Spokane’s North Hill area is returning to the fold of Community Development Block Grant Neighborhoods.

Whether that is a positive or negative development is likely to be a subject of debate.

Those who say it’s good news would include those who welcome the $30,115 in federal funds that the designation makes available for neighborhood betterment efforts. Street and sidewalk improvements, housing rehabilitation, parks and playgrounds, social services — those are among the uses to which CDBG money can be put under federal guidelines.

Between 1978 and 1994, the North Hill neighborhood received between $45,000 and $100,000 a year. In 1994, once 1990 census data had been compiled and analyzed, North Hill no longer qualified for the program and the funding ended.

It no longer was disadvantaged enough, based on a variety of factors that include poverty, the age and ownership of housing, the components of the population measured by age, ethnicity and marital status.

In many ways, however, loss of CDBG eligibility was a sign of success for the North Hill neighborhood. It showed that the demographic factors that impact community vitality had achieved a healthier mix. That the store of social capital in place there reflected an increase of assets and a decrease of needs.

Just what the CDBG program was intended to encourage.

The same thing happened this year to the Lincoln Heights neighborhood across town. That neighborhood had been receiving $25,000 a year in CDBG money, but 2000 Census figures show the criteria no longer are met.

Meanwhile, though, North Hill has slipped back below the threshold and its funds will resume. That will be welcome news to community activists who worried a decade ago about how they would follow through on initiatives that were on the table at the time.

Still, it’s hard to think of a rising level of need as good news.

It would be easier to draw a clear conclusion if we knew with certainty just what the dynamics are that brought about the change. It was thought a decade ago that North Hill rose above the eligibility threshold after longtime residents died or moved away and their homes were purchased by younger families with higher incomes.

Now, speculates Mike Adolfae, director of community development for the city of Spokane, it may be that those young home buyers have moved on, too, but have kept their North Hill houses as rentals. That would impact the CDBG eligibility determination.

Unfortunately, the city lacks the information it would take to draw solid conclusions about why conditions have changed. Such data, although expensive and time-consuming to collect, would be invaluable in assessing whether socioeconomic conditions in Spokane’s low- and moderate-income neighborhoods are being addressed as effectively as possible.