Community Development Director Job Description

A Community Development Director runs the city or county department that decides what gets built, where it goes, and which public dollars help pay for it. The portfolio behind the title differs from one jurisdiction to the next. In Tamarac, Florida, the Director of Community Development directs code compliance, planning and zoning, business revenue, housing and neighborhoods, and economic development, and reports to the deputy city manager. In Port Orchard, Washington, the director oversees the Permit Center, the Building Department, the Planning Department and Code Enforcement, serves as the Fire Code Official, and may step in as Building Official. Some cities keep federal housing grants in this department; others give them to a separate housing office. The org chart tells a candidate which job is actually on offer.

Land use and permits

The development half of the job is regulation. The director owns the zoning code and the long-range land use plan, runs development review, and carries contested projects to the planning commission, the hearing examiner or the council. Tamarac's director chairs the Development Review Committee and approves site plans for expansions and redevelopment. In Washington, the department prepares the plans the state Growth Management Act mandates and implements the State Environmental Policy Act. Rezonings, subdivisions, annexations, parking code amendments and appeals all start as staff reports written or signed in this office, and the director answers for the permit counter's turnaround when builders complain to council.

Federal grants

The other half runs on HUD rules. A city that receives Community Development Block Grant (CDBG) and HOME Investment Partnerships money adopts an Annual Action Plan, chooses activities and subrecipients, and completes environmental reviews under 24 CFR Part 58, the HUD rule covering entities that assume HUD's environmental responsibilities. The dollars can be modest and still demanding. A May 13, 2026 council presentation in Hampton showed 2026-2027 HUD allocations of $1,389,837: $904,961 in CDBG for housing services, housing programs, code enforcement, and planning and administration, and $484,876 in HOME for homeowner rehabilitation, homebuyer assistance and community housing development organizations. Every line carries eligibility tests, procurement rules and monitoring.

Fair housing paperwork changed in 2025. HUD's Affirmatively Furthering Fair Housing interim final rule, effective April 2, 2025, repealed the 2021 interim rule and returned the grantee certification to a general commitment to take active steps to promote fair housing. Under the rule, a certification is deemed sufficient if the grantee took any action during the period rationally related to promoting fair housing. Grantees still make that certification.

The rest of the week

Around those two pillars sit the budget, hiring and staff evaluations, council briefings, and night meetings with neighborhood groups. Tamarac's specification lists evening and weekend meetings and puts the director on call for hurricanes, tropical weather and other emergencies so the city can keep operating before, during and after the event. The job rewards someone who can explain a setback variance to a homeowner at 7 p.m. and defend a subrecipient finding to HUD the next morning.

Directors arrive from planning, building, housing or economic development, and the job asks them to supervise all of those functions at once.

Education. As a rough guide, plan on a bachelor's degree in urban or regional planning, public administration, geography, architecture or a related field. A master's in urban planning (MUP or MCRP) or public administration (MPA) is worth considering for larger jurisdictions. Tamarac's class specification is a useful benchmark: it requires a bachelor's degree in urban or regional planning or a related field plus seven years of progressively responsible experience in complex urban planning and economic development, including four years as a program manager, or an equivalent combination of education, certification, training and experience.

Experience path. One typical route runs planner, senior planner, principal planner, planning manager or deputy director, then director. A second route starts in a housing or grants division, managing CDBG and HOME subrecipients, and adds land use authority later. As a rough guide, expect eight to twelve years of professional work, with several of them supervising other professionals, before a director appointment in a mid-sized city.

Knowledge the job tests. Port Orchard's specification reads like a syllabus: zoning, urban design, transportation, construction, building and fire codes and their enforcement, land use law, permit processing, procurement, contracting, budgeting and grant writing, plus Washington's Growth Management Act and State Environmental Policy Act. Swap in your own state's planning statute and environmental review law and the list travels well. On the federal side, learn eligible activities and national objectives for CDBG, HOME rent and income limits, and HUD environmental review procedures.

Credentials worth pursuing.

• AICP, awarded by the American Institute of Certified Planners, APA's professional institute. Tamarac lists AICP certification as a preferred qualification.
• Certified Economic Developer (CEcD), awarded by the International Economic Development Council, for directors who carry business attraction and retention.
• Economic Development Finance Professional (EDFP), awarded by Grow America (formerly the National Development Council), for deal underwriting and public finance tools.
• ICMA Credentialed Manager (ICMA-CM), awarded by ICMA, for directors aiming at assistant or deputy city manager roles.

Tamarac also requires National Incident Management System (NIMS) training, a reminder that the job can carry an emergency management role.

Tools and skills. Expect to live in a permitting and land management system (Accela, Tyler EnerGov, OpenGov or a homegrown one), GIS for parcel and zoning maps, and HUD's IDIS for grant drawdowns and reporting. The soft skills are harder: chairing a hostile public hearing, writing a staff report a council member can read in five minutes, and telling a developer no in a way that keeps the next project in town.

The federal money behind many of these departments has been in question for two budget cycles. According to a September 3, 2026 Congressional Research Service report, the President's FY2027 budget request, like the FY2026 request, proposed eliminating funding for several HUD grant programs, and all of them were ultimately funded in the FY2026 final appropriations law. CDBG, the largest program proposed for elimination, was funded at $3.3 billion in FY2026, and HOME was funded at $1.25 billion. The budget's stated rationale was that "State and local governments are better positioned to serve their communities' needs than the Federal Government." HUD posted full-year FY2026 formula allocations for CDBG, HOME, Emergency Solutions Grants, HOPWA and the Housing Trust Fund, with the page current as of August 3, 2026.

FY2027 is unsettled. CRS reported that full-year FY2027 appropriations for HUD had not been enacted; a continuing resolution signed into law on September 2, 2026 funds the department through December 11, 2026, generally at FY2026 rates and conditions. The House committee bill would fund CDBG at its FY2026 level. For a director, that means drafting an Annual Action Plan against an estimate, writing contingency language into subrecipient agreements, and briefing council on what happens to code enforcement or housing rehab lines if a program shrinks.

Permitting technology is the second shift. In Los Angeles, an August 2025 council motion asked the City Council to instruct the Department of City Planning to report within 30 days with recommendations for using AI tools to review entitlement applications for zoning compliance and other code requirements, and to have the Department of Building and Safety set up a pilot that uses AI to pre-screen permit applications so applicants can make corrections before formal submittal. Motions like that land on a community development director's desk as procurement, data governance and staffing questions: who checks the tool's output, how disputes with applicants get resolved, and which reviewer positions change.

The labor market data is broad. Because no occupation code names this title, the closest projection is O*NET's for Managers, All Other, which it expects to grow faster than average, 5% to 6% from 2025 to 2035, with about 100,900 openings a year on average. That figure covers every manager not listed separately, so it says little about this title specifically. BLS counted 40,580 Managers, All Other jobs in local government, excluding schools and hospitals, in May 2025; BLS does not report community development directors separately.

Planning offers a reference point for pay trade-offs. In APA's 2025 Planners' Salary and Benefits Survey, 70 percent of respondents worked for public entities, and respondents in the private sector earned 12 percent more, on average, than those in the public sector, while public-sector respondents reported more complete benefits packages. APA cautions that its results describe respondents, not the whole profession.

Next steps from the director's chair include a larger jurisdiction, an assistant or deputy city manager post (Tamarac's director already reports to one), a state housing or planning agency, or a planning consulting firm.

Dear Members of the Selection Committee,

Please accept my application to lead the City of Riverbend's Community Development Department. For the past six years I have served as Deputy Director of Planning and Development Services in a neighboring county, where I supervise the current planning, long-range planning and housing divisions and act as director when she is away.

The work I am proudest of is unglamorous. When I took over current planning, applicants waited weeks for a first completeness review and resubmitted the same plans three or four times. I rewrote our submittal checklists in plain language, set up a weekly pre-application clinic staffed by a planner and a building plans examiner, and published turnaround times on the county website every month. Resubmittals fell, complaints to the board fell faster, and two of our most vocal builders now serve on our code advisory group.

On the grants side, I moved our housing division off spreadsheets and into a single tracking system tied to our HUD drawdowns, which made our last monitoring visit a two-day conversation instead of a two-week scramble. I also led the public process for our most recent Annual Action Plan, holding hearings in three neighborhoods instead of one room at the courthouse.

Riverbend is at a turning point: a zoning code that predates its light rail stations, a downtown that wants housing, and a permit counter that the business community has called slow. I would start by listening to staff and applicants, then bring the council a short list of code and process fixes with dates attached.

I would welcome the chance to discuss how my experience fits Riverbend's plans.

Sincerely, Jordan Avery