictions to housing supply over the business cycle," Finance and Economics Discussion Series 2024-010, Board of Governors of the Federal Reserve System (U.S.).
    20. Dean, Jason & Steele, Marion, 2022. "Income decline, financial insecurity, landlord screening and renter mobility," Regional Science and Urban Economics, Elsevier, vol. 95(C).

    More about this item

    Statistics

    Access and download statistics

    Corrections

    All material on this site has been provided by the respective publishers and authors. You can help correct errors and omissions. When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:taf:houspd:v:24:y:2014:i:1:p:46-90. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

    If you have authored this item and are not yet registered with RePEc, we encourage you to do it here. This allows to link your profile to this item. It also allows you to accept potential citations to this item that we are uncertain about.

    If CitEc recognized a bibliographic reference but did not link an item in RePEc to it, you can help with this form .

    If you know of missing items citing this one, you can help us creating those links by adding the relevant references in the same way as above, for each refering item. If you are a registered author of this item, you may also want to check the "citations" tab in your RePEc Author Service profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.

    For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: Chris Longhurst (email available below). General contact details of provider: http://www.tandfonline.com/RHPD20 .

    Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through the various RePEc services.

    IDEAS is a RePEc service. RePEc uses bibliographic data supplied by the respective publishers.