§1392 Eligibility Criteria

Summary

To be picked as an empowerment zone or enterprise community, a nominated area must meet several clear rules about size, population, and poverty. Urban areas can have at most the smaller of 200,000 people or the larger of 50,000 people or 10% of the biggest city inside the area. Rural areas can have at most 30,000 people. Urban areas may cover up to 20 square miles and rural areas up to 1,000 square miles. The area’s border must be continuous or, except for some rural multi-State cases, made of no more than three separate pieces. The area must show widespread poverty, unemployment, and hardship. It cannot include parts of a central business district unless every census tract there has a poverty rate of at least 35% (30% for enterprise communities). The poverty rules say every census tract in the area must have at least a 20% poverty rate, at least 90% of tracts must have 25% or more, and at least 50% must have 35% or more. Empty tracts count as meeting the 20% and 25% tests but count as zero for the 35% test. Small tracts under 2,000 people that are mostly commercial or industrial can be treated as meeting the 20% and 25% tests. The Secretary may lower one of those percentage tests by 5 points for up to 10% of the tracts (or up to 5 tracts). Any noncontiguous piece must separately meet the poverty tests. Areas without census tracts use equivalent county divisions. The Secretary chooses among eligible areas based on the area’s strategic plan and other criteria. For Alaska and Hawaii, the area meets the poverty and size tests if each tract or block group has 20% or more of families with income at or below 50% of the Statewide median family income (as determined under section 143).