This project is a comparative case study of five Community Development Corporations (CDCs) that emerged in the seven central neighborhoods of Inner North/Northeast Portland, Oregon in the late 1980s. Of the five organizations that began at that time, only two exist currently. Analyzing how and why these organizations rose and fell, merged and failed, struggled and survived in a compressed time frame and geographic area will elucidate the different paths that each organization chose in a neighborhood that changed from derelict to gentrified. Drawing on the overlapping bodies of literature that cover low-income and affordable housing development, CDC structure and evolution, and neighborhood revitalization, this study will highlight issues of local government participation in the expansion of CDCs and a changing community context. The choices that organizations made, or were compelled to make, in response to these particularly local conditions contribute either to their fortitude or their demise. This case study is intended to fill in gaps in the existing CDC and gentrification literature and to contribute an understanding of survival strategies for CDCs in an intensely competitive environment
