Whose Neighborhood Needs? Assessing the Spatial Distribution of Federal Community Development Funds

Bibliographic Data

ID6404492
AuthorsEric Stokan (0000-0001-8409-5016, Department of Political Science, University of Maryland, Baltimore, MD, USA, corresponding author), Michael Overton (0000-0002-1800-9164, University of Idaho), Aaron Deslatte (0000-0001-5518-3949, Indiana University Bloomington), Christine Zhang (0000-0003-4968-8793, Independent Researcher, New York, NY, USA)
Year2024
Volume60
Issue3
Pages983-1023
Publication date2024-05-01
Peer ReviewedYes
Open AccessYes
TypeARTICLE
VenueUrban Affairs Review (JOURNAL)
Journal identifiersISSN: 1078-0874 • E-ISSN: 1552-8332
PublisherSAGE Publications Inc (PUBLISHER)
DOI10.1177/10780874231212843
OpenAlexW4389291825
LanguageEN
Citations received4
References cited73

Local governments must balance their growth ambitions against needs arising from social inequities. The Community Development Block Grant (CDBG) program aims to redress these disparities by directing funds toward disinvested tracts. We ask whether a city's institutional design, public and private actor composition, and resource availability influence the decision to invest in communities with greater levels of social need. Utilizing a social equity framework, we connect place-level procedural fairness mechanisms with neighborhood-level access equity consequences. Combining U.S. local government survey data over two decades with census tract-level CDBG expenditures, we find that in neighborhood where 51 percent or more of the families are low-to-moderate income (LMI), its likelihood of receiving funds increases with its share of LMI population relative to the city's, but at a diminished rate compared to non-LMI tracts. Further, city-level factors moderate this relationship (e.g., including community development corporations in planning processes

American Community Survey · Business · Census · Census tract · Community development · County government · Demographic economics · Economic growth · Economics · Equity (law · Political science · Population · Public economics · Redress · Social equality · Sociology · Demography · Fiscal Policy and Economic Growth · Gender, Labor, and Family Dynamics · Housing Market and Economics · Public Administration

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