Community Development Block Grant Program

Program Information

The Community Block Grants (CDBG) Program is the Department of Housing and Urban Development (HUD) Department’s primary program for promoting community revitalization throughout the country.

Grants are awarded to entitlement communities to carry out a wide range of community development activities directed toward neighborhood revitalization, economic development, and the provision of improved community facilities and services.

Communities develop their own programs and funding priorities. However, grantees must give maximum feasible priority to activities which either benefit low- and moderate-income persons, aid in the prevention, or elimination of slums and blight or activities designed to meet other community development needs having a particular urgency because existing conditions pose a serious and immediate threat to the health or welfare of the community where other financial resources are not available to meet such needs.

Fund Allocations

At least 70% of the total CDBG allocation must be used for activities that benefit low- and moderate-income persons. At least 51% of the beneficiaries of individual activities designed to benefit low– and moderate-income persons must be shown to be of low- and moderate-income.

Grantee Eligibility

Central cities of Metropolitan Statistical Areas; other metropolitan cities with populations of at least 50,000; and qualified urban counties with populations of at least 200,000 (excluding the population of entitled cities) are entitled to receive annual grants.

The amount of each entitlement grant is determined by a statutory formula which uses several objective measures of community need, including the extent of poverty, population, housing overcrowding, and age of housing and population growth.

View Funding Requirements.