Is your town in the media ‘crosshairs’? Two more tips on taking your story back (Part 2)

By Pam Bailey, NeighborWorks America blogger

The alarm Ludy Biddle from NeighborWorks Western Vermont felt when she awoke one morning to see her town labeled the epicenter of a “heroin epidemic” in The New York Times was not unusual. Many other community developers have faced the challenge of re-branding a neighborhood even while the media highlight the community’s flaws. In Part 1 of this two-part post, Biddle and others recommended anticipating the challenge by agreeing on a collective narrative and refusing to repeat the negative. Read on for two more “tips from the trenches.”

Re-claim your narrative with positive stories

Instead of countering negative portrayals in the media, Biddle and other “crisis veterans” recommend focusing on your assets. That’s exactly what Pablo Korona did for the city of Rockford, IL. In 2011, both Forbes magazine and The Wall Street Journal listed it as one of America’s 10 most dangerous cities; even “The Daily Show” chimed in, calling it an “urban wasteland.”

Around the time that the negative publicity was peaking, the Rockford native was working for an advertising agency where he was doing promotions for various city institutions. Korona felt the work he was doing for the company wasn't fully living up to the town’s slogan (“Real. Original.”) Instead, he struck out on his own, raising nearly $9,000 through the crowdfunding site Kickstarter to launch a website called Our City, Our Story. Its mission: “We tell the stories that if you live in Rockford, it makes you glad that you do. The stories that if you’re from Rockford, they make you proud to be. The stories that if you’ve never been to Rockford, they make you want to come here.”

Today, the site features a series of 19 video “episodes,” such as one that introduces the people who work at Forest City Gear, a local company that manufactured parts for the motorized vehicle used by NASA to explore the surface of Mars. The video has proven so popular that it alone has attracted more than 500,000 views. More are in the works.

“Sure, Rockford has problems, but we are so much more,” says Korona. “I wanted to share those stories – not with slick slogans, but in real voices. Authenticity trumps ‘polish’ every time.”

Of course, Korona also happens to be the kind of skillful video producer who can shoot in a “covert” style, in which it’s as if the camera isn’t even there. With the help of Korona’s equally savvy use of Facebook and Twitter, the website has generated rave reviews from The Washington Post and Fast Company, along with independent funding to keep it going. However, what is most exciting to Korona is the organic growth of “Our City. Our Story” beyond the website. For example, the local housing authority has hired Korona to teach residents themselves the art of authentic storytelling through moving pictures.

“I keep getting calls from people saying ‘you have to do a story about this and you have to do a story about that,’” Korona says. The intensive training program will teach residents how to tell those stories themselves. (If you want to learn more about the lessons Korona’s project offers for your town, register for the Louisville NeighborWorks Training Institute, where he will be a featured speaker at the May 21 symposium, “Telling a Purposeful and Powerful Story: Communicating for Maximum Impact.”)

Our City, Our Story is not designed to get media attention, although it certainly has. But if that is what you’re after, consultant Andy Goodman says to remember that “it’s not enough to have a good story.” In addition having a genuine news angle, the coverage that attracts an in-depth treatment and a large volume of “shares” taps into a broader theme.

“Certain stories really take hold in the public consciousness because they piggyback on a larger narrative,” explains the founder of The Goodman Center, whose mission is to help good causes reach more people with more impact. “If you want to replace one story with another, you must shift the frame of reference, from one resonant narrative to another.”

So, for example, the broader narrative behind the media coverage of Rockford and Rutland is that towns with high unemployment, foreclosures and related problems are like mini failed states. The job of Biddle and Kobana is to usurp that underlying theme with stories that demonstrate the amazing resilience that keeps those towns – and the vaunted American “spirit” -- alive.

Don’t get distracted! 

Two girls from the Northwest neighborhood of Rutland
contribute their "community gift" by offering their
ideas for the town via a questionnaire and agreeing
to volunteer.

Negative publicity is often unfair and incomplete, and very frustrating for staff members who are toiling in the trenches. However, Biddle and her team are not allowing the continuing fallout to distract them from their work in the neighborhood to create a better future. Whereas others on a “Project VISION” team created by the city to focus on the neighborhood are working on safety, health and employment, NeighborWorks of Western Vermont’s role is to encourage and re-enable homeownership in the troubled Northwest neighborhood.

The organization had sent eight members of the Project VISION team to the NeighborWorks America Community Leadership Institute in Sacramento last October, and this month, the “seed money” received by the participants was put to work: Thirty-five community volunteers spread out over the neighborhood to map its historical, personal, professional and physical assets, such as its Victorian-style architecture. Later, when the mapping project is done, the volunteers will continue on as a community association to plan activities to preserve, expand and celebrate those strengths.

Meanwhile, to reverse the blight and increasing density in the neighborhood, NeighborWorks of Western Vermont is submitting a request to the state for a community development block grant to take over 10 of the houses in the Northwest neighborhood; some will be demolished and rebuilt and others will be rehabilitated. To build excitement, the organization has partnered with the local Green Mountain Power company to transform one of the homes into a model of energy efficiency. In the planning stages is an announcement ceremony at the model house with Sen. Bernie Sanders.

“The home is owned by a local teacher and her husband – the type of people everyone would like to have as neighbors, and totally opposite to the portrait painted by The New York Times,” says Biddle. “We think it will serve as an example others will want to emulate. Check back with us over the next four years; this neighborhood is just beginning to re-discover its strengths!”

Is your town in the media ‘crosshairs’? Four ‘tips from the trenches’ for re-claiming your story

By Pam Bailey, NeighborWorks America blogger

It’s every community developer’s PR nightmare. You’ve targeted a neighborhood for improvement and are making headway, when suddenly you wake up one morning to see the community described on the front page of The New York Times as “fighting a heroin epidemic so entrenched that it has confounded all efforts to combat it.”

That’s exactly what happened on Feb. 28 to Ludy Biddle, executive director of NeighborWorks of Western Vermont, and her team. The Northwest neighborhood of Rutland, a rural town of 16,000, had long been plagued by a high concentration of unemployment and poverty, and the resulting blight. Many of the community’s once-beautiful Victorian homes had been acquired by absentee owners and carved into dense, virtually single-resident-occupancy apartments. Among the negative consequences of the town’s challenges was drug abuse, fed by typically out-of-state dealers. The problem had become so serious that it was a major theme of Gov. Peter Shumlin’s “State of the State” address.

However, Biddle’s organization and others have been working hard to reverse those trends; in fact, when it surveyed more than 200 randomly selected residents in the neighborhood door to door last summer, it found that 58 percent were somewhat to very satisfied to be living there, and 85 percent were willing to invest time as volunteers to improve the neighborhood and its image.

Rutland volunteers Jenifer Dufresne and Sheila Nicholes
canvas the Northwest neighborhood for the
community survey.

“If we had not participated in NeighborWorks’ Community Impact Measurement project by conducting the survey, we would not have had any data to show that the neighborhood has strengths as well,” says Biddle, adding that the research, which uses tools designed by the Success Measures initiative at NeighborWorks America, will be repeated in three years to track progress in the neighborhood over time. “Our experience has really proven the value of taking the time to assess community-level attitudes. The timing turned out to be ideal.”

But how do you capitalize on the good work you’re doing when the media are telling a different story? The New York Times article was widely shared on Facebook, with the mayor’s son even hearing about it while skiing in Colorado. Soon, reporters from media ranging from Fox News, to Rolling Stone, to Al Jazeera were calling. In addition, state-level officials are further highlighting the issues faced by the city; on March 17, Sen. Patrick Leahy held an unusual “field hearing” in Rutland focused on “Breaking the Cycle of Heroin and Opioid Addiction.”

Biddle and her colleagues are not alone. Many other organizations working in distressed neighborhoods have faced similar challenges. Here are some “lessons learned” from Biddle and her Rutland colleagues, as well as other community-development professionals who have survived to thrive after PR crises:

Shape your story in advance – with collective buy-in

 “The first instinct of people who are doing good work, such as the police department, is to talk about it. It’s human nature,” says Marcia Nedland from Fall Creek Consultants, who was retained in 2013 as part of a team charged with advising the city’s re-development agency on strategies for revitalization. “But it’s important to distinguish between your plan to fight crime and the image you want your community to have among potential homebuyers, for example. Stories in the media about your heroic efforts to catch drug dealers may make you feel good, but they will scare away people who are contemplating moving there.”

Paul Singh, senior manager with NeighborWorks America’s Stable Communities Initiative, agrees, saying his team advises organizations to separate “internal stories” from external ones. “Internally, you need to address deficiencies directly and celebrate the work that you are doing. But that is not necessarily what you talk about ‘outside the family.’ Externally, it’s important to promote your assets.”

To help nonprofits create strong brands for their communities and re-build market demand, the initiative launched a Neighborhood Marketing Program in 2012. Through the program, NeighborWorks America is helping 16 organizations across the country implement marketing strategies designed to bolster neighborhood strengths and counter negative perceptions. Seven to 10 more communities will be chosen in 2014.

Don’t repeat the negative

If adverse publicity does occur, you don’t always need to respond! “For many people, the first inclination after a story like the one in The New York Times is to respond just as publicly that ‘most Rutland residents don’t use heroin.’ But what people will remember is the reference to heroin – so you’ve just reminded them of what you want them to forget,” says Biddle. Her organization and the other members of the city's neighborhood-revitalization team (called Project VISION) agreed to turn down the requests flowing in for further interviews on the subject.

Of course, saying “no” to media interviews doesn’t mean not responding at all. Mark Dohan, executive director of the Twin Cities Community Development Corporation (TCCDC) in Fitchburg, MA, recalls when a sensational murder occurred last summer in his town’s Elm Street neighborhood.

The new logo for the Elm Street
neighborhood in Fitchburg, MA.

“The area had been plagued by crime and foreclosures, but we were making good progress in building and selling new houses to reverse the blight in the neighborhood,” says Dohan, whose organization participates in the Neighborhood Marketing Program. “Then came this front-page news. We had to respond; after all, any death is a tragedy. But we decided to deal with facts on the ground, not in the media.”

To acknowledge the loss of human life and help the neighborhood heal, the TCCDC helped to organized a vigil that allowed residents to come together and restore a sense of connectedness. And in the fall, the TCCDC held its first neighborhood-wide open house, attracting an influx of real-estate agents and potential homebuyers. The new logo for the marketing program: “Elm Street: We’re Building a Neighborhood.”

“We went back to the media that covered the neighborhood in the wake of the murder, but after a little time had passed, and with new stories about what’s happening in our community,” says Dohan. “We are re-claiming what defines us.”

In the next blog post: two more lessons from the trenches of PR crises – taking back your story, and preventing disruptions from distracting your team from its work.

Rochester, NY, group works to keep city from going the way of Detroit

When the news first broke that the city of Detroit had filed for bankruptcy, Kim Brumber, CEO of NeighborWorks Rochester, shuddered. Rochester, NY, may not be Detroit, but there are some parallels that hit very close to home.

“Like Detroit, a core of industrial giants fueled Rochester’s early growth,” recalls Brumber, a longtime resident of the area. “For Detroit, it was the Big Three automakers. For Rochester, it was Xerox, Kodak and (just in August) Bausch & Lomb.  And just as the declining competitiveness of the auto industry was a trigger of Detroit’s economic downfall, Rochester experienced its own spiral when one by one, our big employers downsized or left the scene.”

Brumber believes the days of “mega-employers” are over, and that smaller-scale entrepreneurship is what will eventually revitalize Rochester as well as other cities like Detroit. That takes, time, however, and NeighborWorks Rochester is focused on doing its part to prevent the population flight witnessed by its larger counterpart. A key element in that struggle is making sure that residents are able to stay in or access safe, quality, affordable housing.

The family who lives in this house was unable
to pay to keep their home in good repair.

With the help of NeighborWorks
Rochester, the home is now transformed.

“People just don’t have the equity in their homes anymore to spend what it takes to keep them in good condition,” explains Brumber. “Our approach is to make it financially feasible for residents to maintain their houses, and recently, we began offering help with energy-efficiency improvements that reduce their energy costs as well. Much of the housing stock here is very old, so the energy costs are high. We can often save them $100 a month – that’s $1,200 a year, which is significant for the people who live here.”

Over the years, NeighborWorks Rochester has adjusted its philosophy and services to match the changing nature of the city’s needs. The nonprofit was one of the original NeighborWorks organizations, focusing on rehab loans at a time when redlining in the largely African-American communities resulted in disinvestment. Gradually, the organization expanded its scope and services -- including a new focus on neighborhood stabilization and marketing.

“The traditional model for neighborhood re-investment is to demolish drug houses, etc. in the most blighted neighborhoods, thinking that change would follow. But this strategy doesn't work in cities that have a soft real estate market," says Brumber. "We've learned that turning neighborhoods around requires a market-based approach that draws in private investment of time and resources -- ideally before they start to rapidly decline, the typical time to intervene.” 

Through its Healthy Blocks initiative, NeighborWorks Rochester

targets neighborhoods that are showing signs of social and economic disinvestment, but where residents are still trying to tread water. Through a combination of neighborhood “branding,” social gatherings and community-wide improvement activities, residents are encouraged and supported in their efforts to maintain the value of their property and nurture a sense of “belonging” that attracts and retains homeowners. For example, NeighborWorks Rochester partnered with the Realtors Charitable Foundation (an arm of the Greater Rochester Association of Realtors), the city’s police department, local businesses and others to energize the neighborhood called The Pocket. Monthly resident meetings are held in an area recreation center, and spring/fall clean-ups, ice cream socials and leadership workshops are among the results. An overgrown, vacant lot was transformed into the Emmighausen Garden, which produces an array of flowers and vegetables. Since 2008, sales prices in the neighborhood have increased 20 percent per square foot. What’s up next? A new logo soon will appear on street banners and crosswalks will feature “BoulevArt.”

In 2012, NeighborWorks Rochester reported re-investing $4 million into the city’s neighborhoods. The organization trained 365 individuals in how to be smart homeowners, helped 64 families become new homebuyers,  conducted 97 tests for lead in older homes and distributed 82 home-improvement loans and grants, totaling $1.2 million.

In a recent article in the Rochester City newspaper, a member of the editorial team wrote, “What the Greater Rochester community does will determine whether we’ll survive the impact of the changes in our own major industries, our suburban sprawl, our racial isolation. Rochester hasn’t reached Detroit’s depths yet. Maybe we never will. But the warning signs are there.”

NeighborWorks Rochester is among the mainstay organizations working to make sure the city never will.

Finding a Purpose: How Vacant Buildings Can Support Neighborhood Marketing

Reposted from the Stable Communities blog

Finding new uses for vacant buildings is something many nonprofit housing organizations are getting good at, but some properties — like an abandoned movie theater — are harder to rework. With creative thinking, however, empty buildings can be used to spark new interest in old neighborhoods.

Last year, after looking closely at the prominent features of an old, vacant movie theater, NeighborWorks Waco (TX) decided that its brick interior and artistic vibe made the perfect setting for a “pop up” art exhibit. Now in its second year, Art on Elm Avenue puts this otherwise empty space to good use, and is helping the neighborhood to rebrand itself as an arts district.

Art on Elm Avenue is a one-day event featuring 14 local artists and more than 10 local student artists. In addition to the exhibit, local bands provide live music, food and craft vendors sell food and handmade goods, and a local performance artist creates paintings with his bare hands and a spinning canvas (think Jimi Hendrix and Elvis). Kids’ activities include a bounce house, crafts, snowcones and popcorn, plus an 18-foot canvas mural project where kids develop the plan and create the mural with a touch of advice from volunteer art supervisors.

Each artist featured in the exhibit is allowed to bring up to three approved artworks, which may be two-dimensional pieces such as paintings, drawings, prints or photography, or three-dimensional works such as sculpture and ceramics. Artists are provided with a name plate next to their pieces and can list items for sale.

Art on Elm Avenue is free for both artists and guests. It’s a celebration of art and community that fits nicely into NeighborWorks Waco’s neighborhood marketing strategy. The event draws businesses, entrepreneurs and residents who may not otherwise visit this area, and also celebrates local culture and supports the neighborhood’s plan to become an arts district. It builds community relationships and puts vacant space to positive use. “This event brings everyone together from all parts of Waco,” says Honey Jenkins, NW Waco’s director of marketing. “It draws people of all ages and from all walks of life to Elm Avenue, and helps them to see what it used to be and what it can become.”

This year, Art on Elm Avenue took place on the same weekend as one of the city’s monthly musical events — an Eddie Money concert — so the two groups decided to co-market their events as part of a larger celebration called "Weekend in Waco.” Linking the two events in marketing helped boost attendance; more than 2,500 people attended this year as compared to about 500 last year.

To learn more, visit the Art on Elm Avenue Facebook page or follow events on its Twitter feed.

NeighborWorks Rochester Expands Healthy Blocks Approach

By Ascala Sisk, Senior Manager
Neighborhood Stabilization
NeighborWorks America

Reposted from StableCommunities.org

NeighborWorks Rochester has partnered with residents in three neighborhoods to make exterior home improvements, address quality of life issues, and attract new residents and investment. Through this targeted “Healthy Blocks” approach, homeowners, tenants and landlords work together to create neighborhoods of value and choice.

After eight years of sponsoring “Makeover Madness” home beautification campaigns, organizing social events, planting gardens, sponsoring neighborhood clean-ups, and promoting new neighborhood branding, the Healthy Blocks approach has proven to be successful in improving physical conditions, creating pride, and fostering a community identity. For example, in “The Pocket,” a 7-block neighborhood of 750 residents in the East Main–Atlantic area, NeighborWorks Rochester has observed that physical conditions are improving, the average sales price is up 20 percent since 2008, and homes on the market sell in an average of 18 days as compared to 27 days in 2008 — all signs of a rebounding housing market.

Building on this success, NeighborWorks Rochester is considering candidates for its next two Healthy Blocks initiatives. To help with the selection and to train new staff members on the core components of this approach, NeighborWorks Rochester CEO Kim Brumber turned to David Boehlke, the nation’s leading Healthy Neighborhoods strategist. Joining them over the course of two rainy days in January 2013 were representatives from NeighborWorks Western Vermont who wanted to learn how they might apply this thinking to their own newly selected target neighborhood in the town of Rutland.

With a healthy dose of offbeat humor, Boehlke stressed the need for strategies that are grounded in market realities and build confidence among existing residents. “Markets need to be built,” he said, “not just houses.” This is especially true in cities with stagnant or declining populations where potential homebuyers have many homes and neighborhoods to choose from. In order to compete, you need to reposition your neighborhood in the marketplace. Building confidence in the future of the neighborhood validates people’s choice to live there, creates pride, and encourages investment because it makes economic sense.

So, how do you build confidence? A lot of it has to do with image and physical conditions. Neighborhoods with houses that are reasonably well-maintained and have tidy gardens and litter-free streets instantly convey that this is a neighborhood where current residents succeed, and where future homeowners would want to buy. But according to Boehlke, the key to building confidence is engaging residents and building their capacity to manage day-to-day neighborhood issues. Ultimately, people are more likely to invest in areas where residents work together to improve the quality of life.

As NeighborWorks Rochester considers its next Healthy Blocks, it will select neighborhoods where resident engagement activities and modest investments in home repairs are likely to leverage additional investment. As the team from NeighborWorks Western Vermont also learned, Healthy Blocks’s focus on building markets, improving image and physical conditions, and fostering resident leadership offers lessons for other organizations that are designing place-based revitalization strategies.

To learn more about the Healthy Neighborhoods approach that David Boehlke created and teaches, take a look at his monograph, Great Neighborhoods, Great Cities, written about the Healthy Neighborhoods approach in Baltimore for the Goldseker Foundation.
 

Twin Cities CDC Remakes and Markets Elm Street Area Neighborhood

By Ascala Sisk, Senior Manager
Neighborhood Stabilization
NeighborWorks America

Reposted from StableCommunities.org

Rebuilding and rebranding long struggling neighborhoods isn’t an instantaneous process. As our Stable Communities’ Neighborhood Marketing Program participants know, the work of redeveloping and marketing a neighborhood’s image –and making the substantive improvements that that image shift is built upon—takes time and dedication. This past week, I was excited to join Twin Cities Community Development Corporation, a NeighborWorks network organization, to celebrate another step towards success in these efforts.

On Tuesday, April 9th, I joined the Twin Cities CDC and local and national elected officials at a ribbon cutting in Fitchburg, Massachusetts, where a formerly blighted property has been turned into family-friendly housing. The event celebrated more than the rehabilitation of the seven-unit building, it highlighted the work that Twin Cities CDC has put into the slowly transforming the Elm Street Area Neighborhood, the focus of their neighborhood marketing efforts.

At the event, Congresswoman Niki Tsongas noted the catalytic effect these efforts have on their surrounding neighborhoods, saying, "Strong and healthy communities are built around high-quality and affordable housing…In Fitchburg and across the Commonwealth [of Massachusetts], strong public-private partnerships are helping to provide means and mechanisms for revitalizing our cities and towns.”

It is investments like those being made in Fitchburg that are adding strength to local real estate markets and bolstering community pride. I congratulate Executive Director Mark Dohan and the Twin Cities team for their hard work and terrific achievements and look forward to seeing how Twin Cities’ continued, targeted approach to revitalization transforms Elm Street and all of Fitchburg in the months and years ahead.

Read more about the event here.

Read more about NeighborWorks’ Neighborhood Marketing Program here.

What Makes You Part of a Community?

This blog entry is reposted from the Stable Communities blog. 

Avenue CDC photo courtesy of
Epic Shots Photography

A three-year study by Gallup and the John S. and James L. Knight Foundation in 26 communities has been exploring the factors that attach residents to their communities and how community attachment plays a role in an area's economic growth and well-being. In general, the study results have shown that cities with the highest levels of attachment had the highest rate of GDP growth.

The Knight Soul of the Community (SOTC) study has studied residents' attachment to their communities — and how it's related to economic development — over 3 years, using interviews in English and Spanish with 14,000 residents.

The study analyzed 10 "domains" that were found to drive community attachment at varying levels:

• Basic services — community infrastructure
• Local economy
• Safety
• Leadership and elected officials
• Aesthetics — physical beauty and green spaces
• Education systems
• Social offerings — opportunities for social interaction and citizen caring
• Openness/welcomeness — how welcoming the community is to different people
• Civic involvement — residents’ commitment to their community through voting or volunteerism
• Social capital — social networks between residents

The SOTC site has results by community, a video gallery. Of special interest to community organizers and others working in their community include reports, videos and data that can be downloaded and shared. A Twitter feed provides a place to share experiences (with hashtag #SOTC).
#30#

Rebuilding Market Demand: The Neighborhood Marketing Program

By Ascala Sisk, senior manager,
Neighborhood Stabilization
NeighborWorks America

In recent years NeighborWorks has launched a number of initiatives to respond to the impact foreclosed and vacant properties have on families and communities.  Now we are pleased to add another tool to the foreclosure response and community stabilization toolbox. Last week, NeighborWorks America’s Stable Communities Initiative publicly launched the Neighborhood Marketing Program, a new initiative to stabilize communities by helping to restore stakeholder confidence and build market demand.

We started this program understanding efforts to stabilize communities need to do more than restore housing. To build strong communities, the case needs to be made for investment, both by current and by future residents and businesses. For that reason, we are supporting a group of high capacity organizations that have made significant neighborhood investments with additional tools and funding to work with resident leaders to reframe the image of their community, improve stakeholder perceptions and build market demand. 

Sixteen organizations in the NeighborWorks Network were competitively selected to participate in the 2012-2013 pilot program.These organizations will receive approximately $50,000 in grants and technical assistance to create neighborhood marketing and branding campaigns. Over the next several months, all of the recipients of the Neighborhood Marketing Initiative grants will begin working with residents, stakeholders and marketing coaches to develop plans to move their communities forward.  

At NeighborWorks, we see the Neighborhood Marketing Initiative as a natural extension of our existing leadership in helping residents, local nonprofits, and other businesses respond to the foreclosure crisis and build strong communities. As part of that, CEO Eileen Fitzgerald, pledged the Neighborhood Marketing Program as the NeighborWorks America commitment to action at the recent Clinton Global Initiative America. With this public commitment, we hope to engage more partners in supporting this and similar neighborhood-based recovery efforts.

Check out www.StableCommunities.org/marketing for more on the program and updates on how things are going. You can also download our new case studies report here.

.

Lit Review: Interesting Articles from the Boston Federal Reserve

Reposted from the "Stabilize" blog of the NeighborWorks America Stable Communities program.
----------

The latest issue of New England Community Developments from the Federal Reserve Bank of Boston has a couple of articles particularly interesting for those engaged in stabilizing neighborhoods.  In the first, the author discusses preliminary findings from ongoing research exploring the effect of foreclosure and NSP intervention on neighborhood social stability, with surprising results. The second presents a logical framework for deciding what REO is best marketed as rental property.

In "What Do the Neighbors Think? Assessing the Community Impact of Neighborhood Stabilization Efforts," author Erin M. Graves describes her research assessing residents’ perspectives on neighborhood-level social capital and social disorder.  She hopes to assess the impact of foreclosed properties on those residents before and after NSP intervention.


Graves used a standardized “Sense of Community” survey administered door-to-door, and also assessed property conditions of all parcels in the subject neighborhood.  In the article, Graves describes three themes that emerged from the first round of the survey. The first theme was that residents did not view the vacant foreclosed homes on their street as the primary threat to stability in the neighborhood; nor did they often realize which were due to foreclosures.  If they did know of a foreclosure, they saw it as an individual problem rather than a community problem or trend.

Second, existing crime and gun violence were the main concerns of these neighborhood residents. Residents in this neighborhood did not see vacant properties as attracting crime, and they viewed vacant lots as a greater threat to their sense of community than vacant homes.

Third, residents did believe in the efficacy of government institutions, including the police, to solve community problems, but felt underserved by them.  In order to deal with the safety and property abandonment issues on their streets, Graves says residents defined ever-smaller boundaries for what they consider their [good] part of the community – a street, a section of a street, or sometimes only their house.  These carefully drawn boundaries allow some residents to enjoy and stay in their unstable neighborhoods longer than outsiders would expect them to.

For Graves’ discussion of policy implications, see the full article.

In "New Ideas for Old REOs : A Disposition Framework for Marketing REOs for Rental Properties,"  Prabal Chakrabati and Mariana Arcaya propose a four-step rationale for sorting a community’s REO portfolio to find those properties that are the best candidates for disposition as rental units.  The criteria include:

• whether or not the property is GSE-owned,
• whether the property has been REO for less than or greater than one year (greater than one year means it is unlikely to  be taken up as a homeownership property),
• whether the property is located in an area of high need for affordable rental units (vis a vis Massachusetts’ 10% mandate for municipal subsidized housing inventory),
• whether or not the property is also located in an area that lacks rental housing options (since rental housing demand is on the increase, the model assumes places without those options need them, and that mixed-income communities are a goal).

Additional considerations, such as proximity to transit and jobs, are also mentioned. The article includes an easy-to-read chart, and a specific analysis of Massachusetts REO inventory.

New England Community Developments is published by the Federal Reserve Bank of Boston.  Free subscriptions are available here.

Turning Foreclosure Around: Jobs and Home Rehab

By Ascala Sisk, Senior Manager
Neighborhood Stabilization
NeighborWorks America

The foreclosure crisis and the economic crisis are inextricably linked. Families and neighborhoods experiencing high foreclosure rates are also those facing high unemployment. It is our experience at NeighborWorks America that solutions which support local job creation are an essential component of neighborhood revitalization. One of the key challenges of the foreclosure crisis is the negative impact vacant and blighted properties have on communities. Recently, Citi Community Development and the Citi Foundation launched an initiative which addresses both vacancy rates and small business job creation. Their Partnership for Small Business Development program convenes and funds a working group of national organizations that provide training and business opportunities to small business contractors owned by women and minorities.

According to the United States Small Business Administration, 65 percent of the new jobs created in America between 1993 and 2009 were in small businesses, with minority-owned businesses leading the way. Between 2002 and 2007, minority business growth outpaced that of non-minority firms in terms of total revenue, employment, and number of firms. NeighborWorks America supports this program because it is helping rehabilitate properties at the same time it supports local jobs for traditionally underserved groups. It has the potential to bring back strong neighborhoods and provide sustainable benefits to communities so that they can not only recover, but also prosper.

NeighborWorks America has also done its part to restore jobs while simultaneously serving local communities. In fiscal year 2011, NeighborWorks America and its affiliated NeighborWorks network created and supported an estimated 26,000 jobs. This is in addition to the many programs we run to help residents buy or rent affordable homes, build (or rebuild) communities and increase their financial capability.

Economic recovery and community stabilization will happen when jobs return.  It’s that simple and that difficult. Every effort to address one side must be connected to the other for us to succeed.

For more on ways communities are responding to the impact of foreclosures and vacancy visit the NeighborWorks America website: www.StableCommunities.org.

Homeport Plans ‘Extreme Makeover’ of Columbus Communities

By Ascala Sisk
Senior Manager, Neighborhood Stabilization
NeighborWorks America

As I watched the ABC program “Extreme Makeover” during the holidays, I saw in the faces of an entire community why neighborhood revitalization is so important.

Through the efforts of NeighborWorks member Homeport in Columbus, Ohio, the ABC hit show came to American Addition, a neighborhood Columbus Mayor Michael B. Coleman said was “the most egregiously neglected urban neighborhood I have ever seen.”

It was heartwarming to see national visibility brought to the work Homeport is doing to invest in this distressed neighborhood, and to see the true impact rebuilding a community has on families. Neighborhood stabilization is more than rehabbing abandoned and foreclosed homes and buildings, putting them up for sale or rent and protecting property values.

Extreme Makeover reveals the Rhodes family's new home.
Homeport helped the family submit its application to the show.
View full episode and house tour.

It is also about the people. It is about putting families back in homes, providing safe and secure communities, and bringing back important community connections and infrastructure, such as parks, playgrounds and community spaces.

This is the long-term vision Homeport has for American Addition. The organization used Extreme Makeover as a launching pad for its efforts to rebuild 100 new homes over the next 10 years using Neighborhood Stabilization Program grants, city funds and private investments. In October 2011, Homeport broke ground on the first six lots with homes to be completed by February 2012. All of the houses will be built to green standards. [See Homeport’s story behind Extreme Makeover and American Addition].

If you’d like to see how else Homeport and other NSP grantees are successfully using program funds to reinvest in declining neighborhoods, view these videos. The videos were produced by HUD in collaboration with NeighborWorks America and Enterprise Community Partners.

NeighborWorks Member Homeport Brings ABC’s 'Extreme Makeover: Home Edition' to Ohio



The Rhodes family was surprised to learn they will
get a new home from ABC's Extreme Makeover.
WATCH THE VIDEO.
Tune in to ABC on Friday, Dec. 16 at
8pm, EST to see the transformation!

 

NeighborWorks member Homeport aka Columbus Housing Partnership assisted the ABC network program Extreme Makeover: Home Edition to bring attention to the Rhodes family and the forgotten Ohio neighborhood called American Addition, where they lived.

According to the Columbus Dispatch, the neighborhood has been singled out by Columbus Mayor Michael B. Coleman as “the most egregiously neglected urban neighborhood I have ever seen.” The mayor is investing $5 million to rebuild streets and alleys and install sidewalks, lights, curbs, waterlines and storm-sewer lines, while federal Neighborhood Stabilization Project money will help to pay for 150 new homes.

The city doesn’t have to worry about one of those homes, however. It has been rebuilt by the cast and crew of Extreme Makeover. The process started two years ago, when Homeport’s volunteers and staff went door to door talking to families and helping those interested in completing the lengthy application process. Homeport helped the families create videos to accompany their applications and helped shoot additional supporting video discussing the neglected neighborhood's history.

In August, the cast of Extreme Makeover knocked on the door of James and Jackie Rhodes and surprised them with the news that they had been chosen to receive a brand new home because of their family’s love and commitment to each other. The Dispatch reports that the Rhodes had taken in their daughter Mikia and her four children, after Mikia had emergency surgery to cure a brain tumor. She slept with her children — ages 7, 9, 15 and 18 — in the main sitting room on the first floor, while her parents occupied the only bedroom upstairs. The home was not only cramped, it was also in desperate need of repair.

Now thanks to Homeport and Extreme Makeover, the Rhodes have a brand new home for the holidays. The episode showing the whole process will air on Friday, December 16 at 8 p.m. Eastern time. Some members of the Homeport team made cameo appearances in the show as elves and others may appear talking about the organization's programs. Tune in!

Creating an Opportunity from All of the Empty Houses? An Affordable Housing Response by NeighborWorks America to the REO Crisis

by Thomas P. Deyo,
Deputy Director, Green, National Real Estate
and Community Stabilization
NeighborWorks America


This home was once foreclosed and abandoned.
NHS of New Haven rehabilitated it and sold it.



The growing number of empty houses in neighborhoods hit hard by foreclosures presents a huge challenge for residents still in these neighborhoods — and for the banks and government entities that now own many of these properties. Property values have plummeted for homeowners; homes have become shells of shelter having been stripped of their copper wire, plumbing or anything of value; communities have become health hazards or magnets for crime. (See The New York Times Foreclosures Empty Homes, and Criminals Fill Them Up.)

Many responses have been launched to address the situation.

An early public policy response to the crisis was the Neighborhood Stabilization Program (NSP) that offered support to local initiatives to stabilize high-foreclosure communities, mitigate impacts on neighborhoods and families, reduce blight, and offer affordable housing choices to residents. Many NeighborWorks organizations participated in NSP efforts and their initial efforts with local government entities and many other nonprofit organizations have shown successes and positive impact of their work in many communities across the country.

While various responses have been important efforts in establishing a foothold, gaining large scale control of properties and achieving significant gains for affordable housing have been difficult.

But now maybe an opportunity presents itself. The federal government is investigating ways to encourage private investment in significant holdings of “REO” or “real-estate owned” properties held by FHA and the GSEs, and the Federal Housing Finance Agency (FHFA) requested comment on strategies for disposition, including as rental properties. (see FHFA, Treasury, HUD Seek Input on Disposition of Real Estate Owned Properties.)

The opportunity is the potential of adding a substantial amount of affordable rental and for-sale houses for low and moderate income families at a time of desperate need for such housing in our nation. The risk is that a unique opportunity to produce public benefit of longer-term stabilization of fragile communities and increasing supply of affordable housing may be missed in favor of quick disposition without regard to community interests. We believe it’s time to seize the opportunity at hand.

Local nonprofit housing corporations and community residents should be central to any long-term viable solution. In partnership with FHA, the GSEs, and the private market, these groups can deliver on meeting the needs of communities for housing and stability.

The time is now to respond with a plan that takes the available resource that is impacting community strength and turn it into a community opportunity. In simple measure the plan calls for nonprofits to acquire, rehab, and maintain properties, rent at affordable rents to low- and moderate-income community residents, and when markets return sell at affordable prices to these same households and return to government a share of the proceeds to compensate for lower acquisition costs. (See NeighborWorks America comment letter.) This is not easy or simple but requires commitment and recognition that to make an opportunity requires taking some risk.

Proposed Jobs Bill Includes $15 Billion for Project Rebuild, “Next Generation” of NSP

by Sarah Greenberg,
Senior Manager for Community Stabilization
NeighborWorks America

This post originally appeared in Stabilize, the blog of NeighborWorks America's Stable Communities Initiative.

President Obama has proposed the American Jobs Act, containing a variety of incentives and programs aimed at getting more Americans back to work.

One of the components of the bill is Project Rebuild, described as the “next generation” of the Neighborhood Stabilization Program (NSP). The bill proposes a $15 billion budget (more than double the total allocations of NSP Rounds 1, 2 and 3 combined) — two-thirds of which would be allocated directly to participating jurisdictions (as in NSP Rounds 1 and 3), and the other third would be allocated through a competitive process (as in NSP Round 2).

The overall American Jobs Act and Project Rebuild are drawing criticism, and their likelihood of passage is uncertain. Project Rebuild is intended to connect Americans looking for work, with the work needed to repair and repurpose residential and commercial properties. Like NSP, Project Rebuild would be focused on acquiring, rehabilitating and re-occupying foreclosed residential property, but there are several modifications:

• It broadens eligible uses to allow commercial projects and other job creating activities, capped at 30 percent.
  Many regions with concentrated home foreclosures also have concentrations of vacant commercial structures that weigh on property values and make it less likely that new businesses will come into the community and invest new capital. Project Rebuild will tackle this problem directly by allowing grantees to rebuild and repurpose distressed commercial real estate.
• Up to 10 percent of formula grants may be used for establishing and operating a jobs program to maintain eligible properties in target neighborhoods.
  Project Rebuild will enable grantees to use funds to establish property maintenance programs to create jobs and mitigate “visible scars” left by vacant/abandoned properties.
• Each state will receive a minimum of $20 million of the $10 billion in formula funds.
• Beyond this baseline, funds will be targeted to areas with home foreclosures, homes in default or delinquency, and other factors determined by HUD, such as unemployment, commercial foreclosures, and other economic conditions.

Project Rebuild also seeks to scale up successful land bank models, providing infusions of capital to leverage private sector investment, and to empower and expand collaborations with for-profit developers where appropriate.

Other features of Project Rebuild include:

• Project Rebuild will provide funding to purchase, rehabilitate, and/or redevelop foreclosed, abandoned, demolished, or vacant properties. Funding can also establish and operate land banks or demolish blighted structures.
• Project Rebuild will support an estimated 191,000 jobs and treat at least 150,000 properties across all 50 states.
• HUD will allocate formula funds within 30 days of Congressional enactment of Project Rebuild, complete the competition, and obligate all funds within 150 days of enactment. Grantees will have three years to spend 100 percent of funding. HUD will establish further benchmarks for expenditures at one year and two years.
• Formula funding will go directly to states and entitlement communities across the country. Competitive funds will be available to states, local governments, for-profit entities, non-profit entities and consortia of these entities.
• Strict standards of oversight will ensure good stewardship of these funds. HUD will strengthen existing accountability procedures by requiring that grantees have an internal auditor to continually monitor grantee performance to prevent fraud or abuse. Grantees will be required to provide quarterly progress reports and HUD will recapture funds from underperforming or mismanaged grantees to reallocate those funds to areas with greatest need.

The Project Rebuild proposal is an acknowledgement of the importance of neighborhoods to Americans’ quality of life and to the economy, and of the effective work of nonprofits, government and their private sector partners in stabilizing communities.

Project Rebuild would leverage the significant investment in capacity building of grantees and their partners in foreclosed property acquisition, rehab and repurposing. By adding much-needed capital to this capacity, Project Rebuild has the potential to not only create jobs, but to enable communities to scale up their impact and achieve the momentum necessary to tip more neighborhoods back to a trend of improvement.

Here are a Fact Sheet and FAQ on Project Rebuild.