CDBG Funds

[MichaelC]

More at Urban Tulsa

quote:Tulsa's Community Development Block Grant program has probably done more than what most realize. There is an Albertson's at Pine and Peoria that exists because of CDBG funds. OSU-Tulsa has a home in Greenwood because of CDBG. Even new housing developments have occurred in North Tulsa thanks to CDBG funding.

"We've worked hard," said Edgar Moore, the community assistance administrator for the City's Urban Development Division. "Over the years, we've calmed the community and (we) have proved ourselves."

Moore said the reviews on the city's CDBG program are mixed: some say the city has done a good job, some feel the city hasn't done enough.

The reality is simple. What the program has done over the last 32 years with its CDBG funds hasn't always been readily visible to the community as a whole; and what has been very visible has taken a long time to make it visible.

Tulsa has been receiving CDBG funds since 1975; a year after the U.S. Congress approved the program, Moore said. The program, which has pumped approximately $150 million into Tulsa, was created with the federal government combining several urban development/urban renewal programs into one program.

Originally, Tulsa received funds from the Model Cities program, he explained. The program, which shares the same principle of today's CDBG program, was to help cities improve their downtowns and inner cities. Programming funds became available from the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development after cities saw much of their populations moving out of the inner cities to the suburbs