Right Column

Funding Criteria–General, Native American, and California Community Economic Enterprise Fund Components

State Community Development Block Grant Program

The rating factors used under the Native American, general allocations and the Enterprise Fund activity under the Economic Development Allocation consist of: benefit to Targeted Income Group households (except for Enterprise Fund), the extent of poverty in the applicant jurisdiction, the seriousness of the problem to be addressed using CDBG funds, the applicant's efforts to assist in resolving the problem, the environmental, social or economic impacts of the proposal, and the applicant's performance with any prior CDBG grants from the State.

The evaluation criteria are weighed by the maximum number of points assigned to each of the main categories of criteria as follows:

1. Poverty Index—100 points
2. Benefit to the Targeted Income Group—300 points
3. Need for CDBG Assistance—200 points
4. Prior CDBG Performance—150 points
5. Capacity to Administer the CDBG Program—150 points
6. Leverage of Local and Private Resources—50 points
7. State Objectives—50 points

Total: 1000 points

The weighing of the evaluation criteria and their use in a way that compares applications to one another is consistent with the State objectives of funding applications that provide the greatest portion of funds to benefit the Targeted Income Group, address the most serious community development needs, and demonstrate effective strategies and sound management as follows:

1. Poverty Index (Maximum 100 Points)—The Department will compare applicant jurisdictions on the basis of the percentage of the population with incomes below the poverty level as provided in the latest decennial census. The Department will assign 100 points to the application serving the area with the highest poverty percentage. The other applicants will be rank ordered based on the extent of their poverty to the highest poverty level. Applicants who elect to target their local program to fewer census tracts or census block groups than there are in their jurisdictions shall receive scores based on either those targeted census subdivisions or all the census subdivisions in the jurisdiction, whichever results in a higher score. The Department obtains this data from the State Census Data Center.
2. Benefit to Targeted Income Group (300 points)—A formula exists in regulation to measure the comparative extent of benefit to the Targeted Income Group of each applicant's program based on documented information provided by the applicant. The formula works as follows: Under the federal national objective, benefit to low and moderate income persons, at least 51 percent of a project's beneficiaries must be Targeted Income Group persons. Under State regulation, any single activity that meets no more than 51 percent benefit receives zero points. Under the State regulations, the 300 points for this benefit criteria are distributed among programs that provide 52 to 100 percent benefit. The 300 points are divided by the 49 percentage points between 51 percent and 100 percent. The product of this division is 6.12 points for each percentage point from 52 to 100. Since 51 percent benefit is equal to zero, the number 51 is subtracted from percentages greater than 51.
3. Need for CDBG Assistance (200 points)—The Department will evaluate need based upon which of four activity types is being proposed. The four activity types and criteria to be used are as follows:
   1. Housing New Construction: The need for CDBG assistance will be based upon jurisdiction-wide data including incidence of overpayment, incidence of overcrowding, residential vacancy rates, and other relevant data.
   2. Housing Rehabilitation: Need will be determined by jurisdiction-wide housing stock condition as described in the local general plan's housing element, census data describing housing overcrowding and age within the relevant area, and other relevant data.
   3. Public Works: Need will be based upon documented health and safety problems, as well as the extent to which the proposed project solves the problem.
   4. Community Facilities and Public Services: Need will be assessed based upon documented health and safety problems and the extent to which the project meets the need.
4. Prior CDBG Performance (100 points)—The Department will assign scores based upon the timeliness of expenditures of CDBG funds on general allocation grants funded in program years 1993 and 1994. The Department will also consider any unresolved monitoring findings, unresolved audit findings, timely close-out submittals, and timely reporting (annual GPR, cash requests, and quarterly reports). Jurisdictions without 1993 or 1994 grants will receive full performance points.
5. Capacity to Administer the CDBG Program (150 points)—Jurisdictions receiving 1993 or 1994 general allocation grants will receive full capacity points. Lacking that experience, applicants will be evaluated upon submitted tasks, duty statements, and resumes of local staff. Jurisdictions lacking local staff capacity may demonstrate capacity by including a letter of interest from a professional contract consultant.
6. Other Funding (50 points)—The Department will assign a score based upon a comparison, among applications. of private funding committed to the proposed project. Specifically, the Department will compare like activities against one another in deriving a score. For example, housing new construction projects will be compared against one another for private leveraging scoring. The Department will also compare applicants on the extent to which they bring local resources to bear on the proposed project. Cash and in-kind contributions will be compared based upon similarity in sales and use tax revenue bases. In this way, more affluent jurisdictions will not compete directly with more revenue impacted communities on this scoring criterion. Applicants will also be compared against one another based upon the provision of any regulatory relief in conjunction with the proposed project. Other State and federal funding brought into the project will not garner a competitive advantage.
7. State Objectives (50 points)—The State objective in this year's funding will be the extent to which the project will provide infrastructure for housing, or to correct health and safety deficiencies.