Community-Based Antipoverty Programs

COMMUNITY-BASED antipoverty programs in the U.S. were created in the 1960s to address the growing problems of urban decay and concentrated poverty. Most programs were initiated during President Lyndon Johnson's War on Poverty. Johnson's War on Poverty programs included a wide variety of initiatives across several federal agencies. The programs lacked a coherent policy that linked them together or an empirical base that guided their activities. One of the key innovations of the antipoverty programs of this era was the emphasis on community-based approaches to addressing poverty problems. Among the most important place-based programs were the Community Action Program (CAP), Model Cities, and the Special Impact Program (SIP).

CAP was one of the more innovative approaches to poverty alleviation. Through this program, federal funds were administered to local organizations that coordinated social services, including housing, employment, and educational programs. A critical component of CAP was that it required the “maximum feasible participation” of residents in the community in the implementation of the program. Local politicians were threatened by this program because it established a political process, and power, that went around local governments. Daniel Moynihan criticized the program for raising expectations among the poor that were unrealistic. He attributed the urban riots of the 1960s to these programs that failed to address the needs of the poor.

Model Cities was established through the Demonstration and Metropolitan Development Act of 1966. In response to criticism by local officials, the Model Cities program made grants directly to city agencies to improve housing and provide services to low-income neighborhoods. It also provided funds for building projects and gave local officials control over the planning process. In many ways it resembled the New Deal programs with its emphasis on slum clearance and redevelopment on a massive scale. Demonstration cities submitted proposals but were given the ability to control local projects. The key shift, however, was moving the control over the programs to city officials rather than nonprofit organizations.

The third program was SIP, which provided financial support to community development corporations (CDCs) for urban revitalization, especially housing. Over the years, this program has become the primary mechanism for the federal government to fund affordable housing. From the 1960s to the 1990s, CDCs and other nonprofits produced about three-quarters of a million units of federally assisted housing.

The War on Poverty stressed the participation of poor people in designing policies to provide services to their neighborhoods. Prior to the 1960s, New Deal programs emphasized federal intervention rather than local control. In addition, revitalization was considered largely a process of constructing new buildings and clearing out slums. The shift was not only from federal [Page 194]to local, but also from people- to place-based programs. Rather than direct programs to individuals there was recognition that community context played a role in generating and reproducing poverty.

Many social scientists have been critical of these efforts to promote participation among the poor to implement these programs. Some have questioned the capacity of the poor to be involved in these programs. Others have criticized place-based antipoverty programs because they have moved away from organizing the poor to a focus on development. As CDCs have matured they rely increasingly on financial resources from institutions and place a higher priority on technical assistance than on mobilizing the poor. Some scholars make a more fundamental critique of the Great Society programs by suggesting that they were used to regulate the poor rather than to empower them. Welfare programs reduced the potential for social unrest.

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