§12183 Approval of Applications

Summary

The Secretary must approve an application only after checking several things. The people in the target area must have incomes below the area median. The applying community development corporation must show it can run a revolving loan fund and has past experience in housing and community and economic development. The group must show good working ties with local businesses, banks, the community it will serve, and local or regional job training programs. The group must plan to make 75 percent of jobs kept or created by the fund go to people who are very low‑income or low‑income (poverty level or ≤80 percent of area median), unemployed or underemployed, in certain job training programs, in jobs saved by the financing, or historically underrepresented in the local economy. Approved applicants must include a mix of large and small, urban and rural, and groups serving diverse populations. When choosing among applications, the Secretary must give priority to those serving areas where the median income is 80 percent or less of the area median and where unemployment is high or where the population fell at least 7 percent from April 1, 1980, to April 1, 1990, per the Census.