HOLISTIC COMMUNITY DEVELOPMENT
Table of Contents
Transforming Community Development
Policy and Practice
Three
Overlapping Focal Points
Holistic Community
Development
Prevention, Early
Intervention, and Investment
Regionalism
The Delivery System
Analysis
Understanding the Economy
The Challenges of Change
The Economic Fundamentals
The Art of Collaboration
Moving Toward Holistic Community Development
Indiana's Step Ahead Initiative
The Sandtown Transformation
Holistic Community Development: Preliminary State Assessments
Barriers and Constraints
Setting a Preliminary Agenda Development
Connecticut
Illinois
Indiana and
Michigan
Missouri
Nebraska
North Dakota
Ohio
Oklahoma
Pennsylvania
Vermont
Virginia
Threads of Holistic Community Development
Employment Training
Welfare to Work
Linking Jobs, Human Services and Housing
EZEC Program and Consolidated Planning: The
Shape of Things to Come?
This report is based on a conference on "holistic community development" co-sponsored by the Council of State Community Development Agencies and several other national associations and hosted by the Indiana Department of Commerce. (The Appendix contains the agenda for conference.) The report is not simply a summary of the conference; it does not summarize sequentially each conference speaker or session. Rather, the report tries to distill in an organized fashion the key points made during the two and one-half days. Consequently, although the report occasionally attributes specific comments to speakers, much of a speaker's comments or a session's discussion is embedded in more generic comments or interlaced in broader themes. While this approach does not isolate and distill each speaker's or session's unique contribution, it does hopefully provide a more readable and meaningful summary, especially for those who did not participate in the conference.
The conference mixed several types of sessions: plenary speakers, panels, concurrent work sessions, and discussion break-outs. Although this mixture enriches a conference and provides the capacity to obtain different objectives, it makes reporting on the conference more difficult. Perhaps the key session in the conference was the state team break-outs. Here, in most cases, representatives from the same state but from several different agencies discussed how to begin to introduce holistic community development policy and practice in their state by, in part, identifying barriers or gaps that must be overcome and suggesting initial steps that might be taken. In nearly all cases, the team break-out session was the first opportunity for people from different state agencies to meet face-to-face and begin discussions of how to embark on a long-term collaboration based on the theme of holistic community development.
COSCDA thanks its co-sponsors and hosts as well as the conference speakers and participants for their contributions to the conference. Nonetheless, the points of view and conclusions in the report, especially those in the first part, are not necessarily those of the conference sponsors or their members, including COSCDA's members, or the conference hosts or participants.
This report rests on this premise: current community development policy and practice must be fundamentally transformed. The nature and scale of the problems facing poor people and poor communities, the devolution of federal responsibilities, and the reduction of federal resources make the transformation imperative. In this new community development, policy and practice should substantively focus on holistic community development; early intervention, prevention, and investment; and regionalism. The delivery system represents perhaps the most problematic barrier to transitioning to the new community development. The policies and priorities developed in the new community development must rest, at least in part, on analysis, which primarily tries to identify and examine the root causes of the problems being addressed. Finally, the new community development must be undertaken with a good understanding of the structure and dynamics of the economy.
In addition to overcoming the barrier of delivery systems, states must tackle other challenges including the spatial mismatch between the location of job growth and the location of poor or unemployed people, and the skill mismatch between the jobs available and the skill levels of people. Housing policy and transportation become central and the values of diversity and mobility become very important. Additionally, community development must pay attention to market-based solutions and processes, and jettison the "social grants" approach to problem solving.
Collaboration—the forging and nurturing of relationships across institutions and agencies— is essential if states are to be successful in facing the coming changes and challenges. Developing a shared vision—a shared sense of problems, their solutions, and outcomes— sharing information, and understanding the institutional and financial constraints of other institutions can help form effective collaboration.
Indiana's Step Ahead initiative, which alters traditional state human service policy and practice, provides an example of a state-based initiative that sets a platform for a more collaborative approach to community development. Baltimore's Sandtown Transformation is a comprehensive effort to break the cycle of poverty and hopelessness in an inner-city neighborhood.
State representatives met in small groups to identify barriers and constraints to adopting a holistic community development policy and to begin to lay out a short-term agenda of steps that can be taken to begin developing a holistic community development policy. A state's holistic community development policy must be based on effective components, and examples of models that can be used or adapted by states include the "contextual learning model" of the employment training process used by the Center for Employment Training as well as the welfare to work initiative of America Works. Missouri's comprehensive and collaborative welfare reform effort and Michigan's "21st Initiative" that provides job training in construction skills to disadvantaged people working welfare recipient housing are examples of state practices that may lead to a new community development. Finally, the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development's Consolidated Plan requirement and its empowerment zone/enterprise community program can help facilitate the transition to new community development, as will welfare reform.
P
overty, welfare dependency, and increasing income inequality—problems compounded by the geographic separation of class and race—are not only critical problems facing this country, perhaps the most critical, they are also central to the challenges facing community development. And they are problems facing rural areas as well as inner cities and older suburbs. When looking at demographic and economic trends it is difficult to believe that this country can offer 15 or 20 years in the future the same degree of economic opportunity and security, peace and tranquility that it now does. Those of us concerned about community development should be aware that we need to ameliorate substantially these problems in the near future. To be successful in meeting this challenge, we must significantly transform community development policy and practice.The "old" model of community development—even if it had been very effective—is no longer applicable to the challenges now facing poor people and poor communities. Transitioning to a new model is difficult. Even if the elements of the old model that worked are known and kept and those that didn't work are known and dropped, this kind of tinkering does not produce a new model; it does not really effect a fundamental transformation. While there may be many visions of the new model of community development, most will likely differ on the margin, or on emphasis. What follows is one vision of the new community development.
Transforming community development policy and practice encompasses several components. One component includes three over-lapping focal points: holistic community development; early intervention, prevention, and investment; and regionalism. These focal points relate to the substantive characteristics of new community development; they help determine the kinds of activities, resources, and objectives inherent in the new community development policy and practice. Another component is the delivery system—the resource providers and vendors and the programs and resources within which they work. Another topic is analysis, an examination of problems and their root causes. The last is the economy—understanding the structure and dynamics of the economy, the principal environment in which community development practice must succeed.
In the above perspective, the notion of "transforming community development policy and practice" includes more than the concept of "holistic community development." While holistic community development is central to transforming community development policy and practice, holistic community development alone cannot either fully respond to the problems faced by today's poorer communities or overcome the barriers and constraints faced by community development policy and practice.
Three Overlapping Focal Points
Transforming community development policy and practice encompasses three substantially overlapping focal points. While each focal point contains a set of policy objectives and activities that can be undertaken by itself, the integration of the three focal points is an essential characteristic of the new community development.
HOLISTIC COMMUNITY DEVELOPMENT
One focus is holistic community development, the topic of this conference.
Holistic community development means at least three things. First, it means the conscious,
intended collaboration of three broad sets of resources and activities: housing and
physical development (such as local infrastructure, neighborhood and community
facilities), economic development (enterprise development, job creation, and activities
related to earnings and employment), and human investment (the broad range of welfare
related resources in addition to education, employment training, pubic safety and criminal
justice, and health). (The human investment, or human services, component is very broad,
and its breadth may unintentionally minimize both the importance and the relative autonomy
of education and public safety and security.)
The primary goal of holistic community development is to reduce dependency and promote the self-sufficiency of communities and people—a goal that consensually seems an appropriate reason for public intervention in the lives of people. In undertaking holistic community development, priority must be attached to serving people over serving buildings and artifacts.
Finally, holistic community necessitates some degree of sustaining presence, the opposite of one-shot deal-making and a quick in and out of resources, support and oversight.
The primary reason for a holistic community development focus is the importance of the immediate community or neighborhood environment. While it is difficult to determine the impact of a residential environment on the lives of people and their outcomes per se, recent research suggests that teenage out-of-wedlock births, dropping out of school, and unemployment among young men are related to concentrations of poverty and welfare dependency. More anecdotally, evidence suggests that teen violence, child and spouse abuse, low birth weights, and alcohol and drug abuse are made much worse by concentrations of poverty.
Just as it is common sense to suggest that assisting a family member without improving the lives and behavior of the entire family is usually unsuccessful or cost ineffective, so to is assisting a family but then leaving this family surrounded by an environment of poverty, crime, and adverse personal behaviors. The following quotes from practitioners illustrate the importance of community and neighborhood environment. (See the Endnotes for all references.)
Trying to implement holistic community development is difficult for several reasons. One of these is that for the past 40 or 50 years "community revitalization" (or whatever other name one chooses) has been led by housing and physical development, usually housing rehabilitation. While housing and physical development are important, indeed necessary, they are supportive components in holistic community development. The primary component is human development—physical development provides a complementary role to human investment.
A second, and related, difficulty is that human service policy and practice is unfamiliar with how to frame and deliver human services within the context of community development. Until very recently, human services have focused on the individual, often with someone being entitled to services if certain requirements, usually related to afflictions or problematic behavior, are met. Recently, there has been more focus on addressing the family as a unit as opposed to the individual, but this is still a long way from providing human services within the context of community development.
The American Public Welfare Association's "Families and Communities" project illustrates APWA's commitment to using a community context in transforming human services policy and practice. Several years ago in its report One Child in Four, APWA discussed the importance of prevention and early intervention; however, the report placed the bulk of this discussion in the preface and appendix. But if prevention and early intervention are important, they must be addressed centrally. Recognizing this, APWA initiated its "Families and Communities" project to begin to move human services from a focus on crisis intervention and remediation to prevention and early intervention.
The rationale for APWA's change is simply this: by the time people and families finally access the public human services system they usually are in deep crisis or major trouble, and it has lost the opportunity for early intervention which is more effective and less costly than crisis intervention. The objective of this change is to try to intervene at what would otherwise be the point at which the natural supports of family and community would informally intervene—if these resources were available to those in need.
Yet, "community" is in many ways a foreign concept to public human service providers. Human service practitioners focus on the individual and, more recently, the family. People even in poor communities can be helped if these communities have social capital, the helping interaction of people around common problems. Families and communities are the places the human service practitioners have to go to seek out those who need help before they come to service providers, at a time when they can be effectively and efficiently helped.
Last, economic development activity is infrequently tied to community development, especially the kind of community development that centers on poorer people and poorer neighborhoods. Centering economic development on poorer people or communities and integrating it into holistic community development is a major challenge.
The economic development practitioner's world is largely that of the "deal" with an employer, often located in areas unaffected by poverty and related ills. Economic development has largely become a succession of deals in which geographic location matters primarily only to the employers. To move from single-focus deal to multi-focused community development, from geographic location as an artifact of employer interest to it being a primary and long term interest to the economic development practitioner, and from a macro interest in jobs and public revenue to the nurturing of human capital are changes not easily made, although necessary for holistic community development.
The concept of holistic community development may not seem new to those practitioners who were involved in or know about the model cities program of the 1960s. Indeed, just as "comprehensive planning" became a buzz word a generation or more ago, the words "comprehensive community development" were often on peoples' minds and lips if not in their deeds and actions.
But for several reasons, holistic community development is different than the older model of comprehensive community development. First, and as implied in the above discussion of holistic community development, comprehensive community development was physically based, paying more attention to buildings and facilities than to services. In a way this was partly a response to the resources available. The breadth, scope, complexity, and number of service based programs (employment training, health, education, public safety, and the numerous welfare-related programs) in the 1990s overwhelms the very few and basic service programs that existed in the 1960s.
Second, the delivery system in the 1990s is both far more complex and less governmental than it was a generation or two ago. In part this is because of the growth in the number and complexity of service programs, in part because of the growth and number of community based organizations and other nonprofit service providers, in part because of the increased presence and capabilities of state government, and in part because of the increased attention to public-private partnerships.
Third, the problems facing poor communities today are much different, more broad and severe, than a generation or two ago. Substance abuse; violence, especially crimes against people; welfare dependency and teen out-of-wedlock births; and even the depth of poverty are much more prevalent and much more intense today than years ago. Probably the only problems that have lessened are housing related—the substandard condition of housing and housing overcrowding.
Finally, the nature of the economy has changed. Although the economy is fluid, always changing, several major structural changes have occurred or have become prominent since the early 1970s: the change from a manufacturing economy to a service economy; the prominence of suburbia and urban fringe areas in job creation, especially manufacturing jobs, and the demise of metropolitan areas as major generators of jobs; the real increasing returns to education, especially higher education and graduate degrees, and the real decreased earnings of those with only a high school degree or less; and the opening up of American businesses and employees to global competition, including the technological transformation of the workplace.
Simply put, the notion of comprehensive community development in the 1960s and early 1970s is simplistic compared to the notion of holistic community development at the end of the 20th century.
PREVENTION, EARLY INTERVENTION, AND INVESTMENT
A second focal point in transforming community development policy and practice is an emphasis on prevention, early intervention, and investment. Too often, resources are allocated to treat symptoms and not root causes of problems. For example, providing new or rehabilitated housing to poor people does provide them with more than adequate shelter, but it usually does very little to deal with their poverty or with household behavior that may contribute substantially to the deterioration of the housing. Likewise, the norm in human services is to respond at points of crisis when symptoms are usually treated first, the cost of intervention is the highest, and efficacy frequently low.
Many community development-related expenditures are essentially consumption. These expenditures help the recipient survive the day, or week, or month, but they must continually be used in such a fashion: they are not investments designed to make the recipient better off (i.e., lessen or eliminate the dependency on the assistance) in the mid- term or even in the long run. Sometimes, laws and regulations force resources to be used only for crisis intervention or consumption; in some cases, the cause is simply the practice of tradition or taking the easy way out from the point of view of the provider. Clearly, there are many occasions when crisis intervention is both necessary and appropriate. But a focus on crisis intervention does not permit one to try to get ahead of the curve; one simply tries to respond to problems as they occur and, unfortunately, as they seem to grow in magnitude over time.
Fortunately, there are usually many opportunities for early intervention or prevention, especially in the human services area. The following anecdotes illustrate both how common and how important a focus on prevention and early intervention can be.
These anecdotes imply two challenges to policy makers who want to implement the new community development. One is to become aware of the instances of and opportunities for early intervention and to get the space, time , or resources to address these opportunities. The second is to begin to develop a parallel sense of early intervention and prevention opportunities in physical development.
The third focus is regionalism, i.e., the notion that the problems of poor communities, and especially the problems of their residents, cannot be solved simply by funneling resources into a community or neighborhood. Too often, the concept of community development or neighborhood revitalization translates exclusively into creating, developing, and spending resources, especially physical resources, in and for the residents of a neighborhood, with the emphasis on in.
Regionalism suggests at least two considerations. One consideration is that an effective way to help residents of poorer areas may be to provide them with access to effective institutions and resources located outside the community. This may mean commutation from within the community to outside the community to obtain education, employment training, employment, and other valuable services or resources that are located outside the community. It may also mean providing a place within the neighborhood, permanently or temporarily, for the off-site location of top-notch services or resources that are and will continue to be permanently and centrally housed outside the community. That is, rather than trying to develop an employment training institution, capacity, and facility permanently within the community, it may be more appropriate to house temporarily within the community an employment training initiative that is otherwise located and serving people outside the community.
Effective resources and competent institutions are found throughout a metropolitan area or region; they are usually not located in one and the same place. These resources need to be tapped to help deal with the problems of poor people in poor communities. Rarely do most people live, work, get their medical care, their schooling and training, and have access to resources that meet their other needs all in the same neighborhood or small community.
A second consideration is deconcentration or dispersion. This consideration suggests two things. One is that the most effective way to help poor residents of poor communities may be to help them reside outside of that community. A second is that the most effective way to help poor residents of poor communities may be to develop the community so that it includes (brings in from outside the community) a substantial number of non-poor or at least non-dependent residents. Both of these considerations are often controversial and usually go against the grain of much current community development policy and practice.
These three overlapping focal points—holistic community development; prevention, early intervention, and investment; and regionalism—highlight what may be the most difficult aspect of fundamentally transforming community development policy and practice: designing and using an appropriate and effective system for delivering resources. The new community development requires a processing and organizing that is much different than our current delivery system, and it is a processing and organizing that must affect developing shared priorities, allocating resources, and operating activities.
Delivery systems may be the most difficult problem because public policy often starts with them. A hyperbolic image, but one with an important kernel of truth, of our policy world is that organizations and agencies will advocate primarily for a delivery system that relies on or sustains them and only secondarily advocate, if at all, for the problem being addressed. Self- interest, often polemically wrapped in "do-goodism," contributes more to determining delivery systems than the does the nature of the problem being addressed. Once these organizations and agencies monopolize or obtain guaranteed access to a program or resources, their delivery system—and not the problem— often becomes the focal point of public policy. Given this context, fundamentally transforming community development policy and practice becomes a very challenging concept to implement.
There are many actual and potential resource providers or service deliverers, and they include government and quasi-governmental agencies and organizations, nonprofit organizations, and for-profit organizations. Each of these three major types includes a wide spectrum of resource providers or deliverers and each has its certain strengths and weaknesses. In considering the three focal points of community development, several delivery system weaknesses readily present themselves. One weakness is monopolistic service provision. For example, if primary education is seen as a service that needs dramatic improvement, it is often impossible to provide the service without using the public school system, which is already the provider of the service that is in dramatic need of improvement. While there are increasing ways to get around this monopoly problem, e.g., charter schools, school vouchers, at-home education, these usually are not readily available.
Another weakness is small-scale geographic jurisdictions. While our critical markets, e.g., labor supply, employment, housing, transportation, are regional or metropolitan-wide, the institutions and organizations that try to deal with problems in these markets are almost universally geographically limited: their service boundaries are usually coterminous with counties, cities, or even smaller geographic units. (In nearly every instance, state government is the only authoritative jurisdiction possessing regional scope.) For example, it may be that a suburban county JTPA has an effective training program and slots available, while a central city JTPA program may be ineffective and have many more applicants than slots available, yet it is nearly impossible to have the surplus slots in the suburban county filled by poor residents from the inner city.
Another weakness is what might be called the "territorial imperative," a weakness that may most aptly apply to community based organizations (CBOs). CBOs by their very nature tend to have a small geographic scope and are committed to developing, improving, revitalizing (whatever word one wants to use) a small territory, almost a physical entity. There are probably very few CBOs that would consider themselves very successful if they directed their efforts entirely to assisting residents of a poor neighborhood access viable services outside of the neighborhood and helping these residents leave the area. Developing and building artifacts, processes, and organizations with some permanency within the neighborhood and trying to develop a viable population that continues to reside in the neighborhood are generally, and one might say almost inherently, central to CBOs.
A final delivery system weakness deals with performance accountability. Part of this is simply accountability: the extent to which a service provider is directly accountable to those funding it. Most government organizations tend to be accountable in the sense that elected officials or elected bodies have direct control over them. But there are many governmental organizations that are only very indirectly accountable at best. A more critical aspect or indicator of accountability is performance.
Providers with monopolistic or guaranteed access to resources, providers with little visibility, and providers with strong political (using the phrase "political" very broadly) support often successfully garner funds and resources year after year regardless of their performance, their long-term success, and their cost-effectiveness. Yet this lack of performance accountability often accompanies providers who do not have these protections because funders, for a variety of reasons, do not well monitor performance. Part of the problem is the difficulty in developing criteria and standards, especially when it comes to outcomes (and in some cases, even outputs). But part of the problem is also the lack of interest in doing so and in maintaining oversight over some period of time.
Another aspect of performance accountability, one that has improved in the past decade or so, is ensuring that the delivery system's use of resources and its service or resource objectives are developed with the input of actual and potential beneficiaries and that the potential and actual beneficiaries help hold the delivery system accountable.
Orchestrating the delivery system to accompany fundamental change in community development policy and practice presents an enormous challenge. The delivery system must be a network of providers and vendors, and the number of providers will likely be quite large, since no single, or even several, organization has the capacity to perform well all the necessary activities. Any delivery system is likely to include government, nonprofit, and for- profit providers and vendors and include participant beneficiaries as well. The term "participant beneficiaries" refers to the empowerment of low-income persons to choose their own service providers through the use, for example, of vouchers. Further, the participants in the network, even within a specific topical or issue area like health or housing, will probably change over time, be different in different parts of a state, and vary within a given place and time depending on specific priorities or goals.
The delivery system emphasis must be on performance and accountability: providers who perform should receive funds and continue as part of the delivery system as long as they are successful and as long as their contribution and area of expertise fits well the priorities and goals being pursued. This means that state government must be committed to success in solving root problems, and not committed to any one kind of service provider or vendor or to any particular service provider. Performance accountability is key; the delivery system must be effective. If it is not effective, people will continue to suffer, problems will get worse, and taxpayers will become even more cynical and eventually more intensely adversarial.
The delivery system cannot be created de novo, and it cannot be created and maintained through a command and control approach. Nearly always, however, new service providers have to be created or come on the scene and be integrated into the delivery network. Given the complexity and the almost unyielding nature of the problems being addressed, creativity and flexibility become nearly as important as, or perhaps even part of the definition of, effectiveness.
If command and control is inappropriate for the delivery system, then how is it led and maintained? There may be at least three partial answers to this question. One is a market mechanism, and there are at least two ways to look at this. One is the standard market mechanism where buyers (in this case, participant beneficiaries) choose where to spend their funds among competing suppliers. This suggests that resources akin to vouchers and a value that permits beneficiaries maximum choice must be an essential part of any delivery system. A second way of looking at this is through performance accountability: funders assessing the performance of their service providers, using those that are effective and moving away from those that are ineffective.
A second partial answer is that a focus on community and neighborhood tends both to help allocate resources in an integrated fashion and enhance collaboration. If actual beneficiaries are poor people who are more or less randomly participating or engaged and are spread throughout a large area, collaboration and coordination is made very difficult. However, a focus on community or neighborhood enhances the potential for collaboration and coordination.
A third partial answer is that there needs to be substantial agreement (consensus may well be impossible) on some basics: the extent and nature of the problems being addressed, the priorities among these problems, an understanding of the root causes of these problems, and the major goals being pursued. In other words, a common vision can help orchestrate and maintain a delivery system.
In summary, states are likely to encounter, and must overcome, these major barriers in coming up with an effective delivery system: poorly performing monopolistic service providers; a near-exclusive focus on a small geographic area with a greater concern for place than for people; an unwillingness or inability to develop and use performance measures— using effective service providers and discontinuing the use of ineffective ones; and establishing an active regional connection.
The importance of analysis was alluded to above when it was pointed out that analysis could help develop significant agreement on the nature, magnitude, and causes of problems, and the priorities and activities to be pursued. While this is a potential use for analysis, it occurs only infrequently. The public policy world is more dominated by delivery systems seeking to access resources than it is by the analysis of problems. Even when it occurs, it is usually analysis in name only.
Most "analysis" in the practical world of policies and programs is actually problem description and problem quantification. While such description and quantification is desirable and usually necessary, by itself it often only reinforces our ineffectiveness in solving problems because it tends to pre-occupy participants with symptoms: we get to know symptoms real well and then are at least nudged to allocate resources to deal with these symptoms.
Effective analysis contains two components usually not found when the emphasis of analysis, as it is generally now practiced, is on problem description. One of these is the identification of the root causes of problems: the factors that cause, maintain, or worsen problems, and the extent to which these root causes affect or relate to other problems. None of this is to suggest that the identification of root causes is either easy or in some cases actually doable; for instance, a root cause of one problem may be a symptom of another problem. Nonetheless, analysis can often successfully separate or place along a continuum those factors that are arguably closer to root causes than to symptoms.
While analysis can spread the common ground on which participants stand, it may be unable to overcome strongly-held values that are unamenable or irrelevant to fact and data. For example, most analysis would probably agree that two factors that are arguably root causes of poverty are having an out of wedlock birth as a teenager and never marrying and dropping out of school. Thus, one may well conclude that any community development policy and practice that does not centrally try to prevent out of wedlock births by teens or dropping out of school will be ineffective in the long run. Yet, one could argue that child bearing is a personal decision and that government intervention is inappropriate. However, given the growth and high cost of government subsidies that support these personal decisions fewer people are questioning the justification for government intervention.
Two other constraints to acting on trying to prevent out of wedlock teen pregnancy and dropping out of school are much more important. One of these is that the delivery system for each is nascent or nearly non-existent. Going into an inner city neighborhood and identifying service providers or organizations whose primary mission is to try to prevent out of wedlock teen pregnancy might net a very small number. In any event, that number would usually be dwarfed by the number of providers who undertake, for example, housing. (Which is a good example of delivery systems going about locking up resources to solve apparent problems.) Yet, no one has ever documented that poor housing per se is a significant cause of poverty or that placing poor people in good housing per se is a significant way of eliminating poverty.
Another constraint is that we may know very little about how to prevent teen pregnancy, but we know a lot about, say, how to build housing. Nonetheless, not having good methodologies or techniques is no reason not to try; one would expect expertise and effective practices to develop over time as more experience is gained and lessons are learned.
This last constraint prompts discussion of the other major use of analysis: making some assessment of what policies or programs are relatively cost-effective and which ones are not. To an extent, this kind of analysis is actually project or program evaluation. Some degree of good program and project evaluation is essential. But one cannot expect that the analysis done to seek out root causes and develop policies and activities can spend a lot of time on micro-program or project evaluation. The analysis should be aware of such evaluations and assessments and use them in laying out preferred policies and activities. More broadly speaking, analysis should be able to present decent factual arguments about which policies and practices may be more effective than others, given certain contexts and circumstances.
For example, most analysis suggests that providing rental or homebuyer assistance (demand subsidies) is more cost effective in providing poor people with decent housing than is constructing or producing housing (supply subsidies). In some cases, e.g., for certain special needs populations, or where no financing for nearly any kind of housing is readily available, or where there are extraordinarily low vacancy rates, or on a spot basis, supply subsidies may be more appropriate, but by and large this is a very inefficient way to provide decent housing to poor people. Yet the fact that more resources are spent on supply subsidies than demand subsidies reflects both the notion of delivery systems locking up resources and a greater pre-occupation with artifacts than with people.
As another example, the federal government requires from states upwards of 10 or more "plans" every year or two. State government efforts to transform fundamentally community development policy and practice should use these plans and the planning process in a consolidated way (to minimize duplication and picket-fence policies and practices) to look at common goals and undertake meaningful analysis.
The last element related to transforming community development policy and practice is the need to understand the economy. This requirement exists for two important reasons. First, the goal of new community development policy and practice is to reduce dependency and promote the self-sufficiency of poorer people and poorer communities. Almost universally, this means paying utmost attention to employment, earnings, and enterprise development. Second, government, especially in the United States where democracy and capitalism are core to our society, can rarely significantly influence the economy. It might do so once in a while at the macro level and occasionally at the micro-level. But the economy is too powerful, complex, and decentralized for it to be easily or significantly influenced by public policy and government intervention. And even if effective major interventions could be designed, our political culture would resist, indeed would probably prevent, this intervention from occurring.
Consequently, the structure, dynamics, and trends of the economy—of firms, employment, wages, the markets, and of capital—must be recognized and understood. Otherwise, initiatives to help poor people will be ineffective, will fail, or be successful only at the margin, because they are going against major structural trends in the economy. If significant aspects of the economy are problematic to efforts of self-sufficiency, then these should be known so that strategies can be designed and adopted to work around these constraints. Finally, community development policy and practice should quickly take advantage of the opportunities that the structure and dynamics of the economy may provide, and this can be done only if these opportunities are recognized.
Unfortunately, there is a major disconnect in the current practice of community development and efforts to help poorer people and poorer communities. The governmental "responsibility" for dealing with poor people usually rests with institutions, agencies, and personnel who have little background or experience in economic structure and trends. Likewise, those with the most knowledge and experience with the economy (e.g., people who deal with business recruitment and job development) infrequently get involved in issues dealing with poor people and poor communities. Rarely do states interlace their plans and analyses of social service needs with their plans and analyses of economic development. Consequently, policies and activities aimed at poor people and poor communities are often overpowered by economic trends or are simply irrelevant to the economic dynamics around them.
Understanding the economy is partly related to regionalism: employment opportunity and jobs that pay relatively well without requiring high levels of education occur much more frequently in suburbs and urban fringe areas than in central city counties. Data from the U.S. Census Bureau and the Bureau of Labor Statistics provide one last illustration of this point.
Other illustrative notions of what it means to understand the economy include the following:
Taken together the above anecdotes show the significant amount of churning in the economy. Yet people working for government, especially those over 30 years of age, have relatively little first-hand knowledge or experience of this churning. And this lack of knowledge or experience extends to other dimensions of the economy, such as the requirements for entry level jobs and the kinds of background and behavior employers mostly look for; the importance of small businesses and their characteristics; and the nature of contemporary production processes.
Many people involved in community development issues or working on behalf of poor people or poor communities recognize that, at worst, our policies and programs are ineffective and at times counter-productive, or at best, are very inefficient and have room for dramatic improvement. Perhaps one example of this context of policy inefficiency and ineffectiveness is the large and duplicative number of similar programs. Just within the conference's host state, Indiana, a task force on employment training recently identified nine different agencies spending about $1 billion a year on employment training. Another example is that in implementing the state's welfare reform policy, Indiana is dealing with 149 programs and has asked for a total of 42 waivers.
This panoply of programs illustrates the national scene. The Advisory Commission on Intergovernmental Relations estimated that federal categorical programs number 618, with 40 added in the last two years. Although previous efforts at a "new federalism" were largely rebuffed, 1995 seems to be the year of major change. The administration has recommended the consolidation of 271 programs into 27 performance funds, and House Republicans advocate the consolidation of 336 programs totaling $120 billion.
The recognition that programs are not working to some degree is partly responsible for the dramatic changes now being considered by Congress. While some very broad outlines of a major realignment and priority shift can be seen, the nature of the devolution is really in the details, which may not be known for some time.
Nonetheless, few people believe that states and local governments are ready for the radical changes staring them in the face. Of all the possible challenges of change, two stand out in sharp relief. One challenge rests in the economy, and the other in creating and maintaining effective networks.
As Curtis Johnson remarked, states must get the fundamentals right, and these are nearly all economic. David Rusk elaborated on the importance of the economy by noting that there may be three fundamental prerequisites to successful community development, and all three prerequisites are rooted in the economy: (1) a buoyant regional economy, (2) a society that is "opening up"; and (3) non-poor people from outside a poor community moving into that community.
In reviewing the performance of community development corporations over the past 20 years, Rusk comments that no matter how effective they may appear to be they are usually unable to overcome the forces adversely affecting the neighborhoods and communities they serve. Their efforts to assist poor communities is akin to helping people run up a fast- moving down escalator: some will get to the top and get off, but most will be carried back down to the bottom.
One of the primary generators of the down escalator is the economy. Most of the jobs being created in urban cores require some degree of education and skill, an education and skill level not matched by poor residents of the metropolitan core. This skills mismatch is compounded by urban sprawl, a development pattern that uses land extensively, moving new development further and further out from the metropolitan core. As the rate of sprawl increases, so does the rate at which the metropolitan core is depleted, resulting in increased geographical segregation by income, solidified by small-scale independent local governments.
Paralleling this skills mismatch (i.e., poor residents of the inner city not having the education and skills level necessary to take good paying jobs being created in the central city) is a job mismatch: relatively good paying jobs that do not require much education or high skill levels are being created in suburbs and exurban areas often inaccessible to inner city residents. For example, the City of Detroit intends to create 5,800 new jobs in five years in its enterprise zone; meanwhile, Detroit's suburbs are creating annually 30 times that amount.
These examples of jobs and skills mismatches prompt a call for state action because local governments are the creatures of state government, the federal government is beginning the process of shifting more resources and responsibilities to states, and states often provide the ground rules for private and local action. The ability of the states, especially those with strong growth management laws, to regulate where certain kinds of development occurs, and to promote revenue sharing and fair share housing can potentially be a very strong regional element in a new community development policy and practice.
Racial discrimination and national housing policy, in which public housing becomes a reservation for the poorest of the poor, compound the problems of jobs and skills mismatches. Rusk notes that three out of four poor white people live in middle class neighborhoods, but three-fourths of poor black people live in poor neighborhoods. Thus, if you are Hispanic or black and poor, you are likely to grow up surrounded by and knowing only poverty; if you are white and poor, you are likely to be part of a middle class community. The overlapping concentrations of race and income are reinforced by geographically fragmented government. For example, the most segregated metropolitan area, Detroit, has its central city school district surrounded by 115 independent school districts.
Diversity and mobility within a region are important, and to the extent they occur the problems of poor people and poor communities may become more manageable, more amenable to successful public policy interventions. Public funds can be used to try to overcome the mismatch between people and economic opportunity, by, for example, matching employers with employees across political jurisdictions, using infrastructure investment to attract employment, and ensuring access to and the availability of affordable housing throughout a region.
Similarly, housing policy is critically important. A housing policy that emphasizes mixed income housing, the deconcentration of public housing families, and fair share housing throughout a region can also help to ameliorate the problems of poor people and poor communities, making the work of community development policy and practice more effective if not easier. Neighborhood schools require integrated neighborhoods. Separate and equal has not worked well, and busing and long school commutes are favored by very few.
These kinds of public policies can help "open up" a society, providing real opportunity for both racial and social class integration. This kind of metropolitan environment permits the occurrence of what may be another prerequisite to successful community development: having non-poor people from outside an inner city neighborhood move into the neighborhood.
Thus, community development needs to be considered within the context of the region. This is not easy, and the barriers to regional action are well known and stiff. But the regional context needs to be continually discussed, continually made public and given exposure. It may be only through this kind of visibility and discussion that the importance of region becomes known and understood, and if it is known and understood by many, using a regional concept as part of community development may become easier to accomplish than it now is.
The economy is fundamental to community development for more than just the importance of the region. In a fundamental way community development activities need to pay more attention to market-based solutions and processes. A good example, noted by Johnson, is the need to jettison the "social grants" model of problem-solving, where attention is paid primarily to remediation and services to help people cope and where funds are provided in a charity framework. More dollars are not the answer, and as mentioned in the introduction, more emphasis needs to be placed on early intervention and prevention and to investing in people and places so that positive returns in the years ahead accrue to both. Government must forge real partnerships with businesses, and businesses must also jettison the charity model as they work with and in poorer communities.
And not withstanding the regional nature of the economy, state and local governments, as Johnson said, need to stop "waiting for the Superfund and start cleaning up brownfields." There are many vacant sites in inner cities that could be cleaned up, made environmentally safe, and restored to productive uses. Venture and equity capital can be encouraged to support strategically targeted businesses in the inner city, whether these businesses be retail trade, financial services, or even manufacturing. Inner city residents are under-served, and although their incomes may be fairly low, the number of people in these areas present market opportunities that have been only poorly met. Similarly, government needs to reduce the onerous regulations and actions, such as overzealous zoning, permitting, workforce requirements, licensing requirements, and just plain old unmovable bureaucracy, off the peoples' and businesses' backs so they can go about the businesses of investing in inner cities.
Solutions require the involvement of public, private, and nonprofit interests be involved; all need to collaborate in conjunction with the consensus of citizens. Johnson suggested that states consider the Oregon options package with its emphasis on flexibility in responding to problems accompanied by accountability in performance, a package that involves all levels of government and strong citizen participation. This model must replace the traditional hierarchial model of doing business, and doing this means overcoming the powerful "tenacity of turf" with which we are all familiar.
Especially when we deal with poor people in poor communities we must act on our capacity to increase assets; we must look at people and communities and identify their strengths and capabilities and then move to build and increase these assets. We need a major attitude change that emphasizes what is good and what is possible.
Finally, our current delivery systems do not match the economic fundamentals, in part because government is set up to function at the city and county level while most of our problems are either in neighborhoods (e.g., crime) or regions (e.g., work force and housing). Local governments cannot get the job done simply by themselves. As Johnson pointed out, city boundaries matter only to mayors. The actual functioning, "organic" level is the region, especially in regard to the economy, yet we are not organized to act on this level. Consequently, effective networking, knowing how to work collaboratively, is also fundamental to holistic community development and transforming community development policy and practice.
The extent to which state and local agencies, and other participants in community development, effectively collaborate—forge and nurture networks and relationships across institutions and agencies—in an era of reduced federal resources and micromanagement will go a long way to answering the question, "Are we ready?". As Roberta Garber said, holistic community development may be about 80 percent changing relationships and about 20 percent changing programs.
Collaboration at the practitioner level, among representatives of different institutions, agencies, and levels of government, is extraordinarily difficult, and only in part because of the "tenacity of turf."
Effective collaboration involves creating and developing "social capital"—a sense of mutual reciprocity. Langley Keyes said that social capital involves at least the following five components: (1) long-term shared relationships; (2) a shared vision of a good solution to a common problem; (3) the sharing of information willingly; (4) a recognition of each other's interests; and (5) shared trust and mutual support. Many of these things are easier said than done. There are usually examples of individuals who have been around for a while and have gotten to know well and work with people in other institutions and agencies. But the opportunities available through such people are usually underutilized and inadequately rewarded. And we all know that information is often not willingly shared because information is often power.
How are effective networks and successful collaboration achieved? Keyes suggested pursuing these four themes to create good collaboration. First, think consciously about and pursue horizontal and vertical relationships. Identify your support system and use various processes to try to help develop networks. State agencies, for example, could use a variety of requests for proposals and carrots and sticks to promote localities and other grant recipients to cut across agency and institutional lines.
Second, we all need to try to understand the institutional and financial constraints of those in other institutions and agencies. This may require suspending our current perceptions and attitudes, which may be based only on anecdotes or second-hand information, of other organizations.
Third, we should promote information sharing. Frequently, we have different data bases and different hardware or software, which makes it difficult to share data and information. Often, also, the data and information requirements that state agencies place on local recipients is helpful to the state agency, but of no value at the local or community level. Yet, data and information are important, sometimes critical, to good decision-making.
We need to try to develop a shared vision, a shared sense of the problems, and their priorities, and their solutions, and a shared sense of where we want to go. Perhaps the aphorism of the times—in this era of declining resources and devolution—is this: Either we will sharpen our elbows or we will sharpen our vision. Collaboration will not work well without trust. Yet, as resources decline and as federal programs are consolidated, there is a tendency to revert to a form of social Darwinism, where the key objective becomes protecting turf, competing rather than collaborating with one another.
In addition to creating and nurturing networks, state government agencies need to become high performing organizations, and can learn much from the private sector as Linda Wolf indicated. High performing organizations tend to operate collaboratively, are non-traditional and non-hierarchial, help empower employees and customers, solve problems and do not point fingers, and highly value customer service. We have got to change. The good days (and they really weren't so good anyway, said Wolf) are gone.
T
his section summarizes two major efforts that move toward the vision of holistic community development. Indiana's "Step Ahead" program alters traditional state social service policy and practice in several important ways and in so doing provides a context or platform for a more collaborative and broader approach to community development. The Enterprise Foundation's "Sandtown" initiative, located in inner city Baltimore, illustrates a foundation and community-based initiative that moves toward holistic community development.Indiana's Step Ahead Initiative
Preventing crises by collaborating resources and helping families through cost effective early intervention helped motivate Governor Bayh to initiate the Indiana Collaboration Project, also know as the "Step Ahead" program for its county councils. Step Ahead gives great recognition to the goals of local communities, acknowledging that services in Indiana are predominantly delivered at the local level.
At the direction of the governor, eight state agencies (State Budget Agency; Departments of Correction, Family and Social Services Administration, Health, Administration, and Workforce Development; Office of State Personnel; and the Commission on Higher Education) worked with Indiana's Superintendent of Public Administration and Attorney General to draft a "Proposal for a Consolidated State Plan for Services to Children and Families." Meetings were held with more than 400 officials, providers, and advocacy groups before the state sent the plan to the federal government for its approval. The plan makes possible the development of interagency agreements covering up to 199 federal programs administered by six federal cabinet agencies.
The state's consolidated social services plan (not to be confused the US Department of Housing and Urban Development's "consolidated plan" requirement) is not an implementation strategy; it is a conflict resolution process, and it is about doing things differently and increasing accountability.
Step Ahead helps agencies and individuals serve the needs of children and families by :
Step Ahead provides a framework to implement the plan, with the operative word being framework. The 199 programs are only the programs that may be coordinated; the programs actually coordinated depend on local actions. By the spring of 1995, 107 programs were involved in collaboration efforts in all or portions of the state.
Step Ahead transitions to a new way of doing business by making several major changes in emphasis:
Legislation enacted in 1991 approved the creation of Step Ahead Councils in each Indiana county. More than 3,000 persons serve on the councils. The councils are based on the notion that services to families must broadly try to meet a family's needs at one time if possible.
State and federal agencies look to the councils for recommendations on service delivery, on priorities in funding, and for the evaluation of services. Step Ahead Councils neither operate service programs (unless no other competent organization is available) nor pass through funding to service providers. The councils help local communities set their own goals and priorities and encourage the sharing of costs. Looked at another way, the councils are catalysts for collaborative agreements; foster different ways of doing things, including reorganizations; and help mobilize resources to help ensure a comprehensive delivery system for children and families.
All of the state's 92 counties have completed a needs assessment and have prepared a plan of action. The needs assessments cover six component areas: "educare," nutrition, health, mental health, family support, and professional development. The action plans identify gaps and redundancies in the service delivery system and identify needs and priorities. Because the councils respond to local needs and priorities, the activities the councils are undertaking different activities. One county is developing a single family information center, for example, while another is giving its highest priority to prenatal counseling.
Several popular accomplishments highlight the benefits and advantages of Step Ahead. Common service priorities are being established across program lines. Much cost-sharing is occurring as services are provided to the same family at about the same time, a practice that helps avoid unnecessary duplication and fosters the reimbursement of one agency by another agency to ensure continuity of service. A common child care application was developed and is being used for all child care funding mechanisms. A single program information report was developed and is being used for all child care funding mechanisms. A common procurement policy was created for all councils. There is an increasing use of common eligibility determinations. Information and data management systems are being shared, including the sharing of confidential information as needed. Finally, agencies are increasingly accepting relevant work products of other agencies.
Accomplishments related to program outcomes include, among others, the following:
A valuable aspect of Step Ahead is the way it connects the levels of government. Each council has a state-county facilitator—a state employee assigned to facilitate the local-state collaborative process as issues for resolution are identified by the council. The facilitator, from one of 14 agencies represented on the state's multi-agency teams, works not as a representative of his or her agency but of the collaboration project.
If a council-identified barrier cannot be overcome with the assistance of the facilitator, resolution moves to the Project's Working Group. The Working Group is comprised of state employees who are assigned to facilitate local policy and process development. If the issue involves a statewide policy and multiple agencies, resolution moves to the Indiana Policy Council, which includes the heads of the eight state agencies, the Attorney General, the Superintendent of Public Instruction, and is chaired by the Governor.
If the barrier involves a federal waiver or state plan amendment, the Policy Council will work with the Region V Team, which is comprised of representatives of the US Departments of Agriculture, Education, Health and Human Services, Housing and Urban Development, Justice, and Labor. If necessary, issues may be taken to the Empowerment Working Group at the White House.
Through Step Ahead, the state of Indiana has drawn several conclusions regarding intergovernmental partnerships. Relative to the federal government, the messages are (1) "be our partners"—don't show up only when we make mistakes— (2) help reduce reporting requirements (the Indiana Family and Social Services Administration provides over 200 reports to the federal government), and (3) increase flexibility. At the state level, multi- agency teams with a single point of contact must be created and communication always fostered and enhanced (for example, the state is beginning to connect all counties to the Internet). At the local level, it is most important to redefine roles and instill ownership in efforts to solve problems. Finally, state government must act as a facilitator and not be seen as a monitor; simply, there is a need to trust one another.
"The Sandtown Transformation" is the name given to a comprehensive effort to break the cycle of poverty and hopelessness in an inner-city neighborhood. Sandtown is a Baltimore neighborhood comprised of about 10,300 people, or about 3,500 households. Sandtown exhibits many of the characteristics of the worse inner-city neighborhoods: 79 percent of the housing units are substandard; half of all households have annual incomes of less than $11,000; nearly one-quarter of the residents are officially unemployed; 90 percent of the students score below state performance standards.
The goal of the Sandtown transformation process is to have every child born in the neighborhood have the same chance that children born in stable neighborhoods have. To accomplish this goal, the transformation process takes on at the same time all of the neighborhood's broken systems: housing, education, health, human services, public safety, commercial/retail development, and community building. Because the problems are interrelated, the solutions must be interrelated. Additionally, the transformation process contains two other important characteristics. It emphasizes the redirection and more effective use of government and private funds (it does not rely entirely on new funding) and neighborhood residents are full partners along with city government and the Enterprise Foundation.
The day-to-day management of the process is coordinated by a new nonprofit corporation, Community Building Partnership, Inc. (CBP), whose board is composed of a majority of neighborhood residents as well as city and Enterprise Foundation representatives. CBP has an annual operating budget of about $1 million.
Turning around a neighborhood like Sandtown requires a substantial initial investment, and the strategic planning undertaken through CBP calls for an annual investment of $13 million, over half of which will come from redirected government funds. Most of the remaining portion will come from private funds, but a target of $1.3 million annually will be raised from area businesses, residents, and foundations. In four years the Sandtown transformation process is expected to leverage an additional $36 million from national providers and redirected government funds. In other words, leaving aside the financing for the housing anticipated to be built or rehabilitated and leaving aside the on-going use and investment of government funds (e.g., education, public safety, AFDC, food stamps, public health, social security) and other extant ongoing commitments of money, the Sandtown process expects to invest about $8 million, or about $23,000 per household, annually.
One of the interesting aspects of the planning in Sandtown is the development of quantitative objectives that the process hopes to achieve after five years. The following illustrate these quantitative objectives as well as the accomplishments the Sandtown process had achieved as of the spring of 1995 and some "next steps."
Patrick Costigan, Director of the Sandtown Transformation Project, suggested that six principles are important in systemic efforts to transform a neighborhood. First, a vision must be developed that encompasses involvement and shared responsibility. Second, the activities and planning must be comprehensive and integrated, driven by the triumvirate theme of planning-doing-owning. Third, there must be systems change, which means that the neighborhood and state and local government need to be synchronized in their activities, priorities, and objectives. Fourth, cooperative relationships among the neighborhood, local government, and state government are essential. Fifth, public and private resources must be blended, used in a collaborative fashion, and the redirection and more effective use of existing funds must be at least as important as obtaining and using new funds. Finally, there is a need to maintain an equal partnership.
Last, Costigan indicated that the Enterprise Foundation has learned several lessons through its Sandtown experience. Expectations can unrealistically soar with major attention and a broad planning effort. It is a challenge to manage these expectations. Leadership is critical, and new leadership must continually emerge from the transformation process. There is no substitute for community organizing. Existing assets and organizations need to be supported and built on. Because a good plan has power, the planning process and its outcomes are critically important. Resources must be mobilized up front, and any initiative must be ready to overcome initial barriers and constraints; quick and early successes are needed. Last, and perhaps most important, the management structure must be flexible, and that often means the need to resist running the process and making key decisions with and by government personnel and funds.
A very important part of the conference divided state representatives into small groups to discuss two major sets of issues related to holistic community development. The first set of working groups met to discuss the barriers and constraints to holistic community development. In these break-outs, state representatives were grouped by common "discipline," e.g., housing, economic development, human services, community development. The first subsection reports on these barriers and constraints.
The second set of breakouts grouped representatives of different agencies from the same state to initiate discussion on developing an agenda for starting holistic community development within the state. (In some cases, representatives from two states met in the same small group discussion.) In many cases, these breakouts found representatives of different agencies from the same state meeting for the first time in face-to-face discussions.
Obviously, these discussions were both very informal and very preliminary. Each state was asked to create a short term agenda that the state team's representatives could begin to use once back home to start developing a holistic community development policy. The goal of these breakout sessions were to get a state's multi-agency team to agree on some common ground as an initial commitment to continue work once they got back to their state. Thus, in one respect the conference was designed to be a launching pad for more refined and involved work in each state participating in the conference that would begin to lead to holistic community development policy. COSCDA committed to continue a network to keep the conference participants informed of each state's progress. The second subsection briefly summarizes these state-based breakouts, reporting only on those states with multiple agency teams.
State teams met to discuss the barriers and constraints to developing and implementing holistic community development. Not surprisingly, state representatives identified many common problematic conditions that have to be addressed and overcome to move state policies and programs toward holistic community development.
Fragmented and oftentimes duplicative organizations and services often pervade state government. This layering of organizational bureaucracies inhibits coordination and helps foster a lack of continuity and focus in the delivery of services to communities. Priorities and services are not sustained, complicating the lives of local officials and community residents. This milieu also discourages people in one agency from meaningfully considering other agencies and programs—programs and organizational units tend to go it alone, independently of one another. The absence of horizontal integration is more noticeable at the state level because many localities do a better job of coordinating among agencies and organizations delivering services than do states.
One of the most problematic outcomes of this milieu is the absence of a shared vision. A shared vision—in this case, a common understanding of how and to what end a state is going to relate to its poorer communities and people—may be necessary to overcome fragmentation and a picket-fence delivery of services. Without a shared vision, there is no role definition and each program and organizational unit is left to articulate its own objectives and priorities, which complicates communication among service deliverers and resource providers. The absence of a shared vision implies a relative absence of leadership at all levels of government. The absence of leadership suggests the absence of an understanding of community development and the contributions among the levels of government, the private sector, and the nonprofit sector.
Finally, there are several difficult issues that are specific to the collaboration of state resources that must be overcome. One of these is that urban and rural areas differ from one another. This difference may relate less to the nature of problems than to the institutions that must be included in the delivery system and the social and political culture in which community development takes place. For example, rural areas are not as institutionally rich as urban areas and there may be more of a need for sustained capacity building in rural areas in comparison to urban areas. A second issue deals with information and data. Often state agencies have their own data bases that are frequently incompatible with one another in terms of the unit of analysis and definitions as well as in hardware and software. A third issue is one of local capacity: local government and community capabilities need to be strengthened. Last, state agencies deliver services in at least two fundamentally different ways. Housing and development agencies tend to act as wholesalers, using other, generally local-based service deliverers. Human service agencies often tend to be retailers: providing services directly. While each has its advantages and disadvantages, these two very different resource delivery systems make collaboration more difficult.
Setting a Preliminary Agenda Development
Connecticut
The Connecticut team intends to use the state's recently enacted Neighborhood
Revitalization Act as the spring board for community based planning initiatives. The team
recommends the creation of a multi-agency task force to support holistic community
development and implementation. To be successful, there needs to be serious training for
task force members. The multi-disciplinary task force must also include non-state members
and deal with urban, suburban, and rural communities.
One of the earliest tasks of the state's holistic community development effort must be to develop the capacity for community planning at the local level. Foundations, nonprofits, and the private sector must be included in the effort, and they must become aware of the changes occurring in the state's systems, e.g., welfare reform, community planning. The state's role is that of a catalyst or facilitator. A key objective of this initiative must be to re- design the state's delivery system so that it is based on community needs, is customer- oriented.
Finally, the team believes the state should develop a strategy to support micro-enterprise development and prepare to use performance-based funding to ensure the accountability of service providers.
Illinois
Although the Illinois team believes the state has made progress in developing many
initiatives and programs that relate to holistic community development, it also believes
that the state's efforts are very fragmented and need to be improved. The team believes
that one emphasis that should be made is on capacity building and on ensuring that
information and communication technologies reach the people who need them.
One specific objective the state should undertake within the context of holistic community development is the creation of one-stop shopping strategy for communities. Further, the team believes Illinois should encourage its communities to undertake needs assessments and plans based on community issues, not on service provider capacities or interests. The team believes that the state needs a vision for holistic community development, and the effort to reach that vision needs to have real outcomes, things that people can see and touch.
To achieve this outline the "players" must include state agencies, the Governor and other elected officials, mid-level managers, community stakeholders, and multi-level leadership. The team recommends that the scope and membership of the current Governor's Task Force on Human Service Reform be broadened to focus more on holistic community development. Finally, given the changes that Congress is likely to enact, the team recommends that the state begin to create partnerships around the new block grants and consolidated programs and start to develop a plan for their distribution and delivery. It suggests that community resource teams be established to identify a common vision and begin to break-down interagency conflicts.
Indiana and Michigan
These two state teams recommend a four component approach to holistic community
development: (1) ethnocentrism—a natural urge to collaborate; (2) permeable borders
to end parallel or duplicative services; (3) a simple process at the grass roots level;
and (4) communications—pushing decision-making to the local level through the
consolidated plan process.
Missouri
Although Missouri has a comprehensive welfare reform law that mandates and encourages the
collaboration of many agencies (see summary in this report), the state's team thinks the
state still faces the following challenges. The state cannot save a community, it can only
help a community save itself; therefore, the state role is to help communities help
themselves. The state should not layer on more services, but fully integrate services;
there should be no multiple plan requirements—instead, agencies should work out an
agreement where one community plan is acceptable to all.
For the future, the team suggests that Missouri continue to educate all state agencies about each other's agencies; work to bring others into the fold; and work to base future activities of its team on plans developed through cross agency teams.
Nebraska
The Nebraska team believes that work and employment will be central to efforts to assist
poor people and poor communities. The team identified three linked and sequenced
objectives to overcome the lack of connection among services and agencies: develop a
better referral system, integrate information systems, and effect interagency
collaboration. The team suggests that the state consider developing a single consolidated
application for assistance, a common assessment process, and "one-stop" services
center within a community. The goal is to create accessible and shared information and
data and an excellent referral system that can comprehensively assist families in
communities.
North Dakota
As federal funds are being reduced, there appears to be both a greater commitment to
change and a commitment to increase and improve the use of resources in the state. The
North Dakota team believes it can use three existing processes to help the state move
toward holistic community development. One of these is the state's welfare reform task
force, another is the state's Rural Development Council, and the last is the US Department
of Housing and Urban Development's (HUD's) consolidated plan requirement. Using these
existing processes means communicating the conference's substance to key participants,
working with them to obtain mutual support and agreement, spending time cooperatively
examining good state models, such as Indiana's welfare reform initiative (see summary of
"Step Ahead" in this report), and examining the findings of the recently
completed children and families at risk multidisciplinary team report.
The team intends to share the state's consolidated plan with a much broader set of agencies and participants and to work with the Children and Family Services division in the state's department of human services to help bridge its plan and the consolidated plan. As part of this planning effort, the team hopes to see the development of a plan that coordinates housing affordability initiatives in each of the state's largest cities.
Finally, the team will try to explore ways to improve the role and contribution of the state's educational community and resources in developing and implementing a holistic community development policy for the state.
Ohio
Ohio's team believes that the empowerment zone/enterprise community application process
has helped the state move toward collaboration. The state's empowerment zone/enterprise
committee, which consists of 27 state agencies, and the consolidated plan advisory
committee can form the basis of the state's effort to develop and implement a holistic
community development strategy. Additionally, the empowerment zone/enterprise community
process initiated the beginning of a comprehensive approach intended to (1) link jobs with
welfare reform, (2) locate firms near labor force availability, (3) link economic
development with job training, and (4) save funds of infrastructure.
While there are marked differences between urban and rural areas, the team believes they should be subject to the same approach and process, one that centers on a regional strategy, although there would be different outputs from this common process.
The team recommends that the next steps include having the Lt. Governor form work groups have having the legislature enact a requirement for regional plans.
Oklahoma
The Oklahoma team believes that the state's welfare reform task force is a good starting
point to continue to improve its horizontal integration at the state agency level.
However, the team believes the task force should be altered to include broader agency
participation, such as the Department of Commerce, moving it more toward the Missouri
model (see summary in this report).
A data sharing group that is comprised of representatives from the Departments of Human Services; Mental Health and Substance Abuse Services; Health; and Education; and the Oklahoma Commission on Children and Youth established an effort to facilitate data sharing among agencies and avoid duplication regarding health-related information and reporting. This group is being expanded to include representation from the Oklahoma Health Care Authority, the Oklahoma Employment and Security Commission, and the Departments of Rehabilitation Services and Commerce. Thus, a second starting point may be data sharing: technology can link data from the state's Commission on Children and Youth and the Department of Human Services data base with those of other agencies and levels of government. Other starting points include the Community Development Institute, which was created to work with local leaders to promote best practices; the capital investment plan that localities must prepare; and the strategic planning effort of Oklahoma State University and the vocational technical schools, a planning process that currently does not well integrate human resource needs.
The Oklahoma team believes that attention needs to be paid to urban and rural differences. In many important program areas, the large cities and counties get funds directly from the Federal government, and there is little state involvement. Whatever holistic community development structure is developed, it must be flexible enough to respond to both urban and rural communities. The Oklahoma Commission on Children and Youth uses regional groupings, and this might be one approach to handle the urban-rural split.
Key officials of the Department of Commerce and the Department of Human Services should meet to discuss holistic community development. A model might be the rural development summit that was held about five years ago in the state. Nonetheless, the bottom line is that senior and mid-level managers do not need permission to collaborate, and the meetings generated at this conference should be continued in the state.
Pennsylvania
The Pennsylvania team recommended the creation of a Governor's Task Force on Community
Revitalization, which would be comprised of representatives from all state and
state-related agencies. The task force would have teams of staff to address locally
identified needs through a process similar to that of the empowerment zone/enterprise
community plans and/or local strategic plans. Possible target communities for this
endeavor include (1) those localities with prepared empowerment zone/enterprise community
plans, (2) major business and job development areas, (3) officially "distressed"
communities, (4) "early warning" (localities nearing fiscal distress) system
communities, and (5) communities with special issues.
The team recommends that it get together again to discuss further how to bring in other agencies, how to implement a holistic community development strategy, including the question of how or whether to focus on regions (given the state's over 2,000 localities), and to re-train the state work force.
Vermont
The Vermont team thinks it may be possible to use the consolidated plan process as the
vehicle for more integrated approaches. This process, however, needs to be expanded and
other actors brought into it such as, other state agencies (human services, employment and
training, natural resources, transportation), banks, and utilities. The team believes it
might be appropriate to focus initially on downtowns, especially to those communities
committed to downtown revitalization. The team suggests that the human services and
community affairs agency heads work at the cabinet level to make horizontal and vertical
networks more effective.
Virginia
The Virginia team believes the state must develop responses that solve root problems
rather than treat symptoms by developing a holistic, customer-based approach that contains
a regional element.
Although the essence of holistic community development is broadspread collaboration among many resources, just having collaboration may mean very little if policies and activities are ineffective. This section highlights several approaches to specific aspects of community development that appear to be effective and worthy of adaptation if not emulation.
Government funded training programs are notorious for their ineffectiveness. And this notoriety is probably second to the notoriety of a having a hundred or more federally-funded training programs spread throughout federal agencies. However, the Center for Employment Training (CET), as attested by several independent and fairly rigorous evaluations, stands out as a major exception to this general rule. For example, one rigorous study concluded that over four years CET's graduates increased their earnings $6,700 per year above the control group average, while other programs had a combined average of $214 over controls. Moreover, CET's focus has been on the hard to serve, especially youth and welfare recipients. Since its inception in 1967, CET has trained and placed 65,000 people. The CET training model is one that should be emulated more than it is because it has a successful track record.
CET's success is based on a fundamental approach to employment training: it does not undertake segmented education; it starts and continues with a hands-on approach, a job training design broadly recognized as the "contextual learning model." The CET philosophy believes that traditional classroom training just reinforces memories about failing in school. As Russell Tershy said, many students drop out of such training programs long before they touch a machine because traditional classroom training separates them from the technical skills and experience with equipment that they know are vital to being employed. Without such application they have little sense that their education is connected with a job, and the job at the end of the schooling becomes invisible. Students at CET learn through action, placing their hands on a machine within the first hour of training.
Basic skills, life skills, and computer literacy, while important at CET, are secondary to hands-on training, but these skills are continually integrated into the theory and application of operating the machines. For example, CET teaches blueprint "Machine-Shop-Sheet Metal" reading comprehension and English. Thus, through its hands-on-the-machine training CET trains students in communications, leadership, job interviews, work disciplines, productivity, and employer expectations as well as in family budgeting, purchasing, nutrition, and drug abuse.
CET's training is intensive. Students typically spend six months in the program and train 35 to 40 hours per week, five days a week. Each student selects his or her own skills path, determining the occupation for which he or she wants to undergo training. About 70 percent of the hours are devoted to hands-on practicing to master technical equipment. A two- instructor team stays with the same students most of the day throughout the week. The instruction is individualized and self-paced; there is no fixed course length (Tershy said the typical length is about six months). CET thus has an open-entry, open-exit system. CET can enroll students each week as vacancies occur. And CET admits any income-eligible applicant; there is no creaming, and CET does not turn away potential students because they may be poor training risks.
A key reason why CET is so successful is its tight links with industry. CET hires as instructors highly qualified technical people directly from industry. These instructors, who know industries' requirements and expectations, drill students in workplace norms, such as punching time clocks to show up promptly. The training replicates the work environment and puts students in real life situations, such as dealing with work teams and customers and focusing on problem solving. An industrial Advisory Council and a Technical Advisory Committee for each skill heavily influence CET's technical competency curriculum and suggest current training equipment—CET uses the latest tools and equipment—and helps ensure that CET is training for jobs that will result in placement. As industry needs change, the skills that CET teaches change as well. Volunteers from industry help conduct one-on- one employment interviews with students. CET does not train for entry-level jobs; it focuses on higher skilled jobs such as machinists, precision sheet metal specialists, computer accountants, child care providers, and electronic testers and technicians that pay living wages.
CET does not graduate any student until that student is placed in a good-paying job. CET's job developers market students and arrange their employment interviews, but job-ready students remain in training until placed on the job in industry. Counseling does not stop when a student starts a job. CET follows up with students for six months after graduation to help them address problems that could diminish their chances for success.
As states and the Federal government debate the necessary reforms needed to improve our welfare system, states will more than likely limit the amount of time during which a person receives assistance. Consequently, states will have to strengthen their employment training and placement efforts to help welfare recipients increase their economic self-sufficiency and lower their dependency on public aid.
Welfare reform is going to force two disciplines, human services and economic development, to cooperate like they never have before. Cooperation may not come easily since in many states there is no history of cooperation, the two fields serve very different customers, and their purposes are markedly different. Yet, it is their complementary strengths that provide an opportunity for a partnership that is mutually beneficial.
Recognizing the potential value of this new and necessary partnership, the state of Missouri initiated an unprecedented collaborative interagency effort to reform its welfare system. In 1994, the state legislature passed welfare reform legislation that not only mandates interagency resource collaboration but also includes community revitalization efforts. The emphasis on "collaboration" and the inclusion of "community development" in welfare reform suggests that Missouri realizes that the traditional piecemeal approach to helping someone become more self-sufficient has by and large failed, and that intervention targeted solely at the individual and not at the individual's environment has also largely failed.
The legislation mandates resource collaboration and planning among the Departments of Economic Development, Family Services, Labor, Health and Human Services, and Education. Of the legislation's five components, all are related to increasing the self- sufficiency of welfare recipients and expanding their economic opportunities, and two focus on the community in which a person lives.
The partnership now forming between the two agencies has met several challenges, according to Denise Cross, Department of Social Services, and Dianna Moore, Department of Economic Development. For example, the law requires the Department of Social Services to approve community plans, but the Department has no experience in this area. To solve the problem, the Department of Economic Development is working closely with Social Services to ensure fair assessments of these plans.
From a philosophical standpoint, the Department of Economic Development has had to start "thinking socially" and the Department of Social Services has had to start "thinking economically" in order to understand the priorities and orientation of each other and to see how the two agencies can help each other. Representatives from one agency have attended training sessions held by the other agency to better understand what they do and how they do it.
As a result of the agencies' collaboration, the Department of Economic Development is beginning to make adjustments to its own programs and practices to further support this effort. For example, the Department is organizing a multi-agency task force to decrease areas of poverty across the state, adjusting some of its community development programs to give special preference to targeted areas under the welfare program, and exploring the development of youth crime prevention activities.
A private sector initiative that has demonstrated a high level of success in placing welfare recipients in relatively well-paying jobs is America Works. America Works targets its services only to public assistance recipients and unemployed people. Most of the people participating in America Works' program do not have high school diplomas and have very few skills. Yet, of the thousands of people America Works has helped find jobs, 90 percent are still employed one year after placement. Approximately 95 percent of the candidates are women, and 65 percent are African American, and about 20 percent are from public housing projects. The average hourly wage is between $6.30 and $6.75, plus medical benefits, for successful placements.
There are four basic components to America Works' approach to helping disadvantaged people find work:
First, America Works helps prepare people for employment. For up to six weeks, America Works assesses a person's strengths and weaknesses, builds on his/her existing skills, emphasizes the importance of attendance, appropriate dress, attitude and office behavior. To reinforce the importance of attendance and punctuality, if a person is late just one day, he/she must start the entire preparation stage over; no excuses are accepted.
Second, America Works employs a full-time sales force. The sales force is responsible for contacting businesses that may provide job opportunities to America Works' candidates. America Works approaches businesses from a purely business angle, not a charity angle: The business has certain labor needs and America Works has a certain labor supply.
Third, America Works provides wage supplementation to the employer and supportive services to the employee during a four-month period. Once an employee is placed, a staff person from America Works is assigned to him/her to monitor performance, serve as liaison between employee and supervisor if necessary, and offer any kind of support the employee needs to perform well.
Fourth, America Works contracts with a state or local government to help supplement the wages of the candidate early on in the placement. The wages an employee earns are a combination of the public assistance funds he/she would have received directly and a reduced wage paid by the employer. Both the public assistance funds and the employer's reduced wage are diverted to America Works which pays the employee. After the first four months of placement, the employer decides whether or not to hire the employee and pay his/her full wages. If the employee is hired and remains employed with the company one year after initial placement, the state or local government (whoever contracted with America Works) pays America Works a fee, usually $5,000.
Linking Jobs, Human Services and Housing
The Michigan State Housing Development Authority's (MSHDA's) "21st Initiative" is designed to provide on-the-job training in construction skills to disadvantaged people on state-funded housing rehabilitation projects for welfare recipients. [Increasing housing options is the 21st component or "direction" of the state's welfare reform program, hence the name "21st Initiative".] MSHDA recognized that one of its community development goals (housing rehabilitation) could support one of the state's welfare reform goals (job training and skill development). Consequently, it set aside $1.5 million of its HOME funds for the project and provided six nonprofit organizations with $250,000 grants to implement local programs.
Although still early in the implementation of the program, MSHDA has concluded that there are certain necessary conditions for this kind of project to be successful. These are: flexible funding, strong local leadership, high-performing local nonprofit organization, funding to pay wages, regular face-to-face support and counseling for participants, and a site supervisor who provides lots of positive reinforcement.
While MSHDA has taken a holistic approach in one of its housing rehabilitation projects, the New Community Corporation in Newark, New Jersey, illustrates a holistic community development approach that has evolved over decades to improve the conditions in a targeted urban neighborhood. New Community Corporation, which was established in 1968 after a series of riots, is one of the oldest and most sophisticated community development corporations in the country.
Initially, New Community focused on providing housing assistance and rehabilitation assistance to residents. Over time, as its organizational and financial capabilities strengthened, it began expanding its services to address a range of issues, such as social services and employment, that help determine the health of the community. Today, New Community employs about 1,400 people and is the seventh largest employer and the largest employer of minorities in Newark. It provides rental housing, property management services, transitional housing and services for the homeless, home care services, youth services, employment training and placement, and child care services. It has developed businesses, including a Pathmark grocery store, that provide economic opportunities for residents, offer needed goods and services, and contribute to the tax base. In addition, New Community was recently selected as one of the sites across the country to replicate the Center for Employment Training's model program (described earlier in this section).
EZEC Program and Consolidated Planning: The Shape of Things to Come?
Two recent HUD initiatives, the Consolidated Plan and the empowerment zone/enterprise community program, may complement welfare reform's facilitation of holistic community development in states.
HUD's Consolidated Plan not only attempts to streamline and consolidate several separate planning requirements but also encourages states and large local governments to integrate services and resources that have operated independently for years. The plan requires a three- to five-year housing and community development strategy and combines the planning and application paperwork of four programs: Community Development Block Grant, HOME Investment Partnerships (HOME), Emergency Shelter Grant, and Housing Opportunities for Persons with AIDS.
From a conceptual point of view, the consolidation of similar planning and application requirements makes good public policy sense since it should reduce the duplication of federal pass-through programs and lead to a more comprehensive, integrated use of community development resources. However, operationally achieving greater collaboration among different programs and, in many states, different agencies, can be very difficult, and it is most difficult when three or four different agencies administer the four programs subject to the Consolidated Plan requirements. Fear of one program overshadowing others, reluctance to alter program design, such as application cycles, and concerns over the loss of control and leadership of a program are common issues that can undermine collaborative attempts.
In some states, such as Connecticut, turf issues have risen but have not prevented the state from launching and maintaining an interagency effort to deliver community development resources. The Consolidated Plan acted as a catalyst to interagency coordination in Connecticut. The state's Office of Policy Management serves as the lead agency, working closely with the Department of Social Services, which administers the ESG and HOPWA programs, and the Department of Housing, which administers CDBG and HOME. The cooperation achieved as a result of completing the Consolidated Plan, which was submitted to HUD in early 1995, has facilitated collaboration on other public policy issues and programs. For example, several state agencies are now collaborating to design and implement the state's welfare reform, the state-enacted Urban Sites Remediation Program, and a Neighborhood Revitalization Task Force.
For other states, the turf issues may be more pronounced, and several states, including Oregon, have requested and received waivers from HUD to delay the submission of their plan until later this year. The major lessons learned in Oregon have been the need to identify a common agenda and the benefit of gaining the commitment of the agencies involved to work together to improve the delivery of resources to communities.
While the Consolidated Plan provides an opportunity to plan and design programs holistically, the Empowerment Zone and Enterprise Community Program (EZEC) provides an opportunity to implement programs and provide resources holistically. The EZEC program is designed to revitalize economically disadvantaged targeted communities by funneling resources to address their physical, social, and economic needs. The program involves a partnership among federal, state, tribal, and local governments as well as the private sector and nonprofit organizations. Unlike most community development efforts where a community's needs are expected to fit with available resources, the EZEC program tries to fit the resources to the need. As much as possible, federal agencies are suppose to grant regulatory waiver requests to help each of the 110 participating communities implement their 10-year strategic plans.
The EZEC program so far has been challenging but rewarding to many states. The challenges have been in several of the design features: the role of the state is largely self-defined; the application period was a brief five months; the rules governing the boundaries of potential sites were not always sensible; coordination at the federal level has been lacking; and some of the information and guidance about the use of federal funds, the waiver process, and the state's responsibilities with respect to the use of funds (each designated EZEC site received a special federal grant) has been inaccurate and inconsistent. Additionally, "turf" issues surfaced at the state and local levels resulting in "lots of chiefs, but no Indians" in Georgia. Some communities, although local leaders advocate the importance of a comprehensive approach to renewal, actually consider the program to be primarily an economic development strategy.
Despite these frustrations, the EZEC program is producing several positive outcomes. The competitive nature of the program and the short time to respond forced communities to focus on the issue and work together. The process has illustrated, according to some, the ideal state-local relationship in which the state responds to the community's needs and the state marshals related resources and concentrates them in targeted communities. The effort has also removed the blinders from some key players; for example, in Columbus, Ohio, a local economic development office, which historically focused on jobs, taxes, and businesses, became an advocate for welfare reform. The role of the private sector as an investor in neighborhoods has bee reinvigorated as well in some EZEC sites. Nonetheless, as Roberta Garber suggested, based on the EZEC experience, states must realize that holistic community development may be an incremental or evolutionary process.
Wilkerson, Isabel. 1994. "Doing Whatever It Takes to Save a Child," New York Times, December 30, p. A1.
Sexton, Joe. 1994. "What Can Be Done About the Scourge of Violence Among Juveniles," New York Times, December 30, p. A24.
DiLulio, John Jr. 1995. "The Plain, Ugly Truth About Welfare," Washington Post, January 15, p. C1.
Donnan, Shawn. 1995. "Overburdened System Falls Short," Washington Times, May 1, p. C6.
Butterfield, Fox. 1994. "Programs Seek to Stop Trouble Before It Starts," New York Times, December 30, p. A25.
Ibid.
Sexton, Joe. Op. Cit.
Leonhardt, Leon. 1995. "Companies Join Efforts to Get Urban Workers to Suburban Jobs," Washington Post, July 31, p. C1.
Veum, Jonathon. 1993. "Training Among Young Adults: Who, What Kind, and for How Long?," Monthly Labor Review, (August), pp. 27-32.
Labor Month In Review. 1995. "Firm Turnover in Manufacturing," (May), Monthly Labor Review, p. 2.
Anderson, Patricia and Richard Meyer. 1994. "The Extent and Consequences of Job Turnover," Brookings Papers: Microeconomics, pp. 177-248.