§1392 Eligibility Criteria

Summary

Before an area can be named an empowerment zone or enterprise community, it has to meet strict tests. An urban area can have no more than 200,000 people (or, if smaller, the greater of 50,000 or 10 percent of its biggest city's population), and a rural area no more than 30,000. The area must show pervasive poverty, unemployment, and general distress. It cannot be larger than 20 square miles if urban or 1,000 square miles if rural, and it generally must have one continuous boundary within no more than two contiguous states (three for rural areas). Poverty must be deep: every census tract in the area needs a poverty rate of at least 20 percent, at least 90 percent of the tracts must be at 25 percent or more, and at least half must be at 35 percent or more. There are a few softeners. Tracts with no people, or tiny tracts under 2,000 people that are mostly zoned commercial or industrial, can count as passing some tests. For enterprise communities, officials can lower one poverty threshold by 5 percentage points for a small number of tracts. In Alaska and Hawaii, an area passes the distress, size, and poverty tests if in each tract or block group at least 20 percent of families earn half or less of the statewide median family income. From the eligible areas, the government picks winners based on the strength of their strategic plans and other criteria it sets.