ABSTRACT
The U.S. community development field originated as a movement for the self-determination of urban poor Black and Puerto Rican communities, emerging from the social justice activism of the 1960s and 1970s. Political empowerment and economic autonomy was the means to transform “ghetto” circumstances and conditions into thriving, healthy, prosperous, and equitable environments for poor and segregated African-Americans and Latinos (Ferguson and Dickens, 1999; Goldsmith, 1974; Newman and Lake, 2006; Tabb, 1970). Key ingredients included “community organizing, political power, training, and participation” (Vietorisz and Harrison, 1971). National and local funders initially supported community development’s early emphasis on political organizing and fostering a proud collective identity for marginalized urban communities. Yet, as the political climate shifted rightward in the 1970s and into the early 1980s, funders began to pull out of this sector, citing a lack of measurable outcomes and responding to the increasingly conservative federal environment for urban low-income development. This retreat signaled the potential demise of the nascent sector. Instead, the community development (CD) field grew and flourished in the subsequent decades, mainly due to its pragmatic embrace of federal devolution and privatization. Community development intermediaries, launched by Congress, foundations, and philanthropists between 1979 and 1982, played a particularly important role in rationalizing and professionalizing the field. This role of community development intermediaries is an important chapter in the evolution of U.S. anti-poverty practice and outcomes, and the focus of this analysis. Intermediaries are the key vehicle for institutionalizing market logics in the CD sector since former President Ronald Reagan’s “privatization revolution” emphasized charity, voluntarism, and, critically, market efficiency in social welfare service delivery. Their creation, growth, and success in rationalizing the sector for financial investment and housing production has been described as
the single most important story of the nonprofit development sector in the 1980s. Arguably, without this source of support for grassroots development activity, state and local governments would have displayed far less responsiveness to nonprofit developer needs over the decade.
