Big or Small

MOSSYROCK - Think "HUD" and you may think "big bucks for big cities." Think again.

Start with HUD's Community Development Block Grant - or CDBG - program. It's been around more than 50 years and may be HUD's most popular programs, especially among city and county officials.

Why? CDBG funds, of course, come with statutory and regulatory strings attached. Most importantly, funds, must be used on projects which principally benefit low- and moderate-income people, eliminate slums and blight or respond to natural disasters.

However, the list of eligible activities is a long one - from housing rehabilitation to downtown revitalization, street repairs to park improvements, fewer and water system upgrades to economic development loan funds. Best of all, the decisions on when, where and how to spend CDBG funds are made not by bureaucrats in Olympia or Washington, D.C. but by elected city or county officials in consultation with communities' residents.

It's true big cities like Seattle and Tacoma, Spokane and Vancouver annually receive CDBG funding. They're among some 1,100 cities nationwide with more than 50,000 residents and counties with more than 200,000 residents that HUD calls "entitlement" communities. There are 32 entitlements in Washington. As long as Congress appropriates CDBG funds they're entitled to a share.

But that doesn't leave smaller communities in the lurch. Among those 1,100 entitlements, after all, are 50 state agencies that also are entitlements and are charged withr making suret CDBG funds are available to smaller, usually rural cities and counties.

Washington's program is administered by itsDepartment of Commerce. Every year some 160 smaller cities and towns and almost 40 counties in Washington s are eligible to compete for up to $12 million in CDB G funds administered by Commerce. That's more than one-fifth the total CDBG funding HUD awards to Washington state every year.

Whether big, small or somewhere in between, in other words, every incorporated community in the state can tap into the CDBG pipeline. Consider the 25 communities that, in October 2019, won Department of Commerce CDBG (www.commerce.wa.gov/news-releases/commerce-awards-10-5-million-for-vital-infrastructure-projects-in-25-rural-communities) awards that will bring "cleaner water, safer streets, and ultimately, a higher quality of life in towns, cities, and counties across Washington state."

Like Mossyrock, population 803, that, with help from Lewis County won $750,000 to help complete the "critical" expansion of a fire station that, the Chief told The Chronicle, (www.chronline.com/crime/county-to-apply-for-grant-to-complete-mossyrock-fire-station/article_f5627ac0-50db-11e9-979e-e726eddd7483.html) "will provide sleeping quarters, a training area and a community room with a kitchen to support the (emergency) shelter." Or Okanogan County in central Washington, population 42,132, that was awarded $24,000 for a Housing Needs Assessment and $200,000 to, the County Clerk told KPQ-AM, "help provide the sewer from the homeless and farm worker housing to the Oroville system." Or the towns of Westport, population 2,099, and South Bend, population 1,561 - both in Grays Harbor County - which each won $750,000, reported KXRO-AM, to upgrade water and sewer systems. Or College Place, population 9,500, in Walla Walla County which received, The Union Bulletin (www.union-bulletin.com/news/local_governments/college_place/college-place-awarded-funds-for-sidewalks/article_7cdf3f7c-e9f4-11e9-95d8-938da6940caa.html) reported, $464,530 for street and sidewalk improvements.

That's just five of the 25 Washington state communities that won CDBG grants this year, just five of the more than 1,500 projects in small, mostly rural communities that, since the Department of Commerce launched the program in 1982, have received more than half a billion dollars in CDBG funds. Yes, CDBG has benefited the nation's cities. But also benefited many of its smallest.

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