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Community Development Financial Flows
How US Counties Compare

June 26, 2018

The US has a wide array of programs and regulatory supports that help finance community development and generate economic growth and opportunity. Some counties are more successful at accessing these resources, but others struggle to secure the same sources of capital.

To better understand the landscape of federal community development financing, we look at investment volume in nearly 1,000 counties with more than 50,000 residents and Puerto Rico from 10 federal programs and regulatory supports.

Search for your county to see how it compares nationally and with peers of similar population size in terms of housing, small business, impact finance, and other investment flows. And explore the counties with the most and least federal investment in the ranking tables.

For further analysis, check out our Urban Wire blog post for a look at the trends and implications for capital, capacity, and community development.

Sort by:
Combined
Housing
Small Business
Impact Finance
Other Community Development

About Standard Deviations
This measures how counties are faring at accessing community development funds compared with the average. The greater the number of standard deviations from zero, the further that county’s investment is from the average.
Click on county to learn more Double tap on county to learn more

*Small counties have populations between 50,000 and 199,999 people

See rankings for by:
Combined
Housing
Small Business
Impact Finance
Other Community Development

Most Investment among Large Counties

Most Investment among Midsize Counties

Most Investment among Small Counties

Least Investment among Large Counties

Least Investment among Midsize Counties

Least Investment among Small Counties

Population sizes
Small counties
50,000–99,999
Midsize counties
100,000–299,999
Large counties
300,000+

ABOUT THE DATA

Download data
State overview table

This dashboard includes investment data for 10 federally supported programs at the county-level: HUD HOME awards, low-income housing tax credit allocations; HUD Choice Neighborhood awards; Capital Magnet Fund awards; CDFI lending activity compiled from three different sources (CDFI Fund transaction-level report data, Opportunity Finance Network data, and an analysis of CoreLogic data) that we then de-duplicate; New Markets Tax Credit Program investments project data; Community Reinvestment Act–reported small business lending data, Promise neighborhoods awards; Community Development Block Grant awards; and Section 108 lending awards. It does not include any state-level programs.

We first aggregate funding for each of these programs for 2011 through 2015 (some programs, including Capital Magnet Fund and Promise Neighborhoods, did not have annual funding rounds, so we aggregate all funding delivered by these programs in that period). We then allocate program funding to the following four dimensions: housing, small business, impact finance, and other community development.

Some counties do not have data reported for certain programs. We assume that counties where no funding is reported for a program received $0 in investments through that program.

For each program, we scale the total dollars of funding an indicator received to estimate potential demand at the county level. For the small business dimension, our indicator is Local Employment Dynamics data on the number of small business employees (defined as the number of employees in businesses with fewer than 20 employees). For all other dimensions, the indicator is the county population in households earning under 200 percent of the federal poverty level.

Next, we calculate counties’ z-scores for each program and then each dimension. A z-score indicates how many standard deviations above or below the mean a given county fared at accessing community development investments in each program and dimension, relative to its demand indicator. The combined dimension is the average of the four other dimensions.

Although this comprehensive tool offers a new look at the mix of federal community development funds flowing into communities at the county level, the data has the following limitations:

  • We include only federally connected funds and don’t include state- and locally backed community development finance or philanthropic investments.
  • We have limited access to rural-focused funding programs and exclude calculations for counties with populations under 50,000 to avoid misrepresenting federally supported capital flows to those communities.
  • We lack information about the full set of federal community development financing. For example, we are missing information about historic tax credits, US Department of Agriculture loans and grants, and the Environmental Protection Agency’s Brownfields program.

PROJECT CREDITS

This feature was funded by a grant from JPMorgan Chase. We are grateful to them and to all our funders, who make it possible for Urban to advance its mission. The views expressed are those of the authors and should not be attributed to the Urban Institute, its trustees, or its funders. Funders do not determine research findings or the insights and recommendations of our experts. More information on our funding principles is available here. Read our terms of service here.

The Urban Institute is collaborating with JPMorgan Chase over five years to inform and assess JPMorgan Chase’s philanthropic investments in key initiatives. One of these is Partnerships for Raising Opportunity in Neighborhoods (PRO Neighborhoods), a $125 million, five-year initiative to identify and support custom solutions for the unique challenges facing disadvantaged neighborhoods in US cities. The goals of the collaboration include using data and evidence to inform JPMorgan Chase’s philanthropic investments, assessing whether its programs are achieving desired outcomes, and informing the larger fields of policy, philanthropy, and practice. As part of a larger body of work that identifies general trends in commercial investments at the local level, this interactive feature documents community development across counties in the United States.

RESEARCH
Brett Theodos, Eric Hangen, Irvin Mull, Noah Strayer, Jay Dev, and Maia Woluchem
DESIGN
Daniel Sundén
DEVELOPMENT
Daniel Wood
EDITING
Elizabeth Forney
WRITING
Emily Peiffer

View this project on Github