Smart Communities

Richmond Gets Results with Neighborhoods in Bloom

Richmond, VA has an innovative project designed to combat the problem of urban blight and affordable housing. That project, called "Neighborhoods in Bloom," focuses on six neighborhoods across Richmond and offers residents there help with housing renovation, restoration, construction, and sales. The city of Richmond's website has more information about each neighborhood and the challenges facing it.

Recently the Federal Reserve Bank of Richmond commissioned a study to examine the project and chart its progress. The results look good as the study found, for instance, that almost 400 homes had either been built or renovated in the project's six-year existence. Property values have risen as a result and one of the study's authors contends that "increases in property-tax revenue over the next two decades will equal the total of housing grants the city directed to the seven areas."

This project is a smart approach to community preservation and we encourage you to read more about it in this Richmond Times Dispatch story or on the LISC website. For a more general guide to the importance of home ownership to communities, visit our Solutions for America website. Or, for information on how local credit unions can work to build communities through home ownership, read this chapter (PDF) on the Vermont Development Credit Union from the Pew Partnership's most recent publication, Inventing Civic Solutions.

Three Cheers for Richard Semmler

Americans are blessed by a notion that they should be giving of themselves and their resources. We are a nation of givers but sometimes one person will stand out above the rest as having given much more than their fair share.

Enter Richard Semmler.

A math professor at Northern Virginia Community College, Semmler has dedicated his life to living sparingly so that he can donate his income to charity. Semmler's dedication to charity is demonstrated by his donation last year of $60,000 from a $100,000 annual income. According to an article in the Washington Post the average charitable donation by a household with Semmler’s income is $2,000.

Read more about Richard Semmler's remarkable lifestyle, and his close monitoring of how his charitable donations are used, in the Washington Post.

The Future of Civic Engagement

A recent report by the Pew Internet & American Life project has some hopeful projections for the Internet and civic life. Over 1,000 leading technology professionals and scholars met and discussed and the present, and future, uses of the Internet.  Among their findings , "a hopeful minority (42 percent) agrees with predictions that the Internet will "substantially increase civic engagement in the next 10 years," and 39 percent thinks the Internet will expand people's social networks and build trust among those who had previously been strangers."

The Pew Internet & American Life project has been releasing reports of some import to government and civic organizations for some time now. Visit the 'Community' section of their website to view other projects related to community development and Internet technologies.

Update on the Status of Community Development Block Grants

Here's an update of what's new with Community Development Block Grants.

On Thursday, July 21^st the Senate Appropriations Committee voted to maintain much of the funding available for Community Development Block Grants (CDBG) despite a proposal by the Bush administration that would have eliminated the program. A Reuters wire article stated, "President Bush had proposed in his HUD budget request that the Community Development Block Grants be replaced along with 17 other federal community and economic development programs by a new program that would be administered by the U.S. Commerce Department. However, his "Strengthening America's Communities Initiative" plan ran into little support from both Republicans and Democrats in Congress."

While funding for CDBG's was retained, the level of funding will decrease by roughly 8% from 2005 to 2006. The U.S. Conference of Mayors registered their disappointment over the potential cuts in a press release earlier this week. Since the House and Senate versions of the appropriations are fairly similar it is unlikely that the decision for funding will change before the budget is approved.

Civic Education and Political Participation

William Galston wrote an article on civic education and engaged citizens that appeared in the  Winter/Spring 2005 issue of Philosophy & Public Policy Quarterly. The article is brief but packs a big punch by offering compelling arguments about why civic disengagement matters, why we are failing to impart civic skills and knowledge to our youth, and why this civic knowledge matters.

The entire issue is online in PDF, Galston's article runs from page 18 to 22. Older back issues of the Quarterly have been archived and are also available online at the publication's website.

State Budgets, Trends, Outlook

The Rockefeller Institute of Government republished an article (PDF) by Donald Boyd that appeared in the 2005 edition of the Book of the States. Boyd’s article addresses the fact that while states have recovered from fiscal crisis many of them will have to continue making deep cuts throughout the coming decade. Among the pressures on the states are Medicaid, education costs, and potential changes to the federal system of taxation. Taken together these changes mean less revenue in state coffers and more commitments against state budgets.

A warning to our readers, the beginning of Boyd’s article is a bit technical and thick but starting with the section titled "Spending Pressures" on the second page the reading gets a bit easier and more relevant for those interested in the reasons why state budgets are facing tough times ahead.

New Urban Advisory Committee

The Saving America’s Cities Working Group, formed by House of Representatives Speaker Dennis Hastert (R-Ill), has formed a bi-partisan Urban Advisory Committee. This new working group is tasked with making recommendations and, according to Nation’s Cities Weekly, will identify “regulatory reforms that will assist cities to address the complex economic development challenges they face.”

There are five specific areas that the working group will address: brownfields, public housing, market rate housing, historic preservation, and federal rules on regulations. Committee members include Chicago Mayor Richard M. Daley, District of Columbia Mayor Anthony Williams, former Housing and Urban Development Secretary Jack Kemp, former Speaker Newt Gingrich, former Oklahoma Congressman J.C. Watts, National Urban League President and CEO Marc Morial, and Cincinnati City Manager Valerie Lemmie. If you have ideas that the group might consider, we suggest you contact one of them or Speaker Hastert’s office directly.

Look for more news and updates on this working group as they begin to provide recommendations.

Looking Long Term, Get Your Glasses?

Back in June the New York Times ran an editorial ran an editorial that could have, and perhaps should have, been in the news section. Written by Mark Hulbert, an editor of the Hulbert Financial Digest, the editorial discussed findings from a new economics study (PDF) including the surprising observation that "few investors can focus on events more than five years ahead, even when those events are very predictable and almost certainly will have a big impact on a company's earnings."

By ignoring the long-range impact investors often discard their investments before they reach their full projected value. This seems to have great application in the realm of community development. In every instance of a successful community initiative, there have been forward-thinking people leading the way. Not just forward-thinking, though, but folks committed to their vision and unwavering in their conviction that what they were doing was "right" for the community.

This editorial underscores how rare it is to find individuals who are committed to the long-term of anything. It also emphasizes how very difficult it is to achieve long-term change when other people investing their resources – time, money, information – want only immediate results.

The picture is not as bleak as this report might suggest, though, as we at Pew Partnership regularly communicate with hundreds of highly-committed community organizers, planners, and investors. It is critical we believe that we gather very specific outcomes data to make our case. Our communities will be in a better position to advocate for long-term investments and programs if we have evidence that certain things will work and have the return on investment that is expected. In Smart Communities I talk about investing right the first time—it may cost more and take longer but the results will be infinitely better.

Report on the Future of the South

The Southern Growth Policies Board has released its 2005 report titled The New Architecture of Rural Prosperity. Among the principal recommendations of the report are these two:

• Manage economic development as a set of interrelated activities that – directly and indirectly – create, expand and recruit businesses.
• Design and manage economic development along the lines of economic regions, without regard to traditional political boundaries.

The report builds from these recommendations and includes examples of best practices and resources from the Southern Growth Idea Bank. It gives rural communities some great tips on how to get smarter in economic development. The report costs $10 but you can review its executive summary online. (PDF) executive summary online. Copies of the report may be ordered through the website (PDF). We suggest you also read the section on HandMade in America's Small Towns Revitalization Project (Rural Leadership Development) in Inventing Civic Solutions.

The Value(s) of Volunteering

Why do you believe that volunteering matters? What value do you place on it and why?

Susan Ellis recently wrote an article for the NonProfit Times that gives a primer of some of the values we can expect to hold if we appreciate and utilize volunteers. While the article lists eight total values of volunteering there are, undoubtedly, many more. We especially like Ellis's first listed value and reproduce it here for our readers:

"When Lincoln said our government was "of the people, by the people, and for the people," he meant it. Though our population centers have long ago lost the hands-on immediacy of 18th century town meetings, and many citizens have become cynical of the political process, it remains true that anyone can make a difference - or at least make the attempt - providing a willingness to do the hard work involved.

Activists mobilize their neighbors to protest, march, and lobby for causes as local as the placement of a stop sign or as global as world hunger. For the even more political-minded, getting on the ballot as a candidate for office, particularly at the local level, requires little more than a few signatures (winning, however, takes organization and money, both of which need volunteer involvement, too). The best places to live still hold neighborliness as a functioning concept, from doing errands for someone who's ill to picking up litter."

What Ellis is telling us is that everyday should be "Making A Difference Day."