People don't live in cities; they live in neighborhoods. Neighborhoods. Neighborhoods are the building blocks of cities. If neighborhoods die, cities die. There's never been a Federal policy that respected neighborhoods. We destroyed neighborhoods in order to save them.
I used to think I wanted to save the world. Then I got to Washington, and thought I'd save the city. Now I'd settle for one neighborhood.
Msgr. Geno Baroni
THE CHALLENGE AND OPPORTUNITY
In the 1960s the civil rights movement served notice that after almost two centuries an American ideal of equal treatment before the law must become a reality. It also reminded us that America was the special nation which promised hope, dignity and justice for all. Yet the translation of these profound desires, first embodied by the heroic actions of the civil rights movement, into the civil rights laws, these laws into programs, and these programs into the bureaucratization of the civil rights movement and civic impulses is a sobering tale of the unexpected consequences of focusing on legalistic strategies and state-imposed remedies. Such unanticipated and disallowing outcomes suggest that the promises of the American covenant cannot be achieved merely through the sound of great and prophetic words or through legal authorization by the stroke of a pen. The tasks of justice emerge from the specific injustices encountered. An additional stunning irony of this era was the expectation that the urban crisis could be resolved by strategies designed to combat racism. Msgr. Geno Baroni was among the first civil rights activists--Catholic Coordinator for the March in Washington at which Rev. Martin Luther King, Jr. gave his I Have A Dream Speech--to perceive the bankruptcy of racialism and classism in the politics and policy of the late 1960s. Baroni and his associates at the National Center for Urban Ethnic Affairs (NCUEA) developed an alternative approach to urban economic and cultural contradictions. This approach implied a critique of the civil rights movement and its advocate governmental agency, the U.S. Commission on Civil Rights. At bottom this difference involved ethnic and racial culturalism versus a White v. Black/Majority v. Minorities vision of America and the relative importance and emphasis on place and community v. individual rights and the universal claim of social justice.1 These advocates for urban neighborhoods and cultural pluralism argued for the creation of a National Neighborhood Commission which would promote the renewal of urban life and more adequately address the pluralistic character of American culture.
The argument of this paper is that the contemporary disarray of the U.S. Civil Rights Commission and the flagging impulses of the civil rights movement can be traced to failures of insight and strategy that separated the civil rights and neighborhood movements. A review of this unfortunate cleavage indicates that it is time to put new wine into the skins of a public agency and a newly inspired citizens' movement. The experiences and disillusionment of the last decade require a new vision of the American reality--not an impossible dream, but a practical community-based approach to urban life for a pluralistic and diverse urban society composed of thousands of neighborhoods.
On one level, the civil rights movement of the 1960s addressed universal human concerns; but on another level it was an attempt to solve a regional problem. The movement embodied an understanding of problems and applied a set of approaches that derived largely from the experience in the South. The slavery experience and its consequences had seared the American conscience in the nineteenth century. The destruction of its ancient vestiges seared the nation again in our time, once more burning its grief and anger beyond the South.
There were indeed serious social, economic and civil injustices in the Southwest, Midwest and North. Poor, powerless and excluded ethnic Americans had suffered crippling disabilities as a result of discrimination. Yet, it is not at all true, as some asserted, that racism was as deep and as intractable in these regions as it was in the South. The apparent intractability of racism in the industrial cities of the Northeast and Midwest, for example, was a result of faulty analysis and inappropriate approaches to the tasks of justice. Attempts to change patterns and practices which had not been born out of racism (or the desire to discriminate) were optimistically initiated throughout these regions, as well as the entire nation. These attempts gained political momentum; their desire for liberty, justice and freedom invigorated the spirit of at least one generation.
Because the social reality and common dynamics of a divided nation with unique regional and local characteristics were more complicated and complex, however, the struggle against racism yielded uneven and unanticipated results. Such results grew, at least in part, out of an inability to recognize the importance of, as well as the lack of support for, community-based institutions. The influence of local economic and social justice institutions on individuals and communities was painfully slow and inefficient for the nationalizing and modernizing thrust of self-confident legal activists and universalist technocrats. Thus, their national efforts tended to devalue all such institutions and their critique of racism and the Southern experience was expanded to a critique of all localism.
Without challenging their critique of racism in the South, it is nonetheless clear and certain that the Southern experience, for the most part, was unlike the urban neighborhood reality of the Northeast and Midwest. In fact, the entire experience of racism in America is overlaid with an array of other experiences and realities. The factors of pluralism, class, ownership, diversity, unionism, education and coalition politics addressed by political organizations are particularly salient for understanding why the pursuit of civil liberties presented an entirely different challenge to the communities of the Northeast and Midwest.
To focus merely upon racism in the struggle for justice revealed a poverty of analysis that neglected to calculate other intrinsic elements and factors of life there and in other regions. It neglected the importance of community cohesion and non-governmentally negotiated approaches to resolving social and economic inequity, as well as the often modest but usually lasting results brought about by indigenous organization and self-help community-based techniques. To ignore and neglect these complex and sophisticated factors illustrates an inability to understand pluralism, diversity and the social texture from which citizenship emerged in America. Public therapy cannot be based on an inaccurate analysis of the social reality it intends to cure. A similar misdiagnosis may exist today.
The 1980s and 1990s are a new political context: a period of policy assessment, diminishing public resources and a power struggle between civil rights leaders and government. Advocates of social justice may have lost their base of support; various public entitlements are threatened; and the civil rights movement is divided and conquered by "the opposition". We are, in fact, at a moment in public affairs when advocates for the public good may succeed, like Pogo, in doing themselves in.
By the mid 1980s the stridency of single-issue groups, the rhetoric of racism and bigotry, ethnocentric and religious righteousness, and anti-immigrant hysteria all have strained the coalition-building process. Social and economic analysis designed to measure and remedy illegal discrimination have become twisted debates. Divisive contentions about the reality or relative intensity of racial, ethnic, religious and sexual inequality have become cost-benefit calculations. The claims of the elderly and handicapped have fragmented even further the original thrust for liberty and justice. Contradictory findings from many social sciences are used to buttress these conflicting claims for remedies and results. Allowing ourselves to be goaded into such a morass of narrow and special pleas demeans all claims for social and civil justice. It is time for a new analysis of America and for a renewal of our public will in the service of liberty and justice for all. In this situation the work of the U.S. Commission on Civil Rights should not be an irrelevant discussion or a simple-minded preachment.
Moreover, it is time to acknowledge that civil rights can hardly be guaranteed if their protection is dependent solely on efforts of a concerned government agency. The civil rights establishment must address the urgent task of enabling persons concerned with civil rights to take the lead once again in designing a new agenda.
It is time for new directions which transcend both the politics of regional approaches to national needs and the politics of designated special status and inter-ethnic manipulation in America. To renew the civil rights movement we need a long-range politics of human development which transcends region and ethnicity, but does not ignore it; which improves economic well-being based on work and need and transcends the politics of unionism and designated special status, but does not ignore the dynamics of influence, access, advantage and mobility; which recognizes that America is, as Father Hesburgh, a former member of the U.S. Commission on Civil Rights, said, "a nation that promised hope, promised dignity and promised freedom for people." These are the political promises we must learn to keep! Finally, though a national effort in civil rights is needed, it is time to recall the words of John Hannah, another former member of the Commission, "If my years of experience here taught me one thing it is that the problem of civil rights may be solved not by national programs, but by local programs; not by federal action, but by community action."
In the 1960s in America the civil rights movement agreed on the need for national action in search of justice. In the 1980s Americans began to challenge the efficacy of national institutions. Recent presidential elections illustrate voter protest against government and public regulations. This same impulse, however, has provoked another sort of social force which has coalesced in the neighborhood movement. Rather than endorsing the critique of bankrupt policy by electing anti-government candidates, which simply yields questions of public order to private power, the neighborhood movement calls for the recovery of citizenship through the empowerment of government in support of community-based institutions. The challenge of the 1980s was to secure civil rights in communities and to discover how community-based power can be leveraged beyond a locality and region. The National Neighborhood Coalition argued that it was time for governments to listen to neighborhoods and thereby to balance the influences of organized interests and private power in America.2
A reenergized Commission on Civil Rights could become the champion of the American neighborhoods and bring their story to government. A renewed CCR could also shape a civil rights agenda designed to understand, to protect and to encourage community-based institutions. Community-based institutions can create a sense of human scale, individual efficacy and common citizenship. There is abundant evidence in many countries that community-based institutions have brought about wholesome and helpful bonds between individuals, as well as between people and large-scale institutions. In fact, community-based institutions may create the bonds of social solidarity needed to assure fairness from the government, corporations, the communications industries and organized interests which dominate the riot of resourcing and litigation which many modern national governments have become.
A society of unconnected and autonomous persons in perpetual litigation, engaged in never-ending struggles for limited resources, hardly engenders the virtues and goals sought through civil rights laws. On the contrary, such strains in times of emergency could well lead to political disintegration and require extraordinary and tyrannical corporate and military remedies. In the face of such a future, the importance of non-governmental institutions as the seedbed of human dignity and civil rights in this society should not be ignored.
Advocacy for enforcement of civil rights laws is no longer sufficient. It is time to refocus the vision of justice which guides people by reconstituting the bonds of solidarity at the neighborhood level. Discussions regarding the creation or recreation of the Commission on Civil Rights provides an appropriate public moment for a renewal of the civil rights movement and the recovery of social solidarity and civility. Such renewal and recovery of certain basic elements of a national tradition can begin because the vast majority of citizens of all ethnic, religious and cultural traditions believe in liberty and justice for all.
The civil rights movement has demonstrated that society can be changed by political speech and penetrated by legal power. Yet thirty years of progress and growth have shifted public attitudes in a variety of ways. Measured levels of trust in large-scale institutions have plummeted. Many have grown increasingly distrustful of activities supported by large-scale corporations, the national government and even national service and religious institutions. Confidence is waning in sophisticated systems designed to assure defense and safety. The ability of these institutions to meet national needs is uncertain. We appear to be facing a crisis of confidence and trust. The movement towards liberty and justice for all seems derailed.
It is the moment to explore neighborliness as a certain and basic social and moral feature of the national reality. At minimum, cognizance of the neighborhood in the national equation should enable us to limit the exacerbation of our problems and perhaps enable us to prevent the further erosion into irrelevance of the civil rights movement.
Understanding and governing with civility a neighborhood (a territory say, inhabited by less than 10,000 people) is a task of uneven difficulty. Therefore, it is important to appreciate the sometimes messy attempts to understand contingency and complexity in human affairs. A priori recognition of complexity, not the pretense of righteousness and moral superiority, are essential pre-conditions for the peaceful resolution of conflict, the equitable distribution of resources, and the building of coalitions. Preaching simple answers to a neighborhood or a nation is not an adequate substitute for understanding the dynamics of power and order in an industrial, multi-class, multi-cultural and multi-ethnic urban world.
In fact, it is precisely the analytical and rhetorical failures and the resulting political inability to maintain the necessary coalitions to resolve conflicts that provoked the deterioration of public affairs and undermined the covenant of consent which "inspirited" national promises. Ironically, the legal struggle for rights and the passion of religious language in politics often eroded the bonds of community in which both were rooted. The legal-religious approach was fueled by an unspoken belief that great words produced lasting institutional change and assumed that guilt was a primary moral sentiment.
Given the current focus on economic solutions for human difficulties the importance of reenergizing the civil rights movement is particularly acute. It is time to recall that, at the deepest level, civility and civil rights are not merely the products of inspired speech and law. They spring from the best and most generous impulses in human society and culture and by most are created, experienced and learned through and in living communities. For all of their weaknesses and supposed closed character, the structures of society that bring people together at the human face-to-face level of existence, remain the most lasting and effective guarantee of personhood and civil well-being. Czeslaw Milosz, in his Nobel Award lecture, points toward the enormity of the loss that must be overcome when these little worlds of learning, meaning and social solidarity are destroyed:
Perhaps our most precious gift . . . is respect and gratitude for certain things which protect us from internal disintegration and from yielding to tyranny.
Precisely for that reason, some ways of life, some institutions become a target for the fury of evil forces--above all, the bonds between people that exist organically, as if by themselves, sustained by family, religion, neighborhood, common heritage.
In other words, in many countries traditional bonds of civitas have been subject to a gradual erosion and their inhabitants become disinherited without realizing it.3
The poor, powerless and ignored ethnic and excluded racial groups are signs of unfulfilled promises, but the profound disintegration of the generous and open spirit which made these promises is a stunning irony. It is time to remember national promises of dignity, liberty and justice for all. To rebuild community in America on an understanding of its complexity, its pluralism and the importance of small-scale community-based institutions is the agenda for the renewal and recovery of solidarity in the pursuit of justice.
A reconstituted Commission on Civil Rights could provide the national impetus for the reconstruction envisaged. Such an enterprise should be grounded in an understanding of the experiences of American neighborhoods, an appreciation of their diversity and particularly the ethnic elderly that have been ignored and neglected. The following discussion of neighborhood definition and operations as well as the examples of approaches used by neighborhood organizations--development corporations, service providers, and an illustration of a local organizing effort to improve health care--indicate elements of the effort needed to recover and to renew the capacity of community-based institutions. They also suggest the task of reshaping public policy in ways which would not impede and perhaps support the efforts of neighborhood organizations--people helping people, people helping themselves to equitably distribute the public and private resources that large-scale modern bureaucratic institutions have used to disenfranchise them and make them a dependent element of public and private domination.
NEIGHBORHOOD DEFINITION
There is not a single city in the United States without at least some sort of community or neighborhood organization. The daily press overflows with examples of these groups successfully attacking and solving urban problems. They have stopped highways from plowing through their environment. They have closed down or forced changes in companies whose toxic wastes, emissions and sewage have polluted their neighborhoods. They have used zoning to leverage a stake in how the land in their neighborhood is to be used. Their relationship to each other and to other institutions varies even within apparently similar metropolitan conditions.4 Various political cultures and emphasis on bureaucracy, conflict and cooperation influence the consequence of neighborhood leaders and community-based organizations.
The time for systematic policy development and civic/political formation on behalf of neighborhoods as the essential social entities of modern societies has come. The enormity of this task is daunting. For example, despite the validity of developing an ethic of local neighborhoods which seek to safeguard the entire planetary ecosystem, the experiential reality is echoed in a battle cry which has become increasingly familiar in the last two decades, "Not in my backyard!"--NIMBY. While many progressives shake their heads and condescendingly bemoan such small-minded parochialism, the real challenge is to focus communitarian energy in ways which shape and share the burden. To revitalize urban economies and promote peaceful resolution of conflict--one neighborhood at a time--is a radically fresh approach to the relationship between state and civil society which is constituted by thousands of neighborhood. How large a task is neighborhood and civic renewal? Discovering what sorts of neighborhood exist in America is among the most important steps toward defining civil society.
In 1979-1980, for the first time, the U.S. Bureau of the Census offered to supply neighborhood statistics to any municipality of 10,000 or more residents which met certain requirements. Information was supplied on 27,000 neighborhoods or 1,252 jurisdictions that requested neighborhood.
Participation in the Census Bureau's Neighborhood Statistic Program was contingent upon three criteria in addition to the 10,000 plus population size. First, all neighborhoods for which statistics were provided must be official, i.e., recognized by the municipality or a central neighborhood council. Secondly, neighborhoods must be distinct: their boundaries could not overlap. Finally, advisory representation was required from each neighborhood. Though the Census data indicate the size and number of neighborhoods as well as social, economic indicators, the issue of neighborhood definition is not entirely resolved. The US Census Neighborhood Statistics Program enabled jurisdictions to design their own approach to neighborhood definition. Table 1 and 2 (pp. 113-114 below) reveal the broadest outline of this process.
Broden and his colleagues identified six major approaches to defining neighborhoods: 1) homogenous, 2) intimate, 3) political, 4) functional, 5) economic, and 6) citizen perception.5 Each approach to the neighborhood elucidates dimensions of its essential and local reality.
The homogenous approach generally assumes: a) that cities can be divided into distinct areas using physical boundaries, and b) that there is a tendency for people of similar ethnic and/or demographic characteristics to populate those distinct areas. Cities are viewed as a collection of distinct areas, each with its own homogenous populations, so that each neighborhood tends to act in its own distinct way. A popular variation of this approach is found in Michael Weiss, The Clustering of America. Forty types of neighborhoods based on income, home value and education and other consumer preferences, capacities and social indicators as well as the prevalence of each of the types were developed by Weiss and his associates at Claritas Corporation. An alternate view of the American reality emerges from the neighborhood data-base of the 1980 Census.6 (See Tables 3 and 4.)
The intimate definition sees neighborhoods as "urban villages" as sociological antidotes to the anonymous and impersonal urban industrial life. Primarily sociological, this approach searches for social bonding or networks which may be based upon familialism, friendship, religion, ethnicity, social interaction, value consensus and/or the common use of physical facilities. In general, this approach defines a neighborhood as a set of intense and intimate relationships between individuals in a certain locale. The type of communal life or association which creates these bonds or networks influences the degree to which an "intimate" neighborhood is spatial or merely sociological.
The political approach suggests political alliance as the basis for defining neighborhoods, which imply some kind of collective action and commitment. Saul Alinsky argues that cities should respond to community organizations which develop out of specific issues which will not be geographic in domain. This approach implicitly and explicitly rejects geographically defined neighborhoods. However, other politically defined notions of neighborhood argue that whenever political power is granted, even through enacted boundaries, real community will arise. A second non-issue political view recognizes geographic boundaries, but generally believes that residents know those boundaries. Democracy breeds community; thus, the political neighborhood results when governance is transferred. A third political approach suggested by governments in nations like China and Cuba is that neighborhoods are urban units of control. These neighborhood level governmental agencies help decide who goes to college, provide health care, and allocate housing. In addition they promulgate propaganda and act as an intelligence unit to limit dissent.
Another approach believes that neighborhoods are foci of functional common interest. The functional perspective sees neighborhoods as a spatial area whose residents are bound together by common function and institutions: schools, shopping districts, parks and health care clinics. However, this binding is on a less intense scale than the political or intimate approaches. For example strong neighborhoods can exist without social intimacy among neighbors when there are strong expectations of property maintenance. The functional approach was very influential in town planning in England where planners influenced by the 1946 Dudley report on town planning attempted to create neighborhoods in new towns by such centrally located common services as schools or shopping areas in each area of a city. As a tool for analyzing existing cities, the functional approach locates amenities. User residences then may be mapped to see if geographic clusters emerge.
Broden, Kirkwood, Roos, and Swartz identify the economic approach to neighborhood definition and delineation as one which utilizes the perspective of housing markets. They write:
This approach places heavy emphasis upon the individual consumer who evaluates housing in terms of the physical structure and the environment surrounding it. The `neighborhood' is the locale around a structure which defines the burdens and benefits associated with owning a house in a given location. These burdens and benefits include crime, pollution, schools, parks, zoning provisions, property repair, etc. "Neighborhood viewed in this way is regarded as a distinct housing submarket."
This definition incorporates some of the other perspectives on neighborhood definition because the area which has either very intimate ties or a strong set of functional ties will be identified as a distinct housing submarket. Roos and Swartz have defined neighborhood as a domain of localized externalities. They suggest that certain activities at the neighborhood level produce costs and benefits for everyone in that area, not just the actor. These positive and negative externalities have spatial domains which define the neighborhood. In addition, housing demands, land use, physical boundaries. and other factors place limits on actual domain.
Finally, a citizen perception model of neighborhood relies upon boundaries perceived by the citizens. Although this definition may include many of the other perspectives discussed, it is more appropriately a methodology for delineating neighborhoods. While a strict application requires individuals in isolation to draw boundaries from which researchers look for commonalities, a less formal citizen perception approach has been used most notably in Ahlbrandt's and Cunningham's Pittsburgh Neighborhood Atlas. The Atlas was developed through neighborhood group discussions, meetings and consensus, supplemented by randomly mailed questionnaires which in addition to demographic information asked the respondent for the name of his/her neighborhood. This information was used to map areas by similar responses. Regardless of the approach used to define neighborhoods, the activities of neighborhood organizations reveal a variety of capacities. The following generic forms of action can be regularly found in neighborhoods. The following catalogue of neighborhood operatives indicates the characteristics and limitations of various activities. An inventory of roles and functions provided by neighborhood organization indicates their potency as a bridge between the governmental and private sectors and their pivotal importance for civil society and its constructive operations. These neighborhood operations are the social products of neighborhood organizations. The importance of this form of social invention can not be underestimated in any discussion of state and civil society. Understanding this level of social innovation is essential for pathology related to urban life and the realization of multi-ethnic accord in America.
NEIGHBORHOOD OPERATIONS
Safety, Security, and Social Order. This operation consist of activities such as neighborhood crime watch, fostering anti-crime attitudes among residents, cooperation with/monitoring of law enforcement agencies, arson prevention programs, school violence prevention activities, and community pressure and sanctions to combat a variety of detrimental social behaviors (for example, dropping out of school, teenage pregnancy, buying stolen property, vandalism, etc.). These activities make the community safe for investments, increase the social and economic participation of residents, and reinforce positive growth-oriented social behavior. The safety, security, and social order operations help transform the neighborhood by preventing the flight of individuals and families with rising incomes and providing an environment where other operations can be performed effectively.
Neighborhood Improvement/Sanitation. This operation consists of activities such as block clean-up campaigns, community gardens, garbage collection contracts with local government, facade improvement programs, tool lending libraries, and increasing neighborhood amenities such as parks, picnic areas, trees and shrubs. These activities make the neighborhood look better and residents feel better. The improvement/sanitation operation helps transform the neighborhood by increasing the sense of belonging among residents and increasing their participation in the total revitalization process. Furthermore, visible signs of resident pride and concern in the neighborhood help increase the service response of municipal agencies.
Family Support and Adjustment. This operation consists of activities such as day care and elderly care programs, youth recreation and development programs, family counseling, drug and alcohol abuse assistance, social service advocacy and guidance. These activities are geared to each subpopulation that requires support to participate in, and contribute to, the economy or needs support to establish or maintain healthy social functioning. This operation helps transform the neighborhood by breaking what many social theorists refer to as "maladaptive, lower-class social pathologies." In addition, family support and adjustment activities form the core of social service enterprises at the neighborhood level.
Human Capital Development. This operation consists of activities such as employment and training programs, entrepreneurial training, literacy programs, and activities to support public and private elementary and secondary schools which serve neighborhood residents. These activities increase the earning power of local residents. The human capital development operation transforms the neighborhood by increasing the immediate marketable skills of residents and enabling neighborhood children eventually to attain higher income levels than their parents. Human capital development is one prerequisite for increasing community income available for maintaining property, home ownership, and improved cash flows in local enterprises. Distressed communities are characterized by having the local public school as the primary (or sole) vehicle for human capital development for the overwhelming majority of children and having no major human capital development efforts for adults.
Income Production. This operation consists of all activities which produce cash income and other financial assets for people residing in the neighborhood. (A neighborhood enterprise which provides income to a nonresident owner/operator and nonresident employees would not be considered an income production activity in the neighborhood context.) The income production operation helps transform a distressed neighborhood by maximizing the income of residents by shifting them from a jobless status or welfare dependency to employment and from low-wage to higher-wage jobs. Minimizing participation in antisocial activities such as the sale of illegal drugs also increases income production by reducing the presence in the neighborhood of items or activities which destroy earning and educational capacities and an environment conducive to maintaining middle-income families. Increasing income is a prerequisite for successful human capital development, property maintenance, and support operation. Government subsidies and private sector grants for human capital development, property maintenance, and family services can improve conditions temporarily, but long-term success is dependent on increasing the income residents can devote to these operations.
Property Maintenance. This operation consists of activities such as facade improvements, house painting programs, landscaping programs, tool lending libraries, home improvement and maintenance workshops, low interest renovation loans, and other activities which preserve, maintain, or improve the value of residential and commercial property in the neighborhood. These activities increase the financial assets of the residents and provide a basis for maintaining an influx of new families with incomes equal to or surpassing the incomes of existing residents. Property is second in improvement only to the residents themselves as a neighborhood asset.
Health. The operation consists of activities such as prenatal care classes and clinics, health maintenance organizations (HMOs), hospital services, and home health care for the elderly. These activities decrease health problems which impede resident participation in the work force, education, or training. Adequate access to good health care facilities is an important factor influencing the mobility patterns of middle-income families or families rising out of poverty. Furthermore, health care services are a major source of jobs which can be located in the neighborhood.
Transportation. This operation consists of activities to increase the mobility and economic participation of residents as consumers and wage earners. Activities such as van pools to transport local residents to suburban jobs, transportation services for the elderly, and political activities to influence mass transit routes and fares are common in revitalizing neighborhoods. (Revitalizing neighborhoods were observed to be characterized by a high percentage of car ownership by families, or numerous mass transit routes through the neighborhood, or communist-owned van pool or mini-bus services.)
NEIGHBORHOOD ORGANIZATIONS
Some Examples of Specific Approaches
Activities and accomplishments by neighborhood organizations in American neighborhoods give a more complete picture of how neighborhood organizations fulfill their purposes.
o "The Broadway-Fillmore Neighborhood Coalition" in Buffalo, New York, has sponsored various forums and meetings among residents, city officials and private interests to assure that renovation of the local Broadway Market runs smoothly and meets the ongoing needs of residents--including the elderly. This market is more than just a food distribution facility to long-time residents; it is a longstanding neighborhood institution and landmark.
o "Citizens to Bring Broadway Back" in Cleveland's near southeast side has worked on several issues which relate directly to the quality of life of the local elderly. They worked diligently to see that a new fire station was built in the neighborhood; they worked with other local groups and agencies to catalyze the development of a $3 million, 70 unit, elderly highrise in the neighborhood; and they have worked for several years on issues relating to crime prevention, fuel cost containment, and the provision of adequate human services for residents.
o "Kensington Action Now" in Philadelphia has maintained the membership of senior citizen associations over the years and has worked on specific issues relating to seniors through an ongoing Senior Committee. Activities have included: convincing the Philadelphia Corporation to plan a "meals on wheels" program in the neighborhood; work on various crime and arson prevention issues that led to, among other things, increased police patrols; and work to establish a senior citizen center in the neighborhood.
o "The Human Action Community Organization" (HACO) of Harvey, lllinois, responded to a growing crime rate affecting its elderly by organizing an all-volunteer Victim/Witness Assistance Program which included: quarterly meetings with police, prosecutors and judges to assure cooperation; a quarterly accountability meeting with the State's Attorney's Office; the assignment of only one prosecutor to each case in order to ensure continuity in each case; notices to victims/witnesses a week before court dates; an escort service to transport and protect elderly victims and witnesses; a nightly patrol of the homes of victims/witnesses by HACO's crime Stop Patrols; and presentation meetings with the prosecutor's office.
o "The Washington Heights/Inwood Coalition" in Manhattan provides a Community Mediation Service which helps residents, including the elderly, to deal with conflict on an intra-family, inter-family, or intra-neighborhood level.
o "United Seniors in Action," in both Minneapolis and Indianapolis, carried out city-wide campaigns to win discounts on prescription drugs of 10-25 percent from major regional stores.
o "Asylum Hill Organization" in Hartford, Connecticut, is a coalition of seniors, tenants and issue groups which work on the problems of housing, crime, health care, youth and unemployment. Its member group, "Seniors for Action in Asylum Hill" has focused recently on increasing police foot patrols, reducing prostitute activity, developing better elderly transportation services, and keeping open a local medical clinic that serves 3,000 elderly and low income residents.
The way in which neighborhood organizations assist in the provision of human services to their communities are varied, but the basic approaches and strategies common to all multi-issue, multi-based neighborhood organizations involve empowering neighborhood resources. Whether it is youth or families or tenants or homeowners or elderly that one targets for assistance in a neighborhood, neighborhood organizations offer the opportunity for residents to join together on specific, immediate and realizable issues and projects that, in the end, will benefit everyone.
To simply isolate a certain group, for example the elderly, as a specific "consumer" of human services is to overlook a number of their most important needs as residents in the community. They need to feel some degree of control over their lives. They also want to feel that they are a part of the mainstream of the community. And they need those natural support systems that come through interaction with other generations and groups in the community. Multi-based neighborhood organizations can fulfill these needs and others simply through basic processes that are common to all organizing efforts.7
Beyond the organizing processes themselves, neighborhood organization successes often include either new, expanded or improved service for all in the community--from the most vital and active ones to those most dependent on others for basic needs. Not the least important of these needs are economic development and housing fostered by development.
Neighborhood Development Corporations
Neighborhood development corporations are growing in both their numbers and in their capacity as catalysts for development and revitalization in American neighborhoods. As with multi-issue neighborhood-based organizations, these institutions undertake activities that relate to a variety of constituent groups in a community. Though the ventures they develop generally cut across generational and ethnic lines, the programs they set in motion often include the entire community, from the earliest planning phases to such end results as an improved flow of goods and services in and out of the community as well as the revitalization of buildings, residences and facilities.
Factors which ensure a steady rise in production, distribution and ownership within a community form a complex equation that depends largely upon very localized characteristics, dynamics and developments. Yet, as with neighborhood organizations, there are a common set of tools, resources and organizing approaches which neighborhood development practitioners can use in developing the community and promoting its full economic potential. The following examples of specific ventures and accomplishments give an idea of the range of these tools, resources and organizing approaches which assist the elderly:
o "Greater Southwest Development Corporation" in Chicago, Illinois, has responded to a growing housing problem among the neighborhood's elderly homeowners--the houses in which they have lived for years are in need of upgrading, regular maintenance and constant small repairs, but they cannot afford all the costs involved, and they are increasingly limited in the amount of sweat equity they can invest personally in their homes. Greater Southwest established a Senior Citizen/Handicapped Home Repair Service which uses grant money and other resources to address this need. The corporation is also initiating the development of a senior citizen apartment complex.
o "Broadway Development Corporation" in Cleveland, Ohio, is working on a number of projects that will directly assist elderly residents. They are developing a $2.5 million renovation of a vacant, dilapidated commercial building to create a new mini-mall for the neighborhood. They are also assisting a family-owned grocery store in an expansion project which will double the size of the store and expand the food services available to the community. Lastly, they are working on the renovation of an unused theater building which will create low-cost apartments in the heart of the commercial corridor of the neighborhood.
o "The Lawrenceville Development Corporation" in Pittsburgh is a new neighborhood development corporation established to provide a vehicle through which the neighborhood can undertake specific housing, commercial and industrial development ventures. One of its major goals is to revitalize the commercial corridor by attracting new businesses and assisting others.
o "The Liberty Communities Development Corporation" of Baltimore has advocated and participated in the early planning of a multi-purpose center which will include senior citizen services as one-third of its activities. The services will include: crafts and other social activities, health services, transportation to and from the center, "meals on wheels", lunches at the center, etc. The organization has worked also with a local food store owner who runs a shuttle bus between the shopping center where his store is located and several local elderly apartment complexes.
The examples presented here do more than indicate the variety of ventures which these neighborhood development institutions undertake. They indicate also the variety of levels through which development corporations can assist a community. The "Greater Southwest Development Corporation" example shows how a development corporation can be very directly involved in the lives of the elderly through such things as home maintenance services. The "Liberty Communities Development Corporation" example demonstrates the potential role of development corporations as advocates, planners and/or coalition builders in the expansion or creation of services. "The Broadway Development Corporation" indicates how a neighborhood corporation can indirectly better the quality of life for Americans by strengthening the neighborhood's commercial corridor and ultimately keeping the flow of goods and services where residents can get at them. Some neighborhood organizations specialize in social and medical services which are not usually available locally nor adequately provided by external professional service providers. Social workers in cooperation with neighborhood organizations are bridging the gap between client and the professional service providers.
Neighborhood-Based Social Services
As with other major neighborhood entities, neighborhood service providers generally serve a wide range of age groups within a community. For this reason, they often function as multi-purpose or multi-service centers, offering a variety of activities and programs including: youth services, winterization programs, job training and counseling, child care, recreation and cultural enrichment programs, health services, and, of course, senior citizen programs. In fact, because of their ability to provide a human services "tool box" within a community, the other major neighborhood entities make regular referrals to them, pass out literature about their services, and serve on their boards in order to assure that the "tool box" is being used effectively.
The following examples demonstrate how neighborhood service providers can serve a very positive role for persons in American neighborhoods:
o "HARBEL, Inc." of Baltimore is a multi-purpose neighborhood center on the city's northeast side. It provides a range of services and has an ongoing committee structure in the following areas: youth counseling and services, neighborhood operations, crime prevention, mental health, community information, housing assistance, etc. Those programs which help the elderly include: mental health outreach services, homesharing service, winterization programs, the senior committee, advocacy for and among elderly member groups, and work to further develop the neighborhood's natural helping networks.
o "The North Ward Educational and Cultural Center" serves a large Italian community in Newark, NJ. Begun in 1971, it offers a variety of programs and services, including: early childhood development, youth enrichment, senior citizen services, recreation activities, education, vocational training, interaction, health services, cultural awareness programs, and building restoration assistance. The senior citizen services have a staff of their own and reach out to more than 2,000 Italian-American elderly. The services provided these elderly include: medical transportation, shopping and recreational transportation, outreach, nutrition, information and referral, educational activities, employment, cultural awareness, health screenings, and youth escorts.
o Employment support group networks in such cities as Chicago and Washington provide the elderly and other unemployed individuals the opportunity to work together for a common goal--employment. The Employment Support Center in Washington offers a variety of employment services to its member self-help groups, including: job leads, career counseling, guest speakers, referrals, etc.
In the older industrial cities, poverty remains high among the elderly. According to Representative Augustus Hawkins and the National Council of Senior Citizens, 25 percent of the elderly live below the poverty level and only 12 percent are employed. Only 21 percent of displaced older workers have found new jobs. An employment "tool box" such as those supplied through employment support networks may be an important way to address these problems.
In addition to employment-related services, it is clear that neighborhood centers such as "HARBEL, Inc." and the North Ward Educational and Cultural Center are effective because they provide elderly services as part of a more comprehensive approach to the overall needs of the neighborhood. They serve a networking, information-sharing and cohesion-building function as much as they serve a service delivery function. Their relationship to churches, neighborhood groups and other neighborhood entities makes them a natural focal point for helping networks in the neighborhood.
Our experiences with and analysis of, elderly ethnic Americans suggest that their lack of representation on hospital boards, United Way planning boards, and in the direction of health planning boards, as well as their absence from the executive suites of major corporations and foundations, has minimized their influence in shaping the nation's care system. The reshaping of accountable and responsive health care is an ideal intergovernmental organizing issue which ethnic leaders should explore.
Local Health Care Campaigns
The ethnic elderly in urban neighborhoods are especially affected by disparities in the health care system. Among other factors, rising costs, inadequate or absent insurance coverage, and the reduction of public and non-profit hospitals in cities, have strained everyone and have especially hurt the elderly. Ethnic elderly may be especially strained not only because they live in cities and because they are elderly, but also because they do not have designated minority status and therefore may not qualify for certain kinds of assistance. Cultural and language barriers may also keep the ethnic elderly from seeking the service they deserve. Rather than organizing to gain minority status, the neighborhoods and communities in which ethnic-American elderly live should organize around convergent issues which the American health care system has produced and which affect all of the residents.
Local health care campaigns can be effective ways of winning discounts for the elderly from local businesses, hospitals, and doctors; of securing waivers for home and community-based long-term care; of providing transportation services; of utilizing alternative providers; and, of getting and using good generic drug laws. Effective health care organizing strategies may grow out of community and neighborhood organizations, concerned parishes, neighborhood residents, and coalitions between and among any or all of these and other neighborhood entities.
The Villars Foundation has recently published a comprehensive health care organizing manual, The Best Medicine: Organizing Local Health Care Campaigns.8 It outlines some of the following campaigns:
Hospitals. A hospital campaign is based on focusing upon one hospital to urge its physicians with admitting privileges to accept assignment and provide other medicare discounts. Hospitals that need to fill up their beds may be willing partners in this campaign based on the prospect that an agreement with the hospital and the doctors who use it will result in increased medicare utilization.
Successful assignment campaigns are based on the perception that enough new patients can be delivered to the targeted provider(s) to make the contract economically worth their while. This can begin on a small scale--the campaign will attract seniors because of its obvious economic advantages.
Doctors. A few years ago, a campaign to convince doctors to accept assignment and provide other discounts for medicare patients would have had a 50-50 chance of success, at best. But times are changing and physicians now are more amenable than in the past. The success of a physician campaign depends on two approaches. (1) Competition: physicians in over-doctored areas may quickly understand the economic benefits of more patients and free publicity (programs provide enrollees with a list of doctors who have signed on). (2) Guilt and Social Responsibility: as seniors make their plight over medical costs better known, doctors are put in an awkward position. It is heartless for Dr. Greed--who makes $200,000 a year--to charge so much that poor Mrs. Smith with an income of $5,000 a year can't afford to see him.
Transportation Services. The availability of all the medical services in the world is useless if one cannot get to them. Large numbers of the elderly and disabled cannot get health care because they lack transportation to get there.
Federal medicaid regulations issued in 1969 (42 CFR 431.53) require that state Medicaid plans specify that the medicaid agency will assure necessary transportation for recipients to and from providers, and describe the methods that will be used to meet this requirement.
Besides medicaid, there are other sources of funding for the "transportation disadvantaged." These include Title III of the Older Americans Act, Section 16 (b) (2) of the Urban Mass Transportation Act and Section 18 of the Surface Transportation Assistance Act. Unfortunately, there is little coordination between these various programs, and state transportation plans often either exist only on paper or adopt such strict limits on reimbursable transportation services that few, if any, recipients actually receive help.
Alternative Providers. One way both to increase access and to reduce the cost of care is through the use of alternative providers: nurse practitioners, physician assistants, nurse-midwives, birth centers, women's clinics, etc. Alternative providers reduce the cost of health care because of their low technology approach and reasonable charges. They improve access because they practice in underserved areas. They can provide high quality preventive and primary care.
The use of alternative providers has special implications for improved care for the elderly. Alternative providers spend more time with their patients, a crucial ingredient for dealing with the chronically ill.
Despite proven benefits of alternative providers, many states limit their practice through licensure procedures. Physicians' strong combat of any attempt to liberalize these laws requires difficult, time-consuming campaigns.
A variety of different campaigns can be waged to increase the utilization of alternative providers. Some campaigns have tried to influence hospitals to grant these providers admitting privileges, to get third party payers to reimburse their services, or to protect them through anti-trust legislation. Other campaigns have been aimed successfully at changing state licensure laws.
Generic Drug Laws. Generic drug law campaigns seek to increase the role of the patient and, to some extent, the pharmacist in the decision-making process when a patient takes a prescription to the pharmacy. Too often the pharmacist looks at the prescription and dispenses exactly what the prescription says, charging the going rate for brand names.
One approach is to require the pharmacist to lay the choice before the customer and allow the customer to make the final decision. Another approach is to demand that the state agency which regulates pharmacies conduct spot checks with undercover inspectors. Still another option is to work for a law requiring that the prices of the best-selling drugs be posted; however, even when this is enacted, many generics don't appear on the top 50 best-selling lists.
Generally the best approach is to pay special attention to ways to get the responsible state agency to monitor and enforce the provisions of the law, to get generic drug prices posted along with brand name prices, and to obtain stiff penalties for violations.
CONCLUSIONS AND RECOMMENDATIONS
Neighborhoods are a strong determinant of the quality of American life: families live and rear their children in a neighborhood setting; youth are affected by the opportunities and influences they find in their neighborhoods; older people treasure their neighborhood and look to it for the support they need for independent living. Persons of all ages, income groups, races and ethnicity want to live in neighborhoods that are safe and clean, contain decent, affordable housing and suitable community facilities, and offer opportunities for civic participation and self-determination.
A variety of neighborhood entities contribute to achieving better communities, including parishes, community newspapers, neighborhood organizations, neighborhood development corporations, neighborhood service providers, fraternal associations, etc. They should be carefully targeted and thoughtfully assisted in a manner that fosters active and productive partnerships between public agencies, private institutions and neighborhood-based organizations. Residents--including the elderly--should be fully involved in the planning, implementation, monitoring and evaluation of all public and private programs affecting their neighborhood.
The public and private sectors can make significant contributions to neighborhood life. It is particularly important that sufficient capital flows to lower income neighborhoods to permit homeownership, housing rehabilitation, development of new enterprises and support of existing ones. This should be facilitated through a combination of regulations assuring fair treatment of all neighborhoods and selective tax measures offering extra incentives to invest in neighborhoods with the greatest needs. Strong private-sector/neighborhood partnerships should also be encouraged.
Neighborhood residents need the organizational capacity and sufficient resources to initiate self-help activities and participate as full partners with the public and private sectors. The experience of the past twenty years has shown that small amounts of federal, foundation and private funds have served as fruitful catalysts in helping various neighborhood entities carry out programs and activities in response to unmet needs-including those of elderly residents. Within their program spheres, these sources of funding and capital should see that the appropriate resources and technical assistance are available for neighborhood-based activities, including: community development, housing, youth employment, job training, education, economic development, crime prevention, health and human services.
It is through this comprehensive approach to neighborhood stabilization and revitalization that the elderly will be best served. Like all other residents in a given community, the life and needs of the elderly are dependant upon the vitality of the institutions, natural networks, economy, culture and other factors which form the basis of a supportive community existence. With this in mind, the following might be proposed:
o Fraternal organizations and the publications they distribute should look more closely at, and advocate issues affecting, the elderly, such as: utility costs, generic drugs, public and private health care policy, victim compensation, elderly housing strategies, banking and pension fund investments, etc.
o Diffusion of information and techniques as well as leadership training for persons living in ethnic communities are needed.
o Networking and information sharing between neighborhood people and care providers must be encouraged.
o Neighborhood and ethnic leadership need capacity-building technical assistance, particularly for the development of solid housing ventures.
o An American Neighborhoods and Communities Fund should be established to target resources to innovative activities initiated by neighborhood organizations.
During the 1980s the federal well ran dry for urban neighborhood and community organizations. Most direct financial support to these groups was abolished, leaving an enormous funding gap that the private, church and fraternal organizations were unable to fill. Many communities now confront a host of problems, including rising unemployment, scarce housing and deteriorating social services--problems that result from events and actions beyond the ability of communities to control. Clearly, a new approach to revitalizing neighborhoods is needed, one that recognizes that community groups can effectively serve the diverse needs of the elderly and their families.
If established by federal legislation, a "Neighborhoods and Communities Fund" would draw on the strengths of independent, community-based groups by directly funding their innovative community improvement activities. In the past, many federal programs and funds have been poorly targeted as lawmakers and administrators dictated categories of activity and approaches to problem-solving. In contrast, the involvement of neighborhood organizations makes it easier to focus social services, housing, economic development and other resources upon intended beneficiaries. An American Neighborhoods and Community Fund could promote this involvement and be responsive to the initiatives and concerns of neighborhood residents and their institutions and organizations.
In some respects the struggle to recover and to renew urban neighborhoods which began nearly a generation ago, as the illustrations presented in this paper indicate, has produced significant results. In other respects awareness of the founding notions of the urban ethnic neighborhood movement and the diagnosis prescribed are as needed today as they were decades ago. Thus, this sketch of the American reality and the policy and practice recommendations argue the importance of recovering the founding ideas of the neighborhood movement and resuming or at least inviting a new generation to consider our commitment to the people of American neighborhoods from which a peaceful, pluralistic and just urban society can be constituted.
National Center for Urban Ethnic Affairs
The Catholic University of America
Washington, D.C. 20064
1. The position paper "Neighborhood Revitalization: Neighborhood Policy for a Pluralistic Urban Society," Appendix A, NCUEA, 1976, drafted by John A. Kromkowski, Arthur Naparstek and Geno Baroni provides a clear set of notions derived from the ferment of the late 60s and the urban crises which created the Neighborhood Movement. This paper was presented at the White House Conference on Ethnicity and Neighborhood, May 5, 1976, which was convened to focus urban policy on ethnicity and neighborhood, the ignored and neglected dimensions of previous approaches.
2. See Appendix B, "A Declaration of Neighborhood Roles, Rights and Responsibilities," Neighborhood Coalition, May 13, 1982, Washington, D.C. The statement was drafted by Howard Hollman and approved by the Neighborhood Coalition, an organization of persons and institutions based in Washington, D.C. which advocates direct national governmental assistance to community-based organizations.
3. Czeslaw Milosz, Nobel Award Lecture (New York: Farrar Strauss Giroux, 1980).
4. See Appendix C, Recent Newspaper Accounts of Neighborhood Action.
5. See Appendix D, Neighborhood Statistics Program of the U.S. Census and NCUEA.
6. Michael Weiss, Data File on American Neighborhoods.
7. See Thomas Broden, Kirkwood, Roos, Swartz, "Neighborhood Definitions: A Bibliography" in Strengthening Volunteers Initiatives, 2nd edition (Washington, D.C., NCUEA, 1983). Additional references to the types of social, economic and political restructuring envisaged by the neighborhood movement can be found in Jane V. Cunningham and Milton Koller, Building Neighborhood Organizations (Notre Dame, Ind.: University of Notre Dame Press, Notre Dame, 1983); Harry C. Boyte, Community Is Possible (New York: Harper & Row, 1984); Howard W. Hollman, Neighborhoods: Their Place in Urban Life (Beverly Hills: Sage Publications, 1984).
8. See Strengthening Citizen Initiatives, which includes a training curriculum and exercises, as well as a bibliography on community organizing.
9. Anon, The Best Medicine: Organizing Local Health Care Campaigns (Washington, D.C.: The Villar Foundation, 1984).
The city is the cradle of our traditions and our civilization. The American Revolution, which gave birth to our country, was fashioned and fought in the cities and towns from Boston to New Orleans. The great American experiment--liberty and justice for all--was first experienced by millions of immigrant Americans who came to the cities and there developed the rich mixture of human spirit which characterizes the form and style of a fully human life, our urban civilization. Only cities offer the possibility for the continuation of this full human life through the enhancement of urban fellowship and social development. Burchard is right when he says that only the city can aggregate the fiscal and human resources which enable persons to enjoy their life and work in a framework of civic amenities. Those amenities are the obvious ones: well-tended lakes and rivers, green areas and parks, distinguished buildings, great universities, libraries and museums, outstanding restaurants, fine music, exciting shops, the theater, fountains, art in the streets, opportunities for participatory recreation and spectator sports, and historic squares. But they also include healthy neighborhoods with diverse traditions, styles and tones of life, and accountable and responsive government which is attuned and wholly dedicated to the important task of enhancing these civic amenities.
Yet today we are callously abandoning our cities and apparently espousing a Candide-like policy of pessimism and anti-urban privatism. Our national urban policy has not only threatened our cities with fiscal bankruptcy, but more tragically our cities have nearly ceased fulfilling their special and unique capacity to enliven the human spirit. Our cities are not producing the civilizing influences of work, education, art, music and fellowship that of necessity must be located and developed in them. These problems are often discussed and volumes of research have been directed towards eliminating the urban crisis.
Discussion and research, however, are not enough. Our national urban policy has neglect a basic dimension of urban life; the civitas has been forgotten.
In the ancient world, urbs was the place of assembly, the dwelling-place, a sanctuary of the civitas. Civitas was the religious and political association of families and tribes--the people bound together in civic association. By focusing on external concerns, the physical items, to the exclusion of civic concerns, our national urban policy has nearly destroyed the various levels of human associations which make urban life possible. Serious consequences, perhaps fatal results, derive from urban strategies that fail to recognize that a city is primarily a "little world" that is illuminated with symbols, shared experiences, and traditions. As Voeglin suggests, this world of meaning is not an accident or a convenience, it is the experience of their human essence.
In sum, our urban policy must be rethought and refashioned into a civic policy which in broadest outline is cognizant of the civic life of our cities and supportive of two pre-eminent features of that life which have been thoughtlessly squandered, our rich variety of ethnic differences and their life blood, our urban neighborhoods.
The fondest of our family traditions of diverse populations have been nurtured and protected in our urban neighborhoods. The urban neighborhoods have produced civility, order and stability. They are sustained by a delicate network of interpersonal, family, cultural, economic, religious, and political relationships. In fact, a good measure of a healthy city is the health and vitality of its various ethnic neighborhoods.
Many of these healthy neighborhoods have been and are being destroyed, mostly by government action or inaction. In a steady procession of good-intentioned but basically faulted programs initiated by national urban strategists and compounded by faulty local initiatives and planning, our city neighborhoods--and all that they have meant for our country and our people--are tragically passing from the scene. With their damage our greatest American cities will be no more.
The economic bind facing the cities is mounting daily. The middle classes of all races and nationalities are being forced to flee the city. The tax base is eroding, jobs are disappearing, mass transportation is a farce, there is no adequate housing policy or program, health costs are mounting, educational standards are decreasing; through all of this the quality of life in America is deteriorating.
Power must be returned to the people, to all the people. We cannot allow our cities to be havens for the very rich and the very poor with a wall around them separating out America's middle classes. Ownership must be expanded, jobs must be created, planning must relate to human and neighborhood needs. Above all, voluntary associations which speak to the needs of all citizens must be created and supported in every neighborhood to give voice and power to our citizens' aspirations. This will enable them to be heard in the halls of political responsibility so that their needs will be addressed.
The problems of our city neighborhoods affect farmer and suburbanite, as well as city dweller. They share this complex situation in such a close-knit way that the problems of one cannot be solved unless they are all addressed. No longer can we pit farmer against city dweller, suburbanite against rural American, or the small city neighborhood against the large city. All these have, we now know, the same problems, which vary only in quantity. The same policies and lack of vision and planning affect all. The same forces that are causing the closing of the small farm are also driving the middle class from our cities. Now is the time for a unified effort; we must not neglect or turn our backs on the grandeur of our neighborhood traditions and life in our cities. Such neglect will return to haunt us in the years ahead.
Most of our public and private institutions as well as the urban policy of federal, state and local governments have ignored the ethnic factor in urban American society. We cannot understand the urban crisis unless we understand the ethnic, racial and cultural diversity of the American people. One of the challenges of our quest as Americans for self-definition is to recognize that our national self-image as a melting pot is not an adequate framework to deal with our ethnic and racial diversity. We need, therefore, a new rhetoric to begin the task of redefining ourselves as Americans. We are the most ethnically, racially, religiously, regionally-diverse nation in the world.
Many scholars, policy analysts and others agree that the neighborhood is a neglected unit of American urban life. But now residents in cities all across the country are organizing to improve their neighborhoods. Strategies for neighborhood revitalization have many variations, and evolve from different ideological perspectives. However, one theme runs throughout every strategy--the desire to assist people to become more involved in the processes of governance and thus to share in the control of their neighborhoods and their lives.
To date, two major streams of thought have influenced this movement. The first includes those proponents of neighborhood government who return to the principles of Jeffersonian democracy and the conceptual notions put forth by Mumford and Jacobs. They define the problem in human and moral terms, and argue that because family and community life suffer people do not cope well with the diversity and pressures of the city. They assume that people will live better if they have options for control and that the way to achieve this is by a return to smaller units of government.
The second stream consists of those proponents of American Federalism who also decry the trend toward centralization and bigness. However, they define the problem within the context of the good government and reform movements of the early twentieth century and build on the theoretical framework of contemporary public administration. Their approach is functional and structural with emphasis on identifying the tasks which can best be carried out by small service areas in order to achieve greater efficiency, effectiveness and productivity.
The primary focus of any decentralization strategy must be the city, for without a workable strategy of neighborhood decentralization on the local level, the best efforts of other governmental units will be fruitless. We should develop a two-phase neighborhood decentralization model that would begin a process of combining political and administrative decentralization in a fashion that permits and encourages citizen participation. It would have to recognize that each city is different and that no one can prescribe a generic model. Nor can one prescribe the mechanics of developing linkages between neighborhoods, city and regional governmental units. Such a model should be considered a limited approach toward meeting selected needs on a neighborhood level.
There is a paucity of federal legislation which legitimizes the neighborhood as a legal unit. A major problem in writing legislation has been in defining the appropriate role of the federal government. We define the role as having to deal with three major areas of concern:
1) the structuring of financial resources;
2) the reorientation of federal programs, agencies and regulatory bodies; and
3) the provision of technical assistance through model legislation.
More specifically, a neighborhood policy needs to be enacted to serve as a model for a comprehensive approach toward:
1) restructuring the procedures of governance through a mix of centralization and decentralization of services;
2) restructuring financial systems with emphasis on subsidy and incentive programs;
3) molding federal funds and programs with local conditions;
4) provision of oversight over relevant regulatory bodies in the context of neighborhood problems; and
5) rearranging human and educational service delivery systems in ways which will increase utilization and decrease ethnic and racial tension and polarization.
We need to begin to discuss the development of legislative and executive action that would redirect priorities in favor of a national neighborhood policy. Legislative and executive action must lead toward neighborhood re-investment through increased policy, strategies, and programs for neighborhood revitalization. Federal agencies and departments, including the Departments of Commerce, Housing and Urban Development, Health, Education and Welfare, and special agencies such as the Small Business Administration, ACTION, the Community Services Administration, and the Office of Minority Business Enterprise must take the lead in developing policy, strategies, and programs for neighborhood revitalization (housing), neighborhood market place revitalization, economic development, and the stabilization of communities through serving basic human needs.
We could mention good efforts by every one of these federal agencies and departments but we need to recognize that convergent issues at the neighborhood level and bridge issues are needed to build a greater and broader racial and ethnic constituency for neighborhood revitalization.
In sharing our views today about the development of a national neighborhood policy and specifically focusing on neighborhood revitalization in a pluralistic urban society, I would like to make a priority recommendation of a Presidential Commission on Neighborhood Policy. This could begin with a review of all our federal programs and their impact on neighborhoods. The Commission or Task Force could take the ideas and suggestions mentioned earlier in this paper under consideration as its initial agenda. It should incorporate two ideas: a pluralistic urban society and neighborhood revitalization.
Neighborhood decentralization is no urban panacea, but must be studied in light of our increasing concern for community and the problems besetting our cities. The challenge to government at all levels is in devising creative policies which can support appropriate political and administrative decentralization efforts.
We the people of the United States of America come together in varied ways in response to common needs and shared interests. In this declaration we are speaking as neighborhood people who are involved as individuals and through organizations working to preserve and improve our neighborhoods.
As neighborhood people we are concerned about our homes, our families, our neighborhoods, our physical environment and safety, and the institutions and agencies serving us within our neighborhoods. We want to be certain and that we, our neighbors, and people in other neighborhoods have sufficient income to meet basic human needs. We want adequately paying jobs for all who can work and sufficient means of economic livelihood for those who cannot. We want the amenities of the good life. We want freedom to pursue individual activities, but we also recognize our interdependency.
As neighborhood people we rely upon many different organizations, both public and private, to fulfill our needs. We do many things individually to care for ourselves and our families. We serve as volunteers to help our neighbors. We form neighborhood organizations to act as our advocate in dealing with government and the private sector, to undertake neighborhood projects, and to provide specific services. We join with people in the broader community to form other kinds of voluntary organizations. As entrepreneurs and investors, we are involved in business enterprises. We rely upon a variety of governmental units -- local, state, and national -- to help us meet common needs and to guarantee liberty and justice for all. Because many of our needs can be met by small-scale, close-to-home operations, any neighborhood desiring to have direct control over neighborhood projects and services should have the right and resources to do so.
As neighborhood people we realize that our neighborhoods vary widely in population make-up, economic resources, and cohesiveness. Many neighborhoods have already demonstrated their capacity to administer program activities and services, such as housing rehabilitation, commercial revitalization, energy conservation, food programs, child care, youth services, home care for the aging, health services, crime prevention, employment and training programs, arts, recreation, and many more. Other neighborhoods want to develop this capability. Therefore, governments, voluntary organizations, and philanthropy should recognize this desire and should encourage and assist neighborhood organizations to undertake activities of their own choosing. As this occurs, each neighborhood should have flexibility to organize itself as it deems appropriate rather than being forced into a single mold.
As neighborhood people we affirm that when our neighborhood organizations want to take on direct operations, they should have dependable sources of income to allocate as they determine. Among the possibilities are their own tax base, shared revenues with guaranteed minimum, a fair share of united giving campaigns, and income from investments and enterprises. They should also receive grants, contracts, and donations. Because our neighborhoods have widely varying needs and vastly different economic bases, local, state, and national governments, philanthropy, and the private business sector should take action to achieve greater equity in the resources available to neighborhoods.
As neighborhood people we want to participate in economic enterprises located in and serving our neighborhoods. We expect to do this as individual entrepreneurs, partners, stockholders, and investors and as members of cooperatives and shareholders of community-owned enterprises. A major function of these economic activities should be to provide employment opportunities for our fellow residents. Where local jobs in the private sector and the regular public sector are insufficient to achieve full employment, we believe that government-financed job creation should occur. As this happens, neighborhood organizations and neighborhood-based enterprises should be allocated funds to hire unemployed and underemployed residents in jobs meeting neighborhood needs.
As neighborhood people, even as we take on direct operations, we will continue to rely upon local, state, and national governments to fulfill many of our needs. These, too, are our instruments as we act as citizens of the municipality, county, state, and nation. As this occurs, we insist that we should have a meaningful voice in formulation of policies affecting our neighborhoods. This should be achieved through our elected representatives, through a varied array of citizen participation practices, and on occasion through ballot initiatives and referendums. All of these governments should be held accountable for the ways in which their actions affect our neighborhoods.
As neighborhood people we look to the federal government to take responsibility for national solutions to national problems and to take positive actions to assure that equal rights are available to all Americans. We believe that equity is an important goal for the United States and that the federal government should use its powers of taxation and expenditure to achieve a fair distribution of the nation's resources among generations, economic groups, and geographic areas (regions, urban/rural, city/suburb). We advocate direct federal funding of neighborhood organizations for activities amenable to neighborhood administration. Where federal grants go to our state and local governments, they should be directed toward clear national objectives, governed by the principle of equity, and controlled by our elected representatives within these governments. In the expenditure of federal funds, state and local governments should be held accountable for meeting specific performance standards and should be required to achieve full participation of persons served and other citizens in policy formulation, implementation, and evaluation. Neighborhood organizations should be entitled to receive a fair share of federal funds going to and through state and local governments.
As neighborhood people we expect our state and local governments to be guided by principles of equity, participation, and accountability. They should make state and local tax funds available to neighborhood organizations. State government through statutes, and local government through charter and ordinance, should enable neighborhoods which want to organize their own governments to have both the authority and the resources to do so. Where organized, neighborhood governments should also be guided by principles of equity, participation, and accountability.
As neighborhood people, we also look to the private business sector and to voluntary organizations and philanthropy to meet many of our needs. In locating facilities, businesses should respond to the desire of neighborhood residents for jobs and services. They should seek joint ventures with neighborhood organizations and should direct a fair portion of corporate contributions to neighborhood-based activities. Voluntary organizations should assure that their operations are truly responsive to neighborhood needs. They should provide opportunity for full neighborhood participation in policy-making, evaluation of services, and implementation, including contracting with neighborhood organizations to run specific services. Foundations and united giving campaigns should assign top priority to needs of low and moderate income neighborhoods and should fund neighborhood organizations and providers of neighborhood technical assistance.
As neighborhood people, we recognize that we have responsibilities as
well as rights. Therefore, we pledge that we will work as individuals and
through our neighborhood organizations to help one another, care for children, the aging and others in need, guide our youth, look out for the safety of
our homes and streets, maintain our properties, make proper use of public
facilities, and strive diligently to achieve liberty and justice for all.
Adopted by the Neighborhood Coalition,
May 13, 1982, Washington, D.C.
"STUDY FINDS COUNCILS AT GRASS ROOTS"
by Don Ahern
Citizen participation is healthier and much more a part of government in St. Paul than in Minneapolis, according to a study reported in a publication of the University of Minnesota's Center for Urban and Regional Affairs.
But the lack of a strong system in Minneapolis has forced citizens groups to identify more clearly their priorities, even though they have a harder time communicating with City Hall.
The urban and regional affairs center conducted interviews with 40 neighborhood organization leaders and staff members over the past year. The results of those interviews are contained in the June issue of the center's newsletter, the CURA Reporter.
While the article refrains from directly ranking the two cities against each other, it makes it clear that St. Paul's system of 17 funded community councils encourages citizen participation throughout the city. In Minneapolis, the article says, communities are pitted against each other in competition for grants with no assurance of continued funding.
However, the different types of funding contribute to greater independence by Minneapolis groups and more dependence on city funds in St. Paul.
Although St. Paul's system works well, said Jack Whitehurst, a co-author who did the interviews, it is so well organized that it almost becomes a level of city government.
"The people I talked to said the councils need to become more proactive. They are too reactive to a lot off little things. They should be developing their own solutions to problems. It's kind of like the city wants them to do its dirty work."
The article states, in part: "St. Paul displays a strong interest in citywide, organized citizen participation as evidenced by the district council system, the early notification system, distribution of funds, and city staffing assignments for neighborhood programs.
"While Minneapolis groups search for timely information about what the city council is doing, St. Paul groups are concerned that the government may be too involved. . . . Ironically, the district council system (in St. Paul) is such a well-used mechanism for the agendas of various city offices that many district councils have difficulty making room for their own issues, developing their own priorities and asserting their own concerns effectively."
St. Paul's citizen participation director, Geraldine Jenkins, agreed that "we sometimes overwhelm the district councils in paper" while Minneapolis neighborhood activists struggle lo find out what is going on. Jenkins said the article was generally accurate, at least in its references to St. Paul.
The article also said that "it was clear in the interviews that Minneapolis organizations are hostile toward the system and more likely to blame external forces (the city council, the planning commission or the city coordinator's office, for example) if their organizational priorities are sidetracked.
"Neighborhood staff and leaders in Minneapolis believe the city has little, if any, interest in organized citizen participation in decisions by the city council, the planning commission or the various other city departments."
Minneapolis planning director Oliver Byrum said that quotation "reflects a view that if you're not giving us money, you're not doing anything for us." Minneapolis does more staff directed community activities, such as conducting door-to-door needs surveys of neighborhoods, he said. But he added that the article was basically accurate. He said Minneapolis cut back on its district council financing in the early 1980s as federal funds began to dry up. "We felt that there were other ways to get things done," he said. "And there is the feeling that organized groups represent themselves, but do they really represent the community."
In St. Paul, the article says, "organizations seem to believe that the system is there to help them and are more likely to blame themselves if their priorities are sidetracked."
The relative strength of district councils in St. Paul was illustrated by a reference to a few instances in which citizens had first to enlist the aid of their city council member to push for district council action on a particular issue, rather than the other way around. The St. Paul City Council seldom will act on a neighborhood issue without consulting the appropriate district council, although the advice is not always heeded
In its summary, the article concluded that the challenge for Minneapolis neighborhood organizations "lies at the municipal level--whether the city will value organized neighborhood participation seriously enough to provide community organizations with the basic administrative resources necessary." The challenge in St. Paul, according to the article, "lies at the neighbor level." As even more demands are placed on the district councils, it will be increasingly important for St. Paul's neighborhood residents to make clear choices and pursue those things most critical to the future of their communities.
NEW YORK NEIGHBORHOOD COALITION SUCCESSFULLY TIES EXPANDED BANKING POWERS
TO COMMUNITY REINVESTMENT
In mid-January new banking rules went into effect in New York State that will generate an estimated $750 million to $1 billion in new investments in low and moderate income neighborhoods and rural communities. The adoption of these new rules establishes an important precedent for future banking deregulation, demonstrating how expanded powers for banks can be coupled with incentives to encourage lending to disinvested communities. The new banking rules also represent a significant victory for a coalition of neighborhood groups in New York City which were instrumental in bringing about adoption of these banking regulations. The groups sought to preserve access to financial services for modest income consumers in an era of deregulation of the financial services industry. The Center for Community Change and its Neighborhood Revitalization Project (NRP) aided these groups in their efforts.
The neighborhood groups' efforts were spearheaded by the New York City-based Coalition against Redlining (CAR) and its local technical assistance arm, the Community Training and Resource Center (CTRC). CAR is an umbrella organization representing more than 30 local neighborhood groups that serve low and moderate income areas.
The Center began NRP in 1976 to develop new methods whereby local community groups could influence the flow of public and private resources for neighborhood revitalization and preservation. NRP responds to requests from local groups by providing economic, legal and public policy analyses on issues affecting neighborhoods. NRP has been especially effective in expanding the ability of local groups to use public resources, like the Community Development Block Grant (CDBG) and Urban Development Action Grant (UDAG) programs as well as to stimulate increased private investment through the use of the Home Mortgage Disclosure Act (HMDA) and the Community Reinvestment Act (CRA). The project also provides the necessary analytical tools to enable grassroots community groups to tackle newly emerging problems, such as bank branch closings and their impacts on low and moderate income areas.
CAR's effort to develop new mechanisms to preserve access to financial services for poorer neighborhoods dates back to January 1984, when the coalition and NRP were asked to testify at a hearing held by the New York State Temporary State Commission on Banking, Insurance and Financial Services. The State Legislature established the blue ribbon commission, chaired by Adrian DeWind, the former head of the New York State Bar Association, in 1983 to develop recommendations that would permit state-chartered banks to enter new fields such as insurance and real estate and corporate equity investments.
Both CAR and NRP staff testified at the hearing about their growing concern that banking deregulation may have unleashed new disinvestment forces in low and moderate income communities. Both groups cited the wave of bank branch closings in the city's less affluent neighborhoods as evidence that banks were beginning to "demarket" their services to low and moderate income consumers. The testimony also touched on the credit availability problems posed by branch closings and their dire consequences for revitalization efforts.
The CAR and NRP testimony had an impact on the Commission, whose final report acknowledged that banking deregulation had adverse impacts on low and moderate income consumers, on certain urban neighborhoods and on small business. The DeWind Commission concluded that the state had an obligation to devise a set of safeguards to curb these adverse effects and to preserve full access to financial services. Further, the Commission recommended that safeguards be included in the legislative package permitting banks to enter new fields.
The DeWind Commission's report generated a good deal of publicity, particularly concerning its findings about the adverse impacts of banking deregulation. Using the momentum provided by the Commission's report, CAR, with NRP's assistance, developed a specific set of policy recommendations that could be incorporated into legislation giving banks expanded powers. NRP and the Coalition devised several reinvestment proposals, including tying expanded banking powers to an individual institution's lending performance in low and moderate income areas, expanding public disclosure requirements for banks utilizing expanded powers, revising the State Community Reinvestment Act and instituting a supervisory procedure governing bank branch closings.
The proposals formed the basis for a Neighborhood Agenda on Banking Deregulation that was supported by a neighborhood consumer alliance including groups such as CAR, the New York Public Interest Research Group and the New York State Tenant and Neighborhood Coalition. The ad hoc coalition held several meetings with State Banking Department officials in an effort to convince them to incorporate the proposals in the Governor's banking deregulation legislation.
The DeWind Commission report formed the basis for expanded powers legislation included in an omnibus Banking Bill introduced in the State Legislature in late spring. The omnibus bill included provisions permitting state-chartered banks to make direct equity investments in real estate projects. It also directed the Banking Department to consider an institution's reinvestment performance in determining the extent to which it could invest in real estate. Because the legislation did not include the Neighborhood Agenda provisions, however, CAR opposed it. Eventually, a compromise was reached and the legislation was adopted, but not before the Superintendent of Banking promised to include the Neighborhood Agenda through his agency's rulemaking authority. The Superintendent agreed to promulgate rules in the following areas:
- requiring banks to disclose information about their small business lending;
- requiring licensed mortgage bankers to disclose their patterns of lending, just as do banks;
- requiring that banks be subject to an annual Community Reinvestment Exam with a graduated numerical scoring system, replacing the pass, fail method of rating that gave banks little incentive to improve their performance; and,
- pegging real estate equity investments permitted by the new legislation to a bank's community reinvestment score.
The Omnibus Banking Bill was also amended to provide for a four-year sunset, to ensure that satisfactory regulations were instituted before the bill came up for renewal. A final piece of the compromise was the statutory enactment of a branch closing provision. This requires banks to give 90 days notice of proposed branch closings and to provide the Banking Department with confidential information on branch deposits, profits and losses and a map of the area showing remaining financial services. The department must determine whether the closing will result in a "significant" reduction of banking services to the area. If so, the department must conduct meetings with community leaders and banks to explore replacing the closed facility.
The bill passed the State Legislature in late June and was signed into law in early July. Although disappointed that the Neighborhood Agenda was not included in the legislation, CAR leaders were determined to ensure that the Banking Superintendent followed through on his commitment to adopt these proposals by regulation. Throughout the summer, NRP worked closely with CAR leaders and the CTRC staff in developing suggestions for the regulations. In addition, CAR leaders and NRP staff attended several meetings with Banking Department officials to discuss these proposals.
In early September, the Governor and the Banking Superintendent announced a proposal to link the ability of banks to use the new powers to their CRA scores. According to the proposal, banks with the highest CRA scores (i.e., the best records in meeting the credit needs of low and moderate income areas) would be permitted to invest up to 5 percent of their assets in real estate equity, while banks with lower ratings would be permitted to invest as little as 2 percent.
In addition, the Banking Department's proposal included a formula for determining specific set-aside investment requirements for banks utilizing expanded powers. The CRA ratings would be used to determine how much banks must invest in low and moderate income areas (defined as areas eligible for CDBG funding). Banks with the highest, or "satisfactory," rating would have to invest the value of 5 percent of the real estate in CDBG-eligible areas. Those rated "inadequate" or "unsatisfactory" would have to invest 10 percent.
The proposed rules were generally praised by CAR leaders, although they were concerned that the proposal was not well-targeted to benefit low income people or to discourage displacement of poor people resulting from the new investments. CAR asked NRP's help in analyzing the proposal and in developing recommendations for improving the regulations. Based upon discussions with CAR members and members of other community and housing organizations, NRP developed detailed comments on the department's proposed rules and suggested modifications that would strengthen the impact of the reinvestment requirements for low and moderate income people. Several of these suggestions were incorporated in the Banking Department's final rules, which were adopted last December.
NRP is now advising CAR on its plans to hold a statewide conference on strategies for implementing the new banking rules. The conference is scheduled for March.
For further information, contact NRP Director Allen Fishbein, Center
for Community Change, 1000 Wisconsin Ave., N.W., Washington, D.C.
20007; 202/342-0594.