BUSH ADMINISTRATION'S MAJOR ATTACK ON COMMUNITY DEVELOPMENT FINALLY ARRIVES: After four years of incremental pressure on Federal programs that fund community development in cities like Cleveland, the Bush White House has apparently decided it's time for a major assault. From a story in yesterday's Washington Post (free registration required):

The White House will seek to drastically shrink the Department of Housing and Urban Development's $8 billion community branch, purging dozens of economic development projects, scrapping a rural housing program and folding high-profile anti-poverty efforts into the Labor and Commerce departments, administration officials said yesterday.

... Congressional housing aides say the $4.7 billion Community Development Block Grant (CDBG) program -- the bulk of the community planning budget -- could be cut as much as 50 percent. Cities have become dependent on HUD's development programs, especially the CDBG, which has existed for 30 years, city officials said.

The Community Development Block Grant has been the financial cornerstone of neighborhood revitalization in Cleveland since the mayoralty of Ralph Perk. Our recent City budgets include nearly $30 million a year in CDBG funds, as well as $7 or $8 million in "HOME" funds for housing development and additional HUD grants for programs for the homeless and victims of AIDS. CDBG money pays the bills for the whole Community Development Department (including building and housing inspectors), most of our community development corporations, many community-based social service programs (senior centers, crime watch, community gardens, community arts, even some computer centers), and a piece of virtually every grassroots housing or commercial development initiative.

In short, the proposed gutting of HUD and CDBG is a very big threat to Cleveland's future.

If you care at all about community revitalization in Cleveland -- or Toledo, or Columbus, or Akron, or Dayton, or Cincinnati, or Lorain, or any other city of any size anywhere in the U.S. -- now is the time for a scream of indignation in the direction of Senators Voinovich and DeWine. I mean right now, today. And tell your friends to do the same. This baby must die in the cradle!

Contact info for Voinovich is here. DeWine's is here.

"Senator, where do you stand on the Bush Administration's reported plan to take community development programs away from HUD and make major reductions in CDBG funding to Ohio communities?"

Please, do it now. And if you get a reply, please let me know.

Update... A reader wrote back that she had trouble using the email forms on Senator Voinovich's and DeWine's website contact pages, which are linked above. If you have the same problem, you can try these regular email addresses:

senator_voinovich@voinovich.senate.gov
senator_dewine@dewine.senate.gov
I'm sure everything ends up in the same staff routing system.