Smart Communities

Creative Community Crime Fighting

When crime is as prevalent as it is in some areas of Oakland, CA you need some creative ways to combat it.  One way is from the ground up, as this story from Inside the Bay Area.com indicates.  Pastor Raymond Lankford is working hard in his community to reclaim youths from problems caused by the widespread drug abuse and the disintegration of families and common culture that follows.  One of his innovative approaches to stabilizing the environment for local youths is by educating them when they come to get a haircut.  “The barber is a hidden gem. Drug dealers, businessmen, preachers, everyone sits in the barber chair. They have influence, and they have been stable role models in the community.”

Another approach is the traditional “top-down” variety as reported in the New York Times, only this effort has a twist.  Oakland police have identified a Top 50 list of individuals they think are causing trouble in the community.  They are contacting the individuals, requesting they come to police to talk about what’s going on, and then offer a wide array of services to them including job training.  The effort is based on one implemented in Boston over a decade earlier, called the “Boston Miracle” that initiative yielded a drop in murders in Boston from 152 in 1990 to 31 in 1999.

There are two other ongoing efforts to fight crime in other parts of the country that deserve attention.  The first is in Naperville, IL where police helped establish a family resource center to keep children off the streets after school.  Just with the addition of after-school and summer programs for low-income children the community has seen its crime rate almost halved (136 reported crimes in 1995, roughly 70 reported crimes on average now) and a severe reduction in service calls (from 460 in 1997 to below 300 currently.)  More importantly, the resource center is attended by somewhere between 50-70 children and the local elementary school has noted a distinct attitude change toward learning by the young participants.

Finally, the sheriff of McAllen, TX is seeking volunteers for a “posse” that will do research on 225 unsolved murders dating back to 1963.  Sheriff Joe Arpaio is seeking skilled labor - especially law enforcement, real estate, or legal experience – to fill 40 volunteer positions related to the effort.  According to the posse website (yes, even posses have websites) there are a large number of volunteer posses organized by the sheriff’s office doing a large number of tasks including “child fingerprint and identification details, the graffiti prevention detail, jail wagon, search and rescue, christmas mall patrols, tobacco detail, crime prevention patrols, school security, sexual offender notification, and many others.”

There you have it, from pastors and barbers to family centers and posses, communities are active in creative crime prevention across the country.  For more ideas on neighborhood crime prevention and safety visit the Solutions for America website sponsored by the Pew Partnership for Civic Change.

Community Entrepreneurship and Branding

We’ve blogged before on communities creating a brand name for themselves but we haven’t done so outside the borders of the U.S.  That’s about to change.  There's a neat article on Jamaica on the web that discusses some of the efforts there to identify communities with particular festivals or traits.  It sounds like some were fairly successful in their attempts and others might find their initiatives instructive.  The author of the article seems to have a real sense of what makes community brands work.  Just read this sample:

“Development from below is possible with the help of central government agencies, interest groups, and the private sector. For instance, the recently-launched jerk trail along Jamaica's north coast can be matched by a fish and farm trail along the south coast, linking the fishing and farming communities ... [M]any of these communities have great stories to tell and beautiful sights to behold. How many of the citizens of Gimme-Me-Bit, I-No-Call-You-No-Come, August Town, Independence City, Fat Hog Quarter, Wait-A-Bit, Bloody Bay, and hundreds of so many exotic places really do not know the history and attractive potential of their own locality.”

Even if you don’t come away from this article with new ideas on community branding it is still a joy to read about Jamaica’s history of community-building and entrepreneurial efforts.  Given the relative brevity of the article its readers get lots of bang for the buck.

Welfare Reform Revisited

Last week’s newspapers were adorned with news stories and editorials about the 10th anniversary of welfare reform in America.  Bill Clinton offered his apologia for the legislation and public debate was well-served by a healthy dose of public leaders weighing-in on the issue as well as letters from private citizens giving their reaction.  By way of a wrap-up to the anniversary of welfare reform I thought we’d point out a few items that our readers will find interesting.  The first is a story about what hasn’t happened and what has gone wrong in the wake of welfare reform.  Here is a quote from the story in the New York Times:

“The central idea of the nation’s public assistance programs since 1996 has been that cash aid should be only a temporary support while parents are ushered into jobs, with skills training and child-care subsidies to help. The federal government set a time limit of five years for individual recipients, though exemptions were allowed for hardship cases, and states could extend aid with their own money.

Simply cutting families off at an arbitrary date has often proved impractical, because a significant group of mothers … — no one has precise numbers — have not been able to hold on to jobs, even after attending required classes and while receiving other aid.

Their lives are simply too troubled by disabilities, turmoil and, often, bad personal choices, researchers say. Poor education, lack of support from their families or their children’s fathers, mental health and drug problems, and unstable living conditions are common among this group, and a rigid time limit may only harm the children.”

Not everyone agrees with this description, representative John Linder (R-GA) had a letter published in Gwinnett Daily Post calling welfare reform a success.  He argues, in part, that, “The statistics show the successes. Welfare caseloads have declined almost 65 percent, the poverty rate has dropped 7 percent, including a 13 percent drop in child poverty. The statistics show that key poverty rates - white, black and Hispanic - all fell following the reforms.”

Finally, America is not the only country with its eye on welfare reform.  In the provocatively titled article “Swedish Models” found in The National Interest the authors argue that Sweden, long the model of the ideal welfare state, is facing fundamental challenges to its ability to continue its welfare as it currently exists.  A crisis lies ahead as Sweden, and other welfare states, struggle to reform their policies in the face of a population that is very supportive of the existing system and which has little surplus income with which to absorb a change in policy.  This article is fairly brief, very informative, and offers a nice comparison to the sort of need-based system employed here in the states.

Measuring Poverty's Reach

There is no question that the disappearance of manufacturing jobs has left an indelible mark on the United States.  One of those marks is poverty.  A recent story in the New York Times details the decline of Oakridge, OR as concurrent with the disappearance of the local mills and the jobs by which the community flourished.  The story is terribly sad, it’s about the veritable death of a town and the loss of hope for positive change by its residents.  Think of Flint, MI as portrayed in Roger and Me and you’ll get the idea.

While there’s no denying the face of poverty in Oakridge there are some who are questioning how we measure poverty in order to aid those who need it most.  The question is a good one, we should certainly be striving for the most accurate depiction of the problem so we can bring resources to bear on it.  To this end, researcher Nicholas Eberstadt at the American Enterprise Institute has published an article in Policy Review about how poverty is measured and the problems attendant to that measurement.  Caution – this is a long read but is also well worth the effort.  Eberstadt takes care to detail the history of poverty measurement and carefully document the discrepancies in the measures currently used and the questions these raise about what poverty statistics really tell us.

Both these sorts of efforts are important – we need to document poverty and create narratives about those who experience it firsthand.  At the same time, our public policy (and public deliberation) needs accurate statistics that yield an understanding of the scope and development of the problem.  In addition, citizens need to talk about the problem and its solutions.  Two of our partners, the Northwest Area Foundation and the Study Circles Resource Center, have teamed up to produce a community discussion guide that we can recommend titled "Thriving Communities: Working Together to Move from Poverty to Prosperity for All."

Preserving the Past – Becoming a Preserve America Community

One of the strategies for change that I emphasize in Smart Communities is preserving the past and making the most of local traditions and customs.  To this end we have repeatedly highlighted efforts at preservation on this blog and in my articles and speeches.  Among the best of those efforts are the Main Streets initiatives that have been successful across the country in courting economic development dollars, and the National Trust’s annual list of endangered places that calls attention to areas deserving of preservation.

There is another option as well that is not as prominent and does not carry with it the same guarantee of national attention.  That option is the Preserve America program that designates communities as protecting their heritage and using it for community and economic development.  The program is available for small towns and neighborhoods within cities that have populations of 200,000 or more.

Being designated a Preserve America community opens the doors for grants ranging from $20,000 to $150,000 for preservation efforts.  This financial aid can mean as much, if not more, to preservation efforts than other sorts of publicity.  Applications and grant information are available on the National Park Service website.

Another Civic Resource Online

Earlier this year we received a call from Bill Berkowitz at the University of Massachusetts at Lowell and, among other things, he related to us his involvement in developing a great web resource for communities.  The resource is called the Community Toolbox and it has an extensive array of items that will aid any community in organizing its efforts to address particular challenges.  Among the elements of civic engagement addressed by the website are learning new skills, finding and exploring best practices, planning and problem-solving tools, and connecting with others via an online forum.

The Community Toolbox features a tour for first time users and a signup form for their Enewsletter which will keep interested users up-to-date on new postings and information available on the website.  This is a resource we can heartily recommend to our readers.

Reviving the Oldies 3 – “Connecting Inner-City Job Seekers with Suburban Jobs”

Yet another article from the vaults – "Connecting Inner-City Job Seekers with Suburban Jobs" appeared in the Brookings Review in Fall 1999.  This topic was one of great relevance in the booming late ‘90s economy – how  do we match the labor that needs work with the jobs that are increasingly becoming available?  The authors explain this dynamic better than I:

"People in poor, spatially isolated urban neighborhoods are ill prepared to compete in the new economy.  Ironically, the entry-level jobs they need abound—but in the suburbs, out of reach. And efforts by government to connect less-skilled workers in the city with jobs in the suburbs are generally fragmented and needlessly parochial; in the end they hinder rather than help inner city residents gain access to regional job opportunities."

The article explores the nature of the problem and addresses whether government is situated in such a way as to make a difference.  Also discussed are ways in which non-governmental institutions can provide support and assistance in matching labor with jobs.  This is certainly a good question and one that will likely only appear when an economy is chugging along at full clip as it did at the end of last century.  While definitely a product of its time "Connecting Inner-City Job Seekers with Suburban Jobs" is not so far into the past that it doesn't continue to offer insights that are useful and relevant today.

Affordable Housing Done Well

Perhaps it's the rising home prices inherited from the past decade but there has been a lot of attention paid to affordable housing this summer.  Multiple new sites are being considered in every state across the country and Los Angeles has already committed itself to a massive affordable housing project for the coming decade.

In the midst of all these new efforts (just do a Google news search of "affordable housing" to get a sense of the extent of these efforts) is an op-ed from David Broder about how affordable housing can be done correctly.  He highlights Chicago’s efforts to turn its nightmarish public housing projects into affordable housing that provides a safe living space for families and children with public amenities that enhance the quality of life for everyone in the neighborhood.

I won't spoil the particulars of this piece for our readers but I do want to note how important it is that we do what David has done here – praise efforts demonstrating that things like affordable housing can be done well, that affordable housing doesn’t have to mean something that is insufficient or demeaning.  There is no question this is possible, it's just a matter of whether we believe it can be done.

The Legacy of Welfare Reform in America

August 22nd of this year ushers in the 10th anniversary of former president Bill Clinton's sweeping welfare reforms.  What have been the results?  It depends on whom you ask.  The USA Today ran an article on this topic earlier this summer and found mixed reactions from those who were affected.  Some have flourished by their forced re-entry to the workforce, others have struggled to find work and keep themselves, and their families, out of poverty.  Almost everyone agrees that problems confronting the poor continue to persist including a minimum wage that seems unreasonably low and a deficit of programs to provide skills to the unemployed or minimally employed.

Clarence Page of the Chicago Tribune had a nice op-ed piece on the anniversary in which he describes the positive steps toward the reduction of child poverty and teen pregnancy that were achieved by way of welfare reform.  He also details some of the outstanding issues that remain and looks ahead at what further regulation by the Bush administration might yield.  There will, no doubt, be other articles and op-ed pieces this week celebrating, or excoriating, the passage of Clinton’s reforms and we will try and post others that we think make relevant contributions to our understanding of the legislation and its consequences.

Innovative Ideas - Finding New Uses for Old Mills

Industrial manufacturing evolved rapidly in the 20th century and left in its wake a series of eyesores for the 21st century to ponder.  I’m talking about industrial mills and the abandoned shells of these factories can be found throughout this country.  They pose a question – what can be done about these former signs of jobs and community prosperity?

There is a wide range of solutions available as evidenced by the large number of news stories on this topic.  To get a sense of what’s going-on out there I’ll provide a sampling of what is being done with old mills along the eastern seaboard:

•    In Haverhill, MA they are looking to convert old mills into mixed-use buildings offering both commercial property and apartments.  Given the housing crunch in the Boston area this seems to make a lot of sense.  The plan for Haverhill’s mills is also one being considered by Hudson, NY.
•    A number of mills have been converted into museums.  An older story in the Christian Science Monitor notes plans for a mill to be converted into a dinosaur museum in Anderson, SC.
•    Spartanburg, SC sold rare “heart of pine” wood used to make its mills for a healthy profit.
•    Heritage tourism – preservationists are increasingly interested in preserving old mills and might create heritage trails that tell the story of the mill as an important part of the American experience.

A National Geographic story relates other examples as well: a mill turned into a public library, another converted into an upscale hotel, yet another houses a community college.  It seems that the number of uses is limited only by the human imagination.  For those that are interested, beware thinking of this as an easy project to adopt.  A fair number of the stories on mill conversion related anecdotes about difficulties with zoning and regulations.  This is not to scare anyone away, the conversion of mills is a stellar idea that serves communities well, just be aware that there are a number of sturdy obstacles to successfully implementing one of these projects.