The Community Development Block Grant at 50

Paul Joice
Jessie Handforth Kome
Tennille Parker
Todd Richardson
U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development

The views expressed in this article are those of the authors and do not represent the official positions or policies of the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development, or the U.S. Government.

No better account of the origin of the Community Development Block Grant (CDBG) exists than Charles Orlebeke and John Weicher’s 2014 article, “How CDBG Came to Pass,” which begins—

• The creation of the Community Development Block Grant (CDBG) in 1974 was a highly unusual public policy event. A sitting president proposed to terminate several established programs—including one that had been in existence for a quarter-century—in favor of a radically different and untried policy approach; his proposal was approved by a Congress of the opposite party which at the same time was in the process of impeaching him. How did that happen? (Orlebeke and Weicher, 2014)

Drawing heavily from Orlebeke and Weicher’s and similar accounts of other scholars and policymakers (for example, Rich, 2014), the creation of CDBG was not only a watershed moment in community development policy, it was seen as part of a grand vision to transform the nature of federalism in the United States. In 1969, President Richard Nixon unveiled his plan for a “New Federalism” that would combine the spending power of the federal government with a decentralized approach to decisionmaking and program administration (Orlebeke and Weicher, 2014). President Nixon proposed a package of seven revenue sharing programs, including unrestricted “General Revenue Sharing” and six domain-specific “special revenue sharing programs”—including “Urban Community Development” and “Rural Community Development.” The U.S. Congress approved the General Revenue Sharing proposal in 1972 with an initial funding level of $5 billion (more than $30 billion in 2024 dollars), but it was short-lived, suffering gradual cuts until it was fully eliminated in the first year of President Ronald Reagan’s administration (Orlebeke and Weicher, 2014). Of the special revenue sharing programs, only two would come to fruition: CDBG and a job training grant authorized in 1973 by the Comprehensive Employment and Training Act, which would be replaced in 1981 (Orlebeke and Weicher, 2014). CDBG would prove to be the only durable element of the Nixon Administration’s grand vision for a New Federalism. Nixon himself would resign on August 9, 1974, less than a week before Congress completed negotiations on the law to establish CDBG.