Shrinking Community Grants Put Cities In A Crunch

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http://www.wbur.org/npr/147751971/shrinking-community-grants-put-cities-in-a-crunch

Budget cuts approved by Congress in the past two years are trickling down to local communities, and officials there are not happy. They say that reductions in community development block grants will hurt the nation's most vulnerable neighborhoods.

Two years ago, the federal government gave out about $4 billion in such grants to low- and moderate-income communities. This year, the figure is $3 billion — a 25 percent cut. And as that pie has shrunk, those whose slices have shrunk even more are hungry for answers.

"We feed over 1,000 people a day," says Angela Vazquez, who is with Southwest Social Services in Miami, which gets community development block grant funds. "These are our grandparents, the people who built the community." She told city commissioners last week that a potential cut of almost $40,000 for the group's community centers would be devastating for people who have nowhere else to go. "You will condemn people to four walls and declining health," she says.

Like other cities, Miami isn't getting the money it used to — not even a year ago. The city has been told that its CDBG funding this year will be cut by more than a third, to less than $5 million. In nearby Hialeah, funding is down 47 percent. And Allentown, Pa., is getting $2 million this year, a cut of more than 20 percent.

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1. Minneapolis public schools are feeling the crunch

Fundraisers to pay for classroom supplies & teachers' salaries are commonplace.