4 Case descriptions
4.1 Simulated CDC
4.1.1 Background
One of us (Turcotte), who had previously served on the board of a community
development corporation, played the role of an executive director at Simulated
CDC. The executive director defined the primary mission of this organization as to
improve the quality of life in the community served by the CDC, primarily though
improvements in the economic and personal opportunities of residents of the
neighborhood. The emphasis on resident quality of life was reflected in the types of
objectives he described as important to the CDC’s mission, such as: empowering
residents, increasing affordable rental and homeownership opportunities, reducing
crime, increasing amenities, and improving outcomes for children. Specific to the
issue of foreclosures, the CDC would likely identify additional objectives related to
improving the stability of the neighborhood and the quality of the foreclosed
housing stock: these objectives eventually became the means to the fundamental
objectives specified in the VFT structure.
As discussed in Sect. 3, Simulated CDC serves a community that is larger than
the other two actual CDCs, though one that has faced the same dynamics of longterm
economic decline as the Smalltown CDC. According to multiple descriptors of
resident demographics, housing market strength and organization capacity, it lies
approximately in the middle of the urban and Smalltown CDCs.