The Next American City published a two part story on “…how the federal government provides roadblocks to enacting ‘rightsizing’ policies in older industrial cities, and what can be done to change this.”

The second article especially highlights the inadequacies of the federal government to enact effective policies to help these cities rebuild and precisely articulates all of the nuances and difficulties. For instance, “…small population leads to a small tax base, which in turn leads to a smaller city government, which leads to a rejected application for Neighborhood Stabilization funds. It really makes no sense.” This quote highlights the inefficiencies of the federal government to both understand and implement policies that speak to the specific challenges these cities face as older industrial cities.

This brings us to the story’s conclusion:

…Not only do we need to fix to [sic] to the way CDBG funds are allocated, demolition caps on NSP funding, and EPA asbestos abatement regulations, we also need a new program specifically designed to help places like Youngstown. Congressman Tim Ryan from Ohio has already introduced a bill to the House called the Community Regeneration, Sustainability, and Innovation Act [CRSI], which aims to solve these sorts of problems that Youngstown faces. The bill should it pass, would allocate funds to HUD to ‘make grants and offer technical assistance to local governments…to design and implement innovative policies, programs, and projects that address widespread property vacancy and abandonment.’

In other words, the way to move forward and “fix” these cities is to develop and implement place based programs, and CRSI is how these place based programs can be funded.

Click here to read the full article. (It’s really worth it.)