ABSTRACT
This chapter deals with Housing and Urban Development (HUD) efforts to support the wide variety of local actions needed to revive the central city. It examines HUD's current program of block grants for community development, under which the localities are given considerable latitude to select the specific city improvement projects they undertake. The chapter looks at the several programs the block grants replaced, especially the Urban Renewal Program, and the Model Cities Program. The block grant approach to federal aid in the urban field constituted a substantial change from past practices. Modifications to the urban renewal program, enacted in 1954, provided various federal financial supports for the planning and execution of neighborhood rehabilitation projects. HUD is also promoting urban homesteading, where HUD's foreclosed properties are made available to families at nominal cost if they will rehabilitate them with the help of low-interest rate loans, with their own efforts, or both.
