Inspired by CLI, teens open ‘clothing closet’ to fight bullying

By Pam Bailey, NeighborWorks America blogger

Bullying is painfully common on school campuses everywhere – with the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention estimating that one in four high school students are victimized, and more than two-thirds are witnesses.

Among the frequent victims are children from low-income families who can’t afford to dress in “trendy” clothes. That’s particularly a problem for the immigrant farmworker families served by the Cabrillo Economic Development Corporation (CEDC), whose children must attend school alongside wealthier students in California’s Ventura and Santa Barbara counties.

Patty Suarez (left) talks to a local radio reporter.

“Bullying often starts when someone judges your appearance,” says Patty Suarez, an 18-year-old who lives in one of CEDC’s 22 rental communities. “Like, I saw one girl get harassed because she wore knock-off boots. So the kids in my youth group decided to do something about it.”

Youth engagement is a core focus of CEDC’s community-building program. The organization has nurtured a youth-leadership group at each of its rental properties,  with activities ranging from lobbying the city council for better access to mass transit in their neighborhood to a mural-painting project that brought together different generations within families.

“We ask the youth what they care the most about – what they like doing, what they think needs improvement in their community,” says Juliana Gallardo, a community building manager who first joined CEDC in 2009 through the AmeriCorps VISTA program. “Then we help them focus on an activity they choose.”

In 2013, CEDC’s community-building team worked with youth leaders at the organization’s Villa Cesar Chavez property to start an anti-bullying campaign, including “flashmobs” to raise awareness at local events, after participants began reporting problems at school.

“My parents couldn’t pay for new clothes, because they have to pay for so many other important things, like food,” Vanesa Palomar told a local newspaper, describing how fellow students snickered at her worn garb. “Sometimes one of them would get laid off, or they wouldn’t have work for a few days. They worked really hard, but it wasn’t enough.”

A group of CEDC youth visited another organization
that sponsors an anti-bullying teen clothes closet in a
nearby town.

Suarez’ group at the Fillmore Central Station Apartment property soon joined in. Then, CEDC took the youth on a field trip to an organization in nearby San Luis Obispo that had developed a unique response to the same challenge: a “closet” of donated, fashionable clothes for youth who couldn’t afford them otherwise. They decided to start their own version of the project, which they call PACT (“providing accessible clothing to teens”).

To help the teens develop the organizational skills they would need to initiate and operate the program, CEDC sent the team to NeighborWorks America’s Community Leadership Institute last October.

“It was pretty cool to meet older people who are so interested in helping communities. More people care than I thought,” Suarez recalls. “They were surprised to see kids at the conference. But they were very welcoming.”

The trip to the conference in Sacramento helped give the teens the confidence to launch the project, and they began visiting yard sales as well as soliciting donations via community flyers and social media. “The response was so great that we literally filled up the back of a large truck,” says Gallardo. “And the donations keep coming in.”

The youth sort the clothes; any items that aren’t appropriate are given to a local homeless shelter or other charity. In January, the PACT teen closet opened in the community room of the Fillmore apartments. However, the complex is five blocks away from the school, and the youth want its services to be available to everyone in need under the age of 18 living in Ventura County – not just their building’s residents. So, PACT is re-locating to the Big Brothers Big Sisters mentoring room at the town high school – complete with an open house on April 12. Open twice a week for two hours each day, PACT is totally run and staffed by the students -- offering an ideal exposure to the skills required for entrepreneurship, with plenty of opportunity for job training.

 “We’re even partnering with a local organization that places students age 16-21 in internships. PACT will be a host site,” says Gallardo.

According to Suarez, PACT has become so popular that it has taken the “sting” out of wearing second-hand clothes. PACT clothes are cool!

Absentee owners often the root of ‘the renter problem’

By Pam Bailey, NeighborWorks America blogger

It’s a common perception among homeowners that neighborhoods go downhill once too many renters move in. Anecdotes abound of rental properties with peeling paint, dilapidated porches and other problems.

However, says William Rohe, director of the Center for Urban and Regional Studies at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, “there's a lot of research to show that rental properties are kept up as well as homes, and when they're not, it's usually the landlord, not the renter, who is to blame.”

In the wake of the housing crisis, large numbers of buildings whose owners were facing foreclosure have been bought up by investors – with little incentive to keep them in tip-top shape, given the demand for affordable housing.

“In Silicon Valley (San Jose, CA), there isn’t much incentive to improve property (among absentee owners), because they can still command high rents,” says Matt Huerta, executive director of Neighborhood Housing Services of Silicon Valley, a member of the NeighborWork network. “It’s a huge issue, impacting every neighborhood.”

Huerta echoes the complaints of many nonprofit housing professionals, but what sets his organization apart is that the group decided to help renters – and the neighborhoods – bring owners to the table through a mediation program. The idea blossomed three years ago when NHS sent a team of resident volunteers to NeighborWorks America’s Community Leadership Institute. The team was challenged at the event to identify and develop an action plan to address a pressing local challenge, and they focused in on absentee owners.

The result is the Responsible Landlord Engagement Initiative (RLEI), a program that provides a forum to which residents and neighborhood organizations can take complaints about neglected property and irresponsible tenant/landlord behavior. RLEI staff investigates the charges, then finds and contacts the owner -- inviting the company or individual to collaborate on a solution, or face the consequences.

“Half of the time, the owners plead ignorance,” Huerta says. “Others immediately admit to the problems and are embarrassed – or, at the other extreme, deny there is an issue. We emphasize support and collaboration, but there are options to force action if needed – ranging from small claims court or class-action lawsuits, to the city attorney’s office in the case of serious code violations.”

This is a before-and-after photo, showing the unsightly mess at one rental
home before RLEI intervened, and the cleaner look after.

To date, the RLEI has accepted 21 cases, and for all of them, some degree of success has been achieved, although a few have required more than a year to fully resolve. For example, owners have improved safety by installing surveillance cameras and sensor lights, reduced blight by implementing better trash pick-up procedures and repairing structures, become more responsive to community concerns by replacing property managers and initiating neighborhood-involvement programs. One recent example of an RLEI success story is featured in a video on the NHS website.

A large part of that track record is due to the broad-based involvement in the steering committee that runs the RLEI, including representatives from NHS as well as United Neighborhoods of Santa Clara County (a coalition of more than 100 neighborhood groups), the Tri-County Apartment Assn., the Law Foundation of Silicon Valley, the city council, the mayor’s office, the police department and the local housing department.

The program has proved to be so popular that when the original funding from a city re-development agency was cut back, the NHS of Silicon Valley self-funded it, supplemented by individual city council members and a NeighborWorks America Impact Grant to assist with training for capacity-building. However, a new infusion of funds is hopefully coming early this year from a major foundation.

“More funding will enable us to build an online toolbox and database, so the program can be a model for others across the country,” says Huerta.

The next blog post will explore innovative ways to bring renters and homeowners together as "just neighbors."

The Challenges of a Hot Market - An Interview with Neighborhood Housing Services of the Inland Empire

This blog is reposted from StableCommunities.org.

Often we hear about long term vacancies as the consequence of the foreclosure crisis, but in some areas, the speedy return of the market has resulted in other problems for those in need of affordable housing. The Stable Communities Initiative recently sat down with Dawn Lee and Beena Khakhria of Neighborhood Housing Services of the Inland Empire to hear how the return of the housing market is impacting San Bernardino and Riverside Counties in California.

Stable Communities: How has the real estate market in the Inland Empire changed over the past few years?

Dawn Lee, Executive Director and Chief Executive Officer: We were a market hard hit, harder than most, with the foreclosure crisis.

Before the crash, people came to the Inland Empire for affordability. During the boom years, they were building in the area like crazy. With the building boom we also saw rising prices, sometimes tripling over short periods. And people were buying because they felt like “I’ve got to buy a house now because prices are going to keep rising.” Then the housing crash came as well as a failing economy and a high level of unemployment.

Beena Khakhria, Director of Real Estate: In 2007, we saw a huge decline in home values which led to a lot of foreclosures and people walking away from their homes. It crippled our counties. A lot of neighborhoods were like ghost towns. There were squatter issues, people destroying homes, it was really bad. As we saw the market go down, we saw investors come out of the woodwork. The crash had made investment in real estate even more palatable for investors. It wetted their appetite and they devoured.

Around 2010 and 2011, we started to see a lot of REOs come onto the market, but without adequate systems to in place to handle REO sales. While systems to handle REOs were being mastered short sales came on and many realtors jumped on the short sale bandwagon.

SC: Was there a moment when the market hit equilibrium before tipping to the sellers’ advantage?

Beena: There was a short period of time when buyers were able to get into the market and purchase homes, from December 2011 to April or June of 2012. That was a buyers’ market, but it lasted less than six months. After that, our buyers quickly lost out. If you were coming in with 3 percent down and asking for a contingency period and inspections then you were going to lose in the bidding process.

SC: What is the current climate of your housing market?

Beena: Now it’s a seller’s market. Inventory is low. In some places where we want to penetrate there just aren’t any homes.

Dawn: It is very much a seller’s market right now. For some buyers who come to us, this is the 20th or 30th house they have bid on. But the sellers are going after cash offers where the money will be a sure thing for them. That leaves our buyers stuck.

For us, we offer homes to first time buyers and “move-up buyers” with incomes in the low to moderate range. While others working in this space may have properties sitting, we don’t. We’ll list a house and we will get offers in a matter of hours or days. Recently, a home that we were selling appraised at $275,000, the buyer had some delays in their financing and by the time the deal was complete their house had increased in value to $289,000.

At the same time, rents are going up and often rents are more expensive than buying.

SC: Can you share the story of a family you have been working with?

Beena: One family, Maria and George*, started their search with NHSIE Realty in July of 2012. As a young family, they faced the challenges of finding housing that accommodated the needs of their four children; ages in 12, 10, 7 years and 6 months. Maria was pre-approved at a purchase price of $165,000, solely on her income. Her father had gifted them closing costs and partial down payment. George had been unemployed due to a work injury and was going through physical therapy to re-enter the workforce. They had also completed an 8-hour pre purchase class and were going to utilize our down payment assistance.

By the end of October they had submitted at least 25 offers. The rapid decline in available inventory and increasing home prices began to push them out of neighborhoods they had chosen. The agents and sellers were not prepared to work with first time homebuyers utilizing FHA or any city/county down payment assistance programs. Their offers were bid out by investors each time.

SC: What is NHSIE doing to respond to the shifting market and help families like these?

Dawn: As an organization, we have taken advantage of the REOs where we could and have made those homes available to prospective buyers.

A strategy that works for us, and we wish we could expand, is the purchase of homes through First Look programs. If there is a pool of houses that are available for a period of time exclusively to nonprofits, we have a better chance of securing them for first time home buyers who will be owner-occupants.

Another program we have is Opening the Door to Home Ownership, a fee based service for people who are struggling the most. To qualify, you have to have been looking and submitting offers unsuccessfully for three or more months. We match houses from the First Look programs with a buyer’s needs and get the buyer out of the highly competitive market. We renovate the home with the intention of selling the house to the prospective, pre-selected buyer. The program comes with lots of one-on-one coaching and education to ensure the buyers are making good choices and will be sustainable homeowners.

For all our programs, we screen our families and cross qualify to ensure the property is a good fit. We provide one on one coaching, pre-purchase education and home maintenance class.

Beena: We strongly believe that buying a home is a stressful period, and when the buyer feels they are competing with others, it can become a bad situation in their personal lives. We are able to be patient with buyers and allow them to complete the purchase process. We currently have two clients who have struggled with securing financing for up to 5 months. Going through normal channels, they would have had to cancel their contract well within the negotiated contract periods.

SC: How have the key housing challenges in these counties changed over time?

Beena: We are seeing challenges in securing portfolio. We are finding that when we are buying from the First Look programs, the margins we want aren’t there. It hasn’t been easy to find the right deals that make the strategy feasible for us to purchase these homes.

SC: How have you and your staff adapted in the face of market changes? What have you learned from these rapid shifts?

Dawn: We have learned to be flexible. Before, if you were in the foreclosure department, that’s all you did. If you were in the homeownership department, that’s all you did. We have made changes that allow us to be more responsive, now all of our staff are cross trained and cross certified. We are all housing advisors, not foreclosure or homeownership counselors.

We have also trained or hired more broadly skilled staff. We will always maintain foreclosure prevention services, but we see in response to the market that we need people who can offer a variety of services to the same client.

SC: What advice would you give to other organizations trying to monitor their housing markets and adapt to shifting challenges?

Beena: Watch your market. Be very attentive to the trends and understand the challenges your buyers are facing.

Dawn: Be flexible. Evaluate what is out there and always look for new opportunities. Even if you have developed a policy or plan that is focused, don’t be afraid to adjust. Use the data you find. Listen to your market. None of this will last forever but think about how you can be impactful right now. Treat every client as if they are a member of your family.

One of the biggest challenges is visibility. As a nonprofit we are strapped to market our organization. People don’t know we are here. Most people don’t see themselves as people who need the assistance. We want them to know that we are here and we can add value to the process.

Beena: Do a lot of marketing, customers need to know who you are and the value added services you provide.

SC: Any final words of wisdom?

Dawn: This is a unique moment in time. It will be a shame if we can’t do more at this moment, and we know we’ll get back to a point when the market is flooded.

* These names have been changed to respect the family's privacy.

Believing in the People We Help

 This blog entry is reposted from our Leaders for Communities website.

By Sara Varela 
NeighborWorks America
Community Building and Organizing
communications specialist

The other day I told my nine-year-old he was in charge of preparing lunch for the family, since we were all very busy and hungry. I told him to prepare tuna sandwiches, and gave him all the ingredients he needed. He was more than thrilled to take on a major responsibility like that one. He has seen his dad, his older sister and I take turns at preparing and serving meals all his life, but he seldom gets to do it. I told him to prepare the sandwiches, serve them, set the table and call us when lunch was ready. He did a fantastic job; yes, the sandwiches weren’t as perfect as they’d been if I had done them, but my son accomplished the main goal of feeding us himself.

Trusting others to perform important tasks themselves is a critical part of helping them grow, and this concept is highly applicable in the nonprofit world.

Compost Cadet at work

My employer, NeighborWorks America, is a grant-maker which means we rely on our grantees to use our funds responsibly on projects that help the community directly and also inspire residents to help themselves.  Recently, I saw pictures from a NeighborWorks project with affiliate Chinatown Community Development Center (Chinatown CDC) in San Francisco. The photos give a visual example of how Chinatown CDC has used a $10,000 Deep Green Community Building and Organizing (CB&O) Impact grant to empower resident leaders and youth to educate the community on waste reduction through proper composting and recycling.

One of Chinatown CDC's main goals was to focus on leadership and ownership by residents for a more sustainable green community. The approach Chinatown CDC took creating this ownership and leadership among residents was comprehensive and ultimately quite successful. Some activities supported by the grant were:

• Lunch Program: Twenty-four youth volunteers educated other youth (and even some parents) to properly sort items into compost, recycling, and trash bins. The 12 volunteers alternated shifts each day, making sure that there were three people teaching the kids at all times. By the end of summer, the volunteers were just a presence because the kids were automatically doing it correctly.

• Arts & Crafts: Led by a resident volunteer, a group of five youth made wind chimes entirely from recycled items and learned about the importance of reducing, reusing, and recycling.

• Compost Cadets: Eleven youth eagerly volunteered to be Compost Cadets (or Compost Cops, as they called themselves). These young leaders were trained to monitor residents at community events to make sure they were properly sorting their garbage. The Compost Cadets created their own badges and ticket booklets. They rewarded good behavior with environmentally-friendly stickers and they educated people they caught throwing food items or recyclables into the wrong bins.

Compost Cadet at work

The pride that my son felt at being handed an important responsibility and trusting him to getting it done well is the same pride I see in the photos of the children who were given the role of Compost Cadet. As I see the pictures of these young leaders, and the pride, ownership and responsibility that is reflected in them, I realized they embody what CB&O is all about: providing opportunities for skill building, giving residents leadership roles they might not have considered before and ultimately supporting resident-led improvements in their own communities.

There is nothing worse than setting up the stage for leadership development, and then not allowing space, or not trusting the people to take charge. Had I told my son he was responsible for lunch, and then taken over and made the sandwiches myself, or helped him because I didn’t trust he could do a good job, it wouldn’t have been the same. As practitioners I think it is important to walk our talk and really believe the people we want to help have the answers to their own problems. Our role is to enable them to find those answers, and then trust that their decisions were the best ones.

A Recipe for Success: Creating Community Leaders from Scratch

By Sara Varela 
Community Building and Organizing communications specialist, NeighborWorks America

My blog on Leaders for Communities focuses on projects within the national Community Building and Organizing network. This post, on resident leadership development, highlights the activities of CB&O members offering training to promote and build community leaders across the country.

This Wednesday, January 25, Neighborhood Housing Services of South Florida will be hosting a WebEX on how they put together their local Community Leadership Institute (CLI). A great article in the Miami Herald highlighted the CLI graduation ceremony recently. By developing resident leaders organizations like NHS of South Florida contribute to the overall stability of the communities they serve.

NHS of South Florida Community Leadership Institute
graduates celebrate.

Benji Power, NHS of South Florida’s director of Community Building and Organizing, said "Our overall goal is to help those residents make their neighborhood a place that they not only want to choose to stay in and live in, but hopefully other people will as well."

Finding the time to volunteer and be involved can be overwhelming. Resident leadership development programs help break down the enormous task of getting involved. I applaud the graduates of this leadership program and appreciate the efforts of NHS of South Florida for promoting resident leadership development.

NeighborWorks Lincoln, in Nebraska, also hosted a Community Engagement Initiative (CEI) using the “Building Leaders, Building Communities” curriculum created by NeighborWorks America. Residents in this program attend classes once a month for six months. NeighborWorks Lincoln provides a generous $2,500 to each team to complete their project.

And finally, Neighborhood Housing Services of Silicon Valley, in San Jose, California, held a Neighborhood Development Training conference (NDTC) that attracted 200 participants last fall. The NDTC featured free workshops taught by instructors who have experience improving local communities.

NHS of South Florida will be giving instruction how to build community leaders during this Wednesday’s WebEx  at 3 p.m. Participants will be encouraged to share experiences with resident leadership. Are you thinking of hosting or creating a leadership development program for residents in your community? Join NHS of South Florida this week and find out where to start.

More than 1.1 Million Homeowners Counseled for Foreclosure



NeighborWorks America, the administrator of the National Foreclosure Mitigation Counseling (NFMC) Program, announced that more than 1.1 million homeowners across the nation have received foreclosure counseling through the NFMC Program, according to the Program’s sixth Congressional report.

As of June 30, 2011, more than 1,168,062 homeowners in all 50 states, the District of Columbia and the U.S. Territories have received foreclosure counseling as a result of NFMC Program funding.

In December 2010, an independent analysis of the NFMC Program showed that NFMC Program clients in foreclosure were 1.7 times more likely to cure a foreclosure and potentially avoid losing a home, than homeowners who did not receive foreclosure counseling. In addition, NFMC clients who received loan modifications reduced their monthly mortgage payments on average by $267 more per month than they would have without NFMC counseling. This represents an annual savings of over $3,200 per homeowner.

The sixth Congressional Report also found that the largest share of foreclosure mitigation counseling provided by the NFMC Program has gone to assist struggling homeowners in the states hardest hit by delinquencies and foreclosures, such as California and Florida. Minority and low-income homeowners and neighborhoods, which have been disproportionately impacted by the foreclosure crisis, are well-served by the NFMC Program: 31 percent of NFMC Program clients were identified as racial minority homeowners, 20 percent were of Hispanic origin, and 66 percent were classified as low- income.

Homeowners who would like to receive foreclosure counseling can visit http://www.findaforeclosurecounselor.org/ to find a NFMC Program-funded counseling organization in their community.For more information about the NFMC Program, visit www.nw.org/nfmc.