logo
    • Magazine
    • Membership
    • Donate
  • Racial Justice
  • Economic Justice
    • Collections
  • Climate Justice
  • Health Justice
  • Leadership
  • CONTENT TYPES
  • Subscribe
  • Webinars
    • Upcoming Webinars
    • Complimentary Webinars
    • Premium On-Demand Webinars
  • Membership
  • Submissions

Calif. Nonprofits and Communities Face Loss of Redevelopment Agencies

Paula Smith Arrigoni
February 1, 2012
Share
Tweet
Share
Email
Print

January 28, 2012; Source: San Jose Mercury News | The controversial dismantling of California’s 65-year-old redevelopment agencies (RDAs), part of Gov. Jerry Brown’s cost-cutting plan to balance the state budget, is underway with concerning results for local communities and nonprofits. Those results include infrastructure project cancellations, property sales, job losses, and general uncertainty about community investment for future generations. Local RDAs and partnering nonprofits are currently sorting out the complex issues around debt repayment, property ownership, and aborted projects, among others. Nonprofit organizations, particularly affordable housing developers that obtained acquisition and predevelopment financing from RDAs, will be hard-pressed to find replacement financing sources (especially for early-stage financing) from the private sector.

RDAs were created to eliminate blight. They did so by dedicating 20 percent of their funds to affordable housing, while other projects included the development of public libraries, transit villages, community and senior centers, and outdoor public spaces. The biggest beneficiaries of RDAs have been the state’s largest cities, including Los Angeles, San Jose, San Diego, San Francisco and Oakland, as well as some rapidly growing areas like Riverside County. The two main arguments waged against RDAs have been that the criteria used to define RDA projects have been too broad and the cost of RDA project financing has been too expensive.

Sign up for our free newsletters

Subscribe to NPQ's newsletters to have our top stories delivered directly to your inbox.

By signing up, you agree to our privacy policy and terms of use, and to receive messages from NPQ and our partners.

On the latter point, RDAs were criticized for accumulating large amounts of public debt and diverting property tax funds from other public agencies and schools to repay this debt through a mechanism called tax increment financing. Recent figures indicate the magnitude of the financial impact on the state. The Santa Clara Weekly reported that, “In 2009, California’s 425 RDAs ended the fiscal year with $5.7 billion in tax and assessment revenues, $8.1 billion in expenses, and $29.4 billion in outstanding bonds.”The San Jose Mercury News contextualizes these figures, calculating that the per capita debt burden in the East Bay region, which formerly had 29 RDAs, is $4,740—or, put more starkly, “if every dollar the agencies received was applied to the debt—at an annual rate based on the past fiscal year’s revenues allocated to redevelopment—repayment would take 30 years.”

California has a long history of developing and renewing its communities through RDAs with projects like Providence Senior Housing(which provides housing for low and very low income seniors in an underserved area of San Francisco) and the City Heights Urban Village(a mixed-use project including affordable senior housing and a mini-park). The loss of these resources will be hardest felt in California’s biggest urban cities. It’s unclear how local agencies will address blight and private disinvestment in the future, or how local nonprofits and the communities that they serve will be impacted by the loss of these resources. Most likely, it will take much longer for projects like City Heights to get off of the ground (if they can at all) due to the lack of available financing and subsidies, and increased administrative hurdles. –Paula Smith Arrigoni

Share
Tweet
Share
Email
Print

Become a member

Support independent journalism and knowledge creation for civil society. Become a member of Nonprofit Quarterly.

Members receive unlimited access to our archived and upcoming digital content. NPQ is the leading journal in the nonprofit sector written by social change experts. Gain access to our exclusive library of online courses led by thought leaders and educators providing contextualized information to help nonprofit practitioners make sense of changing conditions and improve infra-structure in their organizations.

Join Today
logo logo logo logo logo
See comments

Spring-2023-sidebar-subscribe
You might also like
Cancelling Student Debt Is Necessary for Racial Justice
Kitana Ananda
To Save Legal Aid, Expand Public Service Loan Forgiveness
Zoë Polk
No Justice, No Peace of Mind and Body: The Health Impacts of Housing Insecurity for Black Women
Jhumpa Bhattacharya, Maile Chand and Andrea Flynn
The Human Impact of the Global Refugee Crisis Must Be Understood—And Acted Upon
Anmol Irfan
Black Americans Need Reparations: The Fight for the CTC Highlights the Roadblocks
Jhumpa Bhattacharya and Trevor Smith
Edgar Cahn’s Second Act: Time Banking and the Return of Mutual Aid
Steve Dubb

NPQ Webinars

April 27th, 2 pm ET

Liberatory Decision-Making

How to Facilitate and Engage in Healthy Decision-making Processes

Register Now
You might also like
Cancelling Student Debt Is Necessary for Racial Justice
Kitana Ananda
To Save Legal Aid, Expand Public Service Loan Forgiveness
Zoë Polk
No Justice, No Peace of Mind and Body: The Health Impacts of...
Jhumpa Bhattacharya, Maile Chand and Andrea Flynn

Like what you see?

Subscribe to the NPQ newsletter to have our top stories delivered directly to your inbox.

See our newsletters

By signing up, you agree to our privacy policy and terms of use, and to receive messages from NPQ and our partners.

NPQ-Spring-2023-cover

Independent & in your mailbox.

Subscribe today and get a full year of NPQ for just $59.

subscribe
  • About
  • Contact
  • Advertise
  • Copyright
  • Careers

We are using cookies to give you the best experience on our website.

 

Non Profit News | Nonprofit Quarterly
Powered by  GDPR Cookie Compliance
Privacy Overview

This website uses cookies so that we can provide you with the best user experience possible. Cookie information is stored in your browser and performs functions such as recognising you when you return to our website and helping our team to understand which sections of the website you find most interesting and useful.

Strictly Necessary Cookies

Strictly Necessary Cookie should be enabled at all times so that we can save your preferences for cookie settings.

If you disable this cookie, we will not be able to save your preferences. This means that every time you visit this website you will need to enable or disable cookies again.