Building a Community of Opportunity: Addressing Challenges and Creating Opportunity Around Broad Str

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Building a Community of OpportunityAddressing
Challenges and Creating Opportunity Around Broad
Street Presbyterian

• Presentation to Adult Education Forum at Broad
  Street Presbyterian Church, Columbus.
• November 20, 2005

john a. powell Williams Chair in Civil Rights
Civil Liberties, Moritz College of Law Executive
Director, Kirwan Institute of Race and
Ethnicity The Ohio State University
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Todays Discussion

• Linking Spirituality to Social Justice
• Understanding the Dynamics of Opportunity
• Is Broad Street Presbyterian in a Community of
  Opportunity?
• How do we build Opportunity around Broad Street
  Presbyterian

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Spirituality and Social Justice

• What responsibility do churches and congregations
  have in alleviating racial inequalities and
  promoting social justice?

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• We are all caught up in an inescapable network
  of mutuality, tied in a single garment of
  destiny. Whatever effects one directly effects
  all indirectly.
• -The Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.

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Common Humanity

• Racialized disparity, segregation and exclusion
  harm more than just people of color, they harm
  everyone
• A new arrangement works to lift us all,
  spiritually and pragmatically
• A civil rights agenda is NOT SOLELY a means to
  lift up the poor and people of color but a
  recognition and embracing of our differences
  within our greatest commonality Humanity

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Spirituality and Social Justice

• What is the relationship between spirituality and
  social justice?
• We usually focus on how spirituality inspires
  social justice work, but not on how working for
  social justice informs spirituality
• Spirituality ?? Social Justice

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The Meaning of Self

• Social justice work spirituality calls for an
  expansion of our understanding of self society
• Current paradigm of a Hobbesian, isolated view
• Perceives individuals as autonomous-independent
  selves
• egoistic, possessive, separate, isolated,
  rational
• role of state protect individualism and
  individual property
• This leads to increasing isolation and fear of
  the other
• The price we pay is denigration of part of
  ourselves

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Connectedness

• The alternative is a model of connectedness
• This model perceives individuals as part of
  something bigger.
• Inter-being, unified, not egoistically separate
• This perspective is at the heart of spirituality
• The racialized space and identities we have
  organized ourselves around are toxic and need to
  be reconstructed
• However, because identity is not constructed
  solely at the individual level, it cannot be
  reconstructed solely at the individual level
• Collective Imagination!

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Suffering

• Suffering is a central concern of both
  spirituality and social justice
• Existential/ontological (Spiritual Suffering)
• Sense of lack
• Disillusionment
• Separation from each other, the whole that is our
  unified selves
• Inherent in existence
• Surplus (Social suffering)
• The result of social and institutional
  arrangements/structures
• Visited on people and groups unequally
• Segregation, structural racism, spatial racism
  are all forms of social suffering

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Spirituality Segregation from Opportunity

• If one of the foci of spirituality is to engage
  suffering and its causes, spirituality must also
  be concerned with how institutions and structures
  function in society
• Segregation and exclusion from opportunity cause
  suffering, this suffering is a call to the
  spiritual to combat these structures

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Understanding the Dynamics of Opportunity

• How does access to opportunity and neighborhood
  quality impact our lives?

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The Dynamics of Opportunity

• The truth about housing
• Where you live is often as important as what you
  live in!
• Neighborhood conditions and proximity to
  opportunities impact our abilities for self
  improvement and well-being
• Housing (in particular its location) is the
  primary mechanism for accessing opportunities in
  our society

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Neighborhood Conditions Are Critical

• Decades of experience and research illustrate
  that neighborhood conditions can have significant
  impacts on the life chances of people
• neighborhood quality plays an important role
  in positive outcomes for families. Stable housing
  in an unstable neighborhood does not necessarily
  allow for positive employment and child education
  outcomes. Federal demonstration programs enabling
  the poor to move from distressed city
  neighborhoods to lower-poverty communities
  underscore the potent impact of neighborhood
  quality on family stability.
• From Meeting our nations housing challenges.
  Report of the Bipartisan Millenial Housing
  Commission, Appointed by the Congress of the
  United States. Page 11 (2002)

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The Web of Opportunity

• Opportunities in our society are geographically
  distributed and often clustered throughout
  metropolitan areas
• This creates winner and loser communities or
  high and low opportunity communities
• Opportunities exist in a complex web and are
  often reinforcing, magnifying conditions in low
  and high opportunity areas

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The Web of OpportunityWhere we live impacts our
access to many critical opportunity structures
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The Web of Opportunity

• Consider how where you live determines the
  quality of your life in multiple areas
• The quality of schools that children can attend
• The quality of public services that we receive
• Access to employment, transportation and child
  care
• Public safety, environmental health and public
  health
• Wealth building, neighborhood quality determines
  how much equity homeowners can build

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Geography of Opportunity

• Why does neighborhood quality and opportunity
  vary across metropolitan areas?
• Spatial racism
• What is spatial racism?
• The cumulative impact of policies and structures
  that work to segregate people of color from
  opportunity and strip away resources from inner
  city (and sometimes inner suburban) communities
  of color

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Geography of Opportunity

• Communities of color are disproportionately
  segregated from opportunity
• This is the impact of spatial racism
• People of color are disconnected from
  opportunities such as good schools, meaningful
  employment, safe and stable neighborhoods
• Racial Segregation Opportunity Segregation

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Communities of Opportunity

• How can we remedy the disparities in access to
  opportunity in our metropolitan areas?
• Assure access to communities of opportunity for
  all people, especially people of color and low
  income families/households
• Provide affordable housing opportunities in high
  opportunity communities
• Bring opportunity to low opportunity communities
• Build opportunities in low opportunity areas

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Broad Street Presbyterian and Opportunity

• Is Broad Street Presbyterian located in a
  community of opportunity?

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Broad Street Presbyterian and Opportunity

• Is Broad Street Presbyterian located in a
  community of opportunity?
• Requires looking at nearby opportunity structures
• Opportunity mapping
• What could be depressing opportunity?
• Housing
• Education
• Proximity to Jobs

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Neighborhoods of Opportunity in Franklin County

• Indicators of opportunity suggest that Broad
  Street Presbyterian is located in a lower
  opportunity area
• Why is this the case?
• A few potential reasons
• Housing
• Education
• Neighborhood Trends

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Housing

• Two housing challenges exist in the Near East
  area of Columbus (area closest in proximity to
  Broad Street Presbyterian)
• A large number of cost burdened households
  Almost half of all households are low income and
  nearly a third are burdened by housing cost
• A concentration of subsidized housing creating
  conditions of concentrated poverty See next
  slide
• What is the answer (requires two approaches)
• More affordable housing opportunities provided
  throughout the Columbus region
• More homeownership opportunities in the
  neighborhood (to help struggling households gain
  assets and wealth)

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Subsidized HousingAnd Opportunity

• Subsidized housing in Franklin County (public
  housing and Section 8 housing identified as dots
  on this map) are concentrated in low opportunity
  areas
• What are the implications of this trend?
• Extreme concentrations of subsidized housing
  create concentrations of poverty in these
  neighborhoods

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Education

• Another challenge in the neighborhood is
  provision of adequate educational opportunities
• Most schools in the area are high poverty
• What is the significance of this?
• One of the biggest factor predicting success or
  failure in school is the economic status of the
  student body
• Middle class students in poor schools will
  perform more poorly that poor students in middle
  class schools
• Poor children learn best when surrounded by
  middle-class classmates

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Racial Segregation and High Poverty Schools Near
Broad Street Presbyterian (and other east side
communities) most schools are high poverty
(yellow and red dots).
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High Poverty Schools Create Low Student
Achievement
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Connectivity to Job Growth in Columbus

• The areas represented in black illustrate where
  jobs will grow in Columbus by 2030
• These areas are isolated from affordable
  subsidized housing (green, red and blue dots)
• The area near Broad Street Presbyterian (and its
  subsidized housing) is detached from most of the
  regions projected job growth

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Building Neighborhood Opportunity

• How can we create a community of opportunity
  around Broad Street Presbyterian?

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How can we Build a Community of Opportunity Near
Broad Street Presbyterian?

• Strategic interventions
• Looking for the turning point
• Supporting key community assets and anchor
  institutions
• Support an economically diverse community
• Support revitalization not gentrification
• Think and act both regionally and locally

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Strategic Interventions

• Strategically address issues that challenge
  opportunity in the neighborhood
• Requires an assessment of what opportunities are
  available and depressed in the community
• It is critical to ask
• Does the neighborhood have diverse and affordable
  housing opportunities?
• Is the neighborhood located near employment
  opportunities, or does it otherwise have
  sustainable employment?
• Does the neighborhood have accessible
  transportation options?
• Do neighborhood schools support school readiness
  and stability?
• Does the neighborhoods housing and physical
  environment support the health of residents?
• Does the neighborhood support the creation of
  wealth?

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Looking for the Turning Point

• The Turning Point
• Instead of focusing on the tipping point, we need
  to better define what neighborhoods require to
  reach the turning point
• What convergence of positive actions will
  accelerate the neighborhoods revitalization?
• Pushing development beyond the turning point
  threshold requires an intervention strategy to
  positively transform the neighborhoods physical,
  social, economic, and political environment

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Supporting Key Community Assets and Anchor
Institutions

• Support and strengthen neighborhood anchor
  institutions
• Support key institutions that can draw people
  into the neighborhood and provide stability in
  distressed areas
• What are anchor institutions?
• Anchor institutions are significant community or
  regional institutions that serve a specific
  community or regional need and become magnets for
  other opportunities
• Areas near these institutions become dense
  clusters of opportunity conversely, losing these
  institutions can destabilize multiple opportunity
  structures

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Assets and Anchor Institutions

• Think about the assets and key institutions in
  the community
• Places of worship
• Historical structures
• Community buildings
• Arts and cultural sites
• Commercial areas

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The King-Lincoln District Building a
Neighborhood Anchor

• The development around the King-Lincoln District
  provides an example of a policy to build a
  neighborhood anchor institution
• Creating a magnet for clustering opportunities

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Support an Economically Diverse community

• Building an economically diverse community is
  essential to create a community of opportunity
• Why
• Concentrated poverty creates conditions that
  hinder opportunity
• Gentrification produces opportunity but creates
  an exclusionary community that is not
  economically diverse
• This requires activities to revitalize the
  neighborhood, but also requires monitoring and
  policies to avoid gentrification
• Gentrification creates opportunity exclusion
• Revitalization brings opportunity to the
  community while being inclusionary

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Gentrification vs. Revitalization

• Important to understand the difference between
  gentrification and revitalization
• Gentrification Neighborhood in transition to
  exclusive upper income white community
• Large scale displacement of low income residents
  by influx of high income residents
• Disruption of social networks and services for
  traditional residents
• Revitalization Neighborhood in transition to
  mixed income, mixed wealth, multi-racial
  community
• A community of choice available to a wide range
  of households
• Social networks and services for traditional
  residents maintained and improved

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How do you Avoid Gentrification while
Revitalizing the Neighborhood?

• Monitoring for gentrification is critical
  (consider an early warning monitoring system for
  the neighborhood)
• Many strategies/policies exist to counter
  gentrification (displacement)
• Ranging from maintaining the base of affordable
  housing units to stabilizing local businesses or
  offering financing/loans/grants to existing
  residents
• Identify these early (before problems occur)
• Be prepared to implement if necessary

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Housing Strategies

• Provide affordable housing opportunities but
  avoid over-concentration
• Support homeownership for existing residents
• Build neighborhood wealth
• Think about housing regionally
• Fight against predatory lending and property
  flipping

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Think and Act both Regionally and Locally

• Building a community of opportunity requires both
  regional and local action
• Many of the spatial and institutional trends
  robbing communities of opportunity require
  regional solutions
• Think about what initiatives will open access to
  regional opportunities and bring opportunity back
  to inner city communities
• Requires coalition building to create the
  regional support and power needed to push for
  reforms
• Consider the faith based community as a vehicle
  for social justice oriented coalitions

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Spirituality as a Unifying Force

• Faith Based Organizations offer a great
  opportunity for building coalitions because many
  congregations are already diverse racially,
  economically, and politically
• Churches in the Franklin County cross both
  spatial, racial and class boundaries
• And are located in low and high opportunity areas

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Concluding Thoughts

• Spirituality should motivate and enliven social
  justice work at both the individual level and
  community level
• It is critical to understand the dynamics of
  opportunity when working to improve our
  communities
• The goal should be to create an inclusionary
  community of opportunity, not just in your
  neighborhood but throughout the region

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Concluding Thoughts

• We need integration with opportunity to have a
  truly just society
• Linked fate
• A society where a demographic identifier would
  not predict an individuals life chances

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