Viable Student Transfer Program, Aid to Troubled Home Districts Not Mutually Exclusive

D.J. Wilson is a former staff writer for the Riverfront Times, the Houston Press and the Houston Post. He currently freelances for St. Louis Magazine and Stlmag.com. His weekly radio show, Collateral Damage, was on KDHX from 2001 to 2015 and continues to via podcast at collateraldamage.KDHXtra.org.

For all the talk about the need for a legislative “fix” for the student transfer program in St. Louis County, it’s time for people to realize the transfer option isn’t going away, and basically, that is good news.

About 11 percent of students in the unaccredited districts of Normandy and Riverview Garden took advantage of the chance to go to an accredited school in another district. Those decisions are both a benefit for the child and the community where he or she lives, and a wake-up call to the region that public education’s problems and solutions aren’t confined within the gerrymandered boundaries of each of the county’s 24 districts.

The recent agreement by county districts to participate more fully in assisting troubled districts is a small positive step, even if it were akin to a shotgun wedding consummated three days before Gov. Jay Nixon vetoed the erroneously named transfer fix legislation. That bill, opposed by St. Louis County school district superintendents, would have allowed charter schools in St. Louis County and provided public compensation for the use of private “virtual” school programs.

The real fix that is needed is for all the districts that receive transfer students to accept a reasonable “cap” tuition that does not needlessly drain state and sending district finances. Some have agreed to a cap of around $8,000, others have not.

Offering a viable transfer option and devoting personnel and resources to improve education in the sending districts are not mutually exclusive propositions. Both can, and should be pursued.

The state Department of Elementary and Secondary Education (DESE) stepped into this fray because it is the state’s responsibility to provide a tuition-free education to its school-age residents. School districts administer that education, but when those districts fail, the state steps in.

The state, and to a lesser degree the federal government, try to compensate for the vast discrepancies in financial capacity among school districts caused by the jigsaw puzzle nature of their boundaries. Local district funds come largely from property taxes, and no two districts are created equal.

The assessed valuation for the Clayton School District, all 3.2 square miles of it, is $1 billion. The assessed valuation per average daily attendance is calculated by dividing a district’s financial base by its number of students. In Clayton, that number is $427,415. In Riverview Gardens, it’s $35,616. In Normandy, it’s $64,179.

According to 2014 DESE and census data, Clayton spends $17,394 per student on an enrollment where the median household income is $89,479. Jennings, one of 11 provisionally accredited districts in the state, has a median household income of $28,429. It spends $9,911 per student.

Normandy and Riverview Gardens are dependent on state funds. Last school year 53 percent of Normandy’s revenue came from the state, 32 percent was local, and 14 percent was from the federal government.

Various academic metrics further document the chasm between districts. In Riverview Gardens, 65 percent of students take the ACT, with a composite score of 15.6. In Clayton, virtually all the students take the ACT and the composite score is 25.7. Statewide, the composite score is 21.8.

The multiplicity of school districts is one of the most divisive jurisdictional barriers to a sense of community. The fractured local delivery system of state-guaranteed public education accentuates socioeconomic differences and perpetuates gaps in employment, income, and access to post-secondary education.

In St. Louis, it’s far more than where you went to high school that matters, it’s what school district did you have the fortune – or misfortune – to call home. Those invisible yet real walls between districts are kept high and thick by jacked-up housing costs and apartment rents in highly regarded districts.

To the extent that the transfer program can be enhanced by a reasonable set tuition price paid by the sending district, some of those walls that divide privilege and poverty might be weakened and more students, no matter where they live, might have a better chance for a better life.

Meanwhile the surrounding districts, with help from state and federal governments, can pay more money and attention to help the many students who choose not to transfer.

It’s no mystery that the school districts in trouble have high degrees of concentrated poverty. When Normandy and Riverview Gardens lost their accreditation, they had the highest rate of free-and-reduced lunches in St. Louis County.

Consolidating districts to achieve economies of scale and a better mix of poor and not-so-poor students would go a long way to improve public education in every community.

Sadly, that won’t happen. Due to economic segregation, misplaced fear of those from a lower income bracket, and prior home purchasing decisions based on school district boundaries, chances are slim people will accept any substantive change.

Around 1900, there were 125,000 school districts in the United States. That number has dwindled to about 15,000 today. Change has happened, over time, yet more jurisdictional change is not on the horizon.

If school district boundaries won’t change, allowing a few industrious students to follow their dreams and ambitions outside those artificial boundaries, while working to improve the schools that made them flee, will have to do.

Articles in “From the Field” represent the opinions of the author only and do not represent the views of the Community Builders Network of Metro St. Louis or the University of Missouri- St. Louis.

A New Stadium, A New Opportunity

By David Stiffler, Community Affairs Manager, Equifax

Stadium financing is controversial. The idea of the public shouldering considerable financial burden to attract or retain a single owner or wealthy group of investors remains distasteful to many.  Adding to negative public perception is the relative lack of examples where sports facility construction correlated to significant economic development for the surrounding communities. However, there is an effort underway in the Westside of Atlanta that offers more than just hope that stadium construction can be a catalytic driver of comprehensive community improvement – it offers a blueprint for strategic public/private collaboration. Equifax Inc. (www.equifax.com) has been involved in that effort from the beginning.

Headquartered in Atlanta, Equifax Inc.’s second largest population of employees is in St. Louis. In both cities, we are committed to geographically-focused community investment strategies that are collaborative in nature, evidence-driven and long-term. Our St. Louis “footprints” are Old North and the South Jefferson corridor where over the past five years we have invested close to a million dollars.

The Westside has always been central to Atlanta’s African-American social and economic fabric. It remains home to some of the city’s most significant and influential cultural institutions and iconic leaders. Dr. King lived in Vine City at the time of his assassination. Anchor institutions, such as Morehouse College and Spelman College, historic restaurants, and small businesses are still owned and/or largely staffed by people who grew up in the Westside. Yet, years of challenges have led to properties and people neglected and disconnected from the core of Atlanta. It’s a situation not dissimilar to many of the realities and challenges that impact downtown, North City and County, and East St. Louis. With the likelihood of a new stadium, or at least a “Plan B” here in St. Louis, we also have a unique opportunity to share something more positive: best practices.

Several community leaders in Atlanta reminded me that the Georgia Dome (1992) and the Atlanta Olympics (1996) fell short on the promise of economic development for the surrounding neighborhood including the Westside. Arthur M. Blank, co-founder of Home Depot, noted philanthropist and owner of the Atlanta Falcons football team, had that in mind when he set about a plan to do things differently with the construction of the new Atlanta stadium.  The foundation made strategic hires, bringing in first rate leaders specifically to work in the Westside.  His Atlanta Falcon’s leadership structured their corporate partnerships with a component around Westside engagement and support.  He reached out to the Atlanta Committee for Progress (akin to St. Louis’ Civic Progress) and helped jump start a task force to consider the best way for the most powerful companies in the city to work with the Mayor’s office and all of its major public entities. The task force, in turn, created of a new non-profit (The Westside Future Fund) that will lead comprehensive revitalization work alongside The Arthur M. Blank Family Foundation.

St. Louis can and should learn from this work.  We have wonderful regional examples of public and private collaboration:  CityArchRiver, St. Louis Graduates, 24:1 and the nascent Ready by 21 initiative. All point to our ability to work across sectors to accomplish important results.  We have tremendous leaders across sectors. We need to view the potential for a new stadium as a tie that binds development efforts in North City with development efforts in downtown and East St. Louis. We need to view this opportunity as a chance to drive racial and economic inclusion through workforce development, job creation, social entrepreneurship and a variety of other economic opportunities.  We need community and non-profit leaders, elected officials and private sector leaders to use this moment to connect our regional work. We need to consider how we sustain this work – whether we create something like our own Westside Future Fund or consider building capacity for an existing agency to take on this work.

Our work in the Westside coupled with our five years of work in North City allows Equifax Inc. a unique vantage point. We have begun to align our efforts between the two cities particularly around economic development. We co-lead an economic development roundtable in the Westside with Frank Fernandez, VP from The Arthur M. Blank Family Foundation, and will kick off a similar effort in North City in late August. Equifax Inc. is just one piece of the overall redevelopment puzzle

However, The Arthur M. Blank Family Foundation is exceptionally well-resourced and especially committed.  National reports tell us that St. Louis has great family wealth. Having a strong philanthropic foundation or family trust step forward would help galvanize a comprehensive effort and help create a common narrative and shared future for North City, downtown and East St. Louis. Committing to such a course has value regardless of a new stadium. Whether St. Louis hates or embraces the idea of a new stadium, the region should not lose this rare opportunity to unite the great efforts underway in North City, downtown and East St. Louis around a shared resource.

Articles in “From the Field” represent the opinions of the author only and do not represent the views of the Community Builders Network of Metro St. Louis or the University of Missouri- St. Louis.

The Crime Rise in St. Louis: What We Know, Don’t Know, and Can Do to Stop it

By Richard Rosenfeld

Richard Rosenfeld is the Founders Professor of Criminology and Criminal Justice at the University of Missouri – St. Louis.  He is a Fellow and past President of the American Society of Criminology and currently serves on the Science Advisory Board of the Office of Justice programs, US Department of Justice.

Between January and late July of this year, 110 homicides had occurred in the city of St. Louis — an increase of more than fifty percent over the same period in 2014.  At the current pace, the number of homicides will substantially exceed last year’s total, which itself was up more the thirty percent over the previous year.  Other violent crimes (serious assault, and robbery) and property crimes (burglary, larceny, motor vehicle theft) have also increased.  Crime increases of this magnitude are too large to qualify as statistical “blips.”  They are real and they are worrisome.

The natural question about the St. Louis crime rise is “why”?  The honest answer is no one knows, at least not yet.  More crime could be related to an expansion of illicit drug markets in the city.  Heroin use has increased throughout the region in recent years, and the street price of heroin has fallen during the same period.  Disputes among drug sellers over territory and supply, and between buyers and sellers over price and quality, are often settled violently.  More buyers bring more sellers into the market, leading to more disputes and more violence.

Another hypothesis is that the crime rise is related to a “Ferguson effect.”  The idea is that the police are not fully engaged in their jobs, because they are fearful of or frustrated by the community tensions and possible legal liabilities surrounding the Michael Brown killing last August and subsequent controversial police shootings around the nation.  A related idea is that street criminals have become “emboldened” by the events in Ferguson and elsewhere, in part because they perceive that the police have withdrawn from the streets.

I have my doubts about this explanation, especially as it applies to the increase in homicide.  For one thing, homicides began to rise in St. Louis several months before Michael Brown was killed.  In addition, the best indicator of police engagement is the arrest rate.  The arrest rate did decline in the immediate aftermath of the Ferguson events, as the police were redeployed from their normal patrol activities to address street demonstrations around the city.  But arrests have long since returned to normal levels, and yet crime continues to rise.

It will take some time to figure out the causes of the crime increase in St. Louis, but here are some facts that should be kept in mind as the police and researchers diagnose the problem.

First, St. Louis is not alone.  Several other cities, though not all, have also experienced crime increases in recent months.  Second, crime, especially homicides and other violent crimes, are not random occurrences that are equally likely to strike anywhere and anyone.  They are highly localized in specific places.  About half of the increase in gun assaults during the first half of this year, for example, occurred in just five of the city’s 79 neighborhoods.  Fully half of all violent crimes take place on just five percent of the street blocks in the city.  That means that violence is unevenly dispersed even within high-crime neighborhoods.  Third, the victims as well as the suspects in homicides and other serious violence tend to be criminally involved.  As mentioned, violence is a potent means by which criminals, who cannot appeal to the police or courts, settle their disputes. The single greatest risk factor for becoming the victim of a violent crime, by far, is involvement in criminal activity.  So, if you aren’t a criminal and don’t live in or frequent violent places — in other words, if you’re among the great majority of St. Louis residents — your chances of becoming a victim of violence are very low.

But the localized nature of violent crime should not produce complacency.  When hundreds of our fellow citizens are killed or injured in violent crimes every year, everyone is affected, directly or indirectly.  On some streets, children grow up hearing the sound of gunfire almost daily and, in too many cases, may be caught in the crossfire.  High rates of violent crime generate fear, lead to population loss, retard economic growth, and undermine the tax base.  The entire region, not only the central city, suffers as a result.  Stemming the tide of violence, therefore, should be on everyone’s agenda.

So, what can be done?  Fortunately, two decades of sound research have shown that certain policing strategies can reduce violent crime in the areas where it is concentrated, without displacing it to other areas.  These are the so-called hot spot approaches that concentrate police patrols in high-crime locations.  Once in those places, other research indicates that crime is reduced when the police engage directly with the “hot” people in the area, especially those who have been arrested frequently for unlawful gun possession or use.  The police, sometimes accompanied by probation and parole officers, juvenile court officials, and members of the local prosecutor’s office, send a direct message in their meetings with individuals who are at high risk as both perpetrators and victims of violence: We know who you are, we’re watching, and the next time you participate in acts of violence, we will respond swiftly with the full force of the law.  No exceptions.

But the police cannot, and should not, act alone.  They must act with the law-abiding community behind them.  Most people want the violence to stop, but they may fear retaliation from criminals if they cooperate with the police, or they may fear or not trust the police.  The police must engage directly with these community members as well.  In this case, the message is: We have your back and will do everything we can to protect and assist you.  But we need your help.  We can’t do it alone.  And the police must be prepared to make good on these promises.

None of this is easy.  There is no quick-fix to the violence problem.  But when hot spot policing, a focus on violent offenders, and community outreach are done well and sustained over time, violent crime subsides.  Nor is more effective law enforcement sufficient to reduce violence over the long run.  It must be coupled with enhanced service delivery, housing rehabilitation, code enforcement, and economic opportunities in the disadvantaged communities where violent crime is concentrated.  Those initiatives to rebuild communities will have a better chance of succeeding, however, if the police and their community partners use proven practices to halt the current rise in violence.

Articles in “From the Field” represent the opinions of the author only and do not represent the views of the Community Builders Network of Metro St. Louis or the University of Missouri- St. Louis.

A Quiet Supreme Court Ruling Affirms that Home Matters

By Chris Krehmeyer, President/CEO, Beyond Housing

The week of June 22nd had two blockbuster Supreme Court rulings that reverberated across the country.  During what will surely prove to be a historical week, the court affirmed the Affordable Care Act and its implementation. In addition, SCOTUS eloquently stated the right of all people to marry whomever they love.

Indeed, two important and powerful rulings.

While monumental in our progress forward,  what many did not see was that nestled in between these historic decisions was a much less heralded fair housing case called Inclusive Communities v. Texas Housing and Community Affairs Department.

In the case, the Supreme Court ruled 5-4 in favor of allowing the use of “disparate impact” claims when filing Fair Housing Act Complaints.

According to an overview of the case by Enterprise Community Partners, the Supreme Court upheld the use of “disparate impact claims” not only in cases of “overt discrimination,” but also with “seemingly neutral policies that have a disproportionately negative impact on protected classes.”

The Inclusive Communities Project’s case was not just a challenge to the Texas Housing and Community Affairs Departments use of affordable housing subsidies in struggling neighborhoods. Their argument is also a challenge to department’s practice of not using the subsidy in more affluent neighborhoods.

Again, as stated in the overview by Enterprise Community Partners:

“The Court’s ruling underscores the false choice between investing in distressed communities or in neighborhoods of opportunity.  The Court recognized that local housing authorities and state allocating agencies must continue to provide housing that meets a diverse array of community needs, taking into account a range of factors including market costs, traffic patterns and the need to preserve historic buildings. In doing this work, Kennedy further urges that these agencies should not be punished for investing in communities that ‘have been long segregated, according to the majority opinion.’”

This ruling affirms what we at Beyond Housing already know – home matters.  In the event that policy in any jurisdiction does indeed contribute to a “disparate impact” then it should be changed.  What is true is that whether a family moves to a stable community or into a newly developed home where a comprehensive effort is underway to improve all the facets of that community – we should support both opportunities.

The research is clear on so many subjects related to the importance and power of home on the success of children, families and broader neighborhoods.  Both the revered MacArthur Foundation, and the newly formed Home Matters, websites have all the research we need to affirm that the connectivity home to success in education, health, jobs and economic development. Living in a quality home and community can positively influence a child’s academics and health. Adults may also experience positive benefits in their work performance.

Take a look at the research shared through the Home Matters website on the connection between housing affordability and parents investing more in the development of their children.

The suggestions listed in the “Building Healthy Places Toolkit” indicate that people and places can be healthier when there are adequate resources available at their disposal –resources such as mixed-use land policy, walkable and bikeable streets, and adequate space for ‘multigenerational’ recreation.

Our collective charge is to find the resources to make home happen for everyone in our region and our country.

Articles in “From the Field” represent the opinions of the author only and do not represent the views of the Community Builders Network of Metro St. Louis or the University of Missouri- St. Louis.

We Need New Sources of Funding for Community Development

By Todd Swanstrom, Des Lee Professor of Community Collaboration and Public Policy, University of Missouri St. Louis and Author of recently released Place Matters: Metropolitics for the Twenty-First Century (3rd edition); and Karl Guenther, Community Development Specialist, University of Missouri St. Louis

Todd Swanstrom

On June 9th the House of Representatives approved 2016 funding for Transportation, Housing and Urban Development (THUD; H.R. 2577). The vote was 216 to 210. Six votes decided that the National Housing Trust Fund should be de-funded and barred from receiving additional funding, Veteran Affairs Supportive Housing funds should be eliminated, Choice Neighborhoods should be cut by 75%, Community Development Block Grant (CDBG) cut $6 million, and enforcement of fair housing law weakened.

Karl Guenther

If this appropriations bill becomes law, Missouri and Illinois will lose out on millions of dollars from the National Housing Trust Fund (NHTF) that was slated to be allocated to states during 2016; St. Louis’ two Choice Neighborhoods planning efforts will have an even harder time winning implementation grants; and local HOME funds will be cut. These decreases in funding come after 10 years of cuts to CDBG and HOME funding. St. Louis County, St. Louis City, Madison County, and St. Clair County are receiving less than 50% of the CDBG and HOME funding that they received in 2003 when adjusted for inflation. Federal cuts will damage our ability to have a well-functioning community development system, unless we do something about it.

St. Louis does not have a large foundation(s), like Minneapolis, Cleveland, or Milwaukee, that invests millions of dollars each year in the infrastructure of community development. St. Louis needs a way to support the capacity of neighborhoods to engage residents, devise a vision or plan for their community, and implement that plan. This work includes hosting events that market the community and build relationships among residents, manage partnerships with social service agencies, paying for predevelopment costs such as market studies, identifying sources of gap financing, and contracting to get the work done. In the past Community Building Nonprofits did much of this nitty gritty work. Without new sources of funding the capacity of neighborhoods to do this essential work will be severely harmed.

Here are some ways we can fund a more efficient and effective community development system in St. Louis:

1. Dedicated Sources of Revenue: One way communities have raised funds for community development is through use taxes. Use taxes are sales taxes on items purchased out of state. Use taxes have the virtue that they level the playing field for local businesses (by charging the same sales tax on purchases out of the area) and they raise revenues without harming local taxpayers. The City of St. Louis’s Housing Trust Fund is funded by a use tax. When it generated more money than expected, however, an ordinance was passed to cap it at $5 million. Given cuts in federal funding, this cap should be lifted to at least $10 million. In 2001 St. Louis County put before the voters a Community Comeback Act that would have raised about $35 million annually to aid fiscally strapped local governments and for land assembly and economic development incentives. The Community Comeback initiative failed at the polls but in the wake of Ferguson, the need for reinvestment is clear and presents a much better chance that it would pass now. (For more information on this proposal, see http://pprc.umsl.edu/pprc.umsl.edu/data/interface_003.pdf. )

2. Special Taxing Districts: Where appropriate, residents and community-based organizations can work together to institute special business districts and community improvement districts that create a reliable source of funds to be reinvested within the district boundaries. Special taxing districts have helped revitalize the Grove and South Grand among other areas.

3. Loan Pools and Philanthropic Funds: Private sector actors from philanthropy to lenders to donors can pool and coordinate their grant and loan funds to build a stronger regional community economic development system. A proposal to this effect is being developed by the Metropolitan St. Louis Community Reinvestment Act Association, Community Builders Network of Metro St. Louis, Greater Saint Louis Community Foundation, United Way of Greater St. Louis, IFF, and others. To see their proposal on how to build a stronger regional community economic development system, click here.

If the St. Louis region does not develop new sources of funding for community development, our ability to stabilize and revitalize disadvantaged neighborhoods will wither. Ferguson should be a wake-up call: if one part of the region suffers, the entire metropolitan area is negatively affected. If we can develop local sources of funding for community development, we will be in a much better position to compete not just for federal discretionary grants but also national foundation funding.

Articles in “From the Field” represent the opinions of the author only and do not represent the views of the Community Builders Network of Metro St. Louis or the University of Missouri- St. Louis.

Parks and Greenways Have the Power to Transform Communities

By Todd Antoine

On June 9th the House of Representatives approved 2016 funding for Transportation, Housing and Urban Development (THUD; H.R. 2577). The vote was 216 to 210. Six votes decided that the National Housing Trust Fund should be de-funded and barred from receiving additional funding, Veteran Affairs Supportive Housing funds should be eliminated, Choice Neighborhoods should be cut by 75%, Community Development Block Grant (CDBG) cut $6 million, and enforcement of fair housing law weakened.

Todd Antoine, AICP is the Director for Planning at the Great Rivers Greenway District in St. Louis, Missouri. The primary focus of his work is to develop and implement The River Ring, a regional interconnected system of greenways, parks and trails. He coordinates efforts to establish partnerships with local, state and regional entities in the implementation of The River Ring with projects in St. Louis City, St. Louis County and St. Charles County, Missouri.

As deputy director of Great Rivers Greenway District, I talk to a lot of people who are skeptical about the power of parks and greenways to transform communities. They aren’t convinced—until they see the transformation with their own eyes.

One such transformation was the renovation of Ruth Porter Mall Park in the St. Vincent Greenway. This narrow, 8.12-acre park stretches nine blocks through the neighborhoods between Delmar and DeBaliviere Avenue on the south and Etzel and Blackstone Avenue to the north.

Great Rivers Greenway worked to transform the park, which had fallen victim to crime and deterioration since it was first built in 1968. Knowing that access to well-maintained public parks significantly reduces crime; we worked closely with
neighborhood residents, City of St. Louis Parks Division staff and local law enforcement to identify specific improvements that would make the park safer and more attractive for people to use.

More than 25 hills and multiple gazebos were removed to improve visibility for park visitors and local law enforcement, and new ornamental light fixtures were installed along the trail. Curbs at streets and alleyways were also sloped to ensure that people of all abilities could use the trail in the park for fitness, recreation or as a way to walk, ride their bike or connect to transit stops.

The newest segment through Ruth Porter Mall Park opened in October 2012. The park went from being a place neighbors were scared to traverse to one that provides an outdoor location for programs and events, a place to get fresh air and exercise, as well a paved trail that serves as alternate transportation for those in the neighborhood. It also creates an important “third place” where people can connect and build community.

Recent trail counts revealed that people are using the trail in the park much more than ever before. In addition, the number of people observed walking in the open spaces associated with the larger St. Vincent Greenway doubled with the renovation and improvement to Ruth Porter Mall Park.

We are eager to expand the transformative power of this greenway as we work towards connecting the northern and southern sections of the existing St. Vincent Greenway.  After an extensive community engagement process last year with the assistance of Beyond Housing, we have developed the conceptual alignment for this “missing” 2-mile middle section. The conceptual alignment extends the current edge of the greenway at Etzel and Skinker north to Stephen Jones Avenue where it will link The MET Center, Eskridge High School site, Pagedale Family Support Center and the planned development at the St. Charles Rock Road Metrolink Station. It continues off-road through the Metrolink Station all the way to the existing greenway within St. Vincent County Park.

The renovation of Ruth Porter Mall Park is an incredible example of how greenways and parks can transform communities.  It also shows what can be accomplished when the needs of an underserved community are made a priority.

Work is now underway to extend the greenway further south from Delmar and DeBaliviere to Forest Park in conjunction with the Loop Trolley project. When complete, this neighborhood will have even more green space for walking and biking but will also be connected to Forest Park:  the crown jewel of our regional park system.

Residents have discovered that the urban green spaces and trails have done more than create a bikeable, walkable community. They have also encouraged deeper inter-community neighborhood relationships, strengthening the region, and making St. Louis a better place to live.

Articles in “From the Field” represent the opinions of the author only and do not represent the views of the Community Builders Network of Metro St. Louis or the University of Missouri-St. Louis.

Articles in “From the Field” represent the opinions of the author only and do not represent the views of the Community Builders Network of Metro St. Louis or the University of Missouri- St. Louis.

Let’s Make Good Governance the Goal in Municipal Reform

By Chris Krehmeyer, President and CEO of Beyond Housing

As a region we have talked for many years about the number of municipalities in St. Louis County and how it just seems like too many. Ironically, one of the only issues that we have moved quickly to a degree of consensus on from the Michael Brown tragedy is municipal government reform. With the pushing of Better Together and the Arch City Defenders, our state legislature is moving quickly to change the rules on how municipal governments across the state must function.  For example, the Missouri Legislature passed a law limiting the amount of city budgets in St. Louis County that can come from traffic fines to 12.5 percent.  I will be the first to acknowledge that some reforms are needed to ensure efficient, just and fair delivery of all municipal services. But instead of telling municipalities what they can and cannot do, we should ask the citizens what they want and work with existing leaders for better governance.

What I have not heard from the many voices in this conversation is what actually constitutes good governance for our 91 municipalities in the County and all the other political jurisdictions across the state. Should not that be the goal of all this work? How can we debate the percentage of income from traffic fines and fees each municipal government shall be allowed to pull in if we do not have the accountability structure to determine how that jurisdiction runs its entire government? If the policing and court system is fair, just and does not disproportionally harm someone for a traffic violation, then does it matter what percentage of their total budgets are fees and fines?

The St. Louis County Municipal League already has a ten best practices list for municipal governments that covers financial soundness, municipal codes, and basic core services that are needed to accomplish good governance. We need to add a provision about policing and court systems to ensure that the abuses that have been brought to light never occur again. Let us have this conversation so that tax payers in these jurisdictions can fully understand and be part of deciding what is best for them.

If a municipality is unable to meet an agreed upon litmus test of good governance over a reasonable amount of time, then there needs to be an end game. Let us not, however, get blinded by the bright light of “fix Ferguson” and rashly make changes that will not bring us good governance. We should not be lulled into thinking that bigger is necessarily better. We also must remember that each municipality has an obligation to provide for the safety of its residents.

For years our region has believed that there are too many municipalities. This may or may not be true. What is important is to ask residents in these smaller communities what is important to them and whether they have been receiving these goods and services from their municipal governments. Ask the residents of these communities whether they would like to join with another municipality or become part of unincorporated St. Louis County. The broad-based assumption is that everyone living in these small, mostly African American communities is being treated terribly and is unable to change their political leadership. I do not believe this to be true.

In our rush to “fix Ferguson” let us not unintentionally disrespect the democratically elected leaders of many predominantly North County communities. Let’s fix the issues that need to be addressed. Let’s find the places where collaboration and sharing of services are possible. Let’s make sure we have good governance in every community in our region no matter its size. Let’s allow the people who live, pay taxes and raise their children in these communities to decide what is in their best interests.

Articles in “From the Field” represent the opinions of the author only and do not represent the views of the Community Builders Network of Metro St. Louis or the University of Missouri-St. Louis.

A Prescription for Adequate Housing and Comunity Development in Ferguson, St. Louis

By Jim Roos

In 1971 Jim Roos created Neighborhood Enterprises, Inc. to manage lower cost rental housing. In 1990 he created Sanctuary In The Ordinary, a nonprofit corporation that own affordable rental housing and advocates for supportive public policies.  

We need systemic change in strategy for adequate Housing and Community Development. The current process of gut rehab or new construction, fueled by tax credits, produces expensive units, at high subsidy, and often concentrates rental units in large complexes like Canfield Green in Ferguson.

In St. Louis the average cost per unit of gut rehab/new construction is about $185,000.  Two years ago Neighborhood Enterprise, Inc. participated in rehabbing four, large, 3-bedroom, 2-bath units for owner occupants where the average cost was $330,000 and average subsidy was $240,000.

Not only are many of these projects expensive per unit, but the tax credits are inefficient. Every $1 of tax credit produces only 43 cents of housing according to an article in the St. Louis Post-Dispatch (3-3-14).

A better process would be:

1. Promote nonprofit corporations to repair, own, and manage lower cost rental housing. The apartments owned by nonprofit corporations should be affordable to people at 50 percent of are median income (AMI). For a family of four, maximum income would be about $33,550. Affordable means that the rent should not be more than 30 percent of family income. Maximum rent for 2-bedroom unit would be $839. Most 2-bedroom units would rent between $500 and $700. We should strive for a mixture of 75 percent market rate and 25 percent subsidized units.

2. We should focus on “selective rehab” as proposed by The Enterprise Foundation in its Cost Cuts Manual in 1987. When Neighborhood Enterprises utilizes selective rehab methods we produce “Sanctuary In The Ordinary”, that is, units that cost an average of $45,000 per unit, 1/4 of the cost for gut rehab, and we seldom displace people.

3. Government should provide 20 percent interest-free permanent financing and banks provide 70 percent for permanent affordable rental housing owned by nonprofits. There is currently little private or no public financing for ordinary rental housing. The government could also target housing choice vouchers to these permanently affordable units.

Having government provide funds for rental housing sounds crazy and is counter intuitive. Neighborhoods want home owners.  However, if we stabilize rental housing, homeowners will stay or want to move into the neighborhood without subsidy.  Just as important, when we focus on rental housing, fewer tenants will be displaced into distressed areas like Canfield Green in Ferguson.

Since 1970 I have lived and worked in the area just north of I-44 between Jefferson and Grand, now called the Gate District.  After I-44 was finished in 1970, this area rapidly declined.  Over 20 years more than half of the buildings were abandoned and demolished.

According to ST. Louis Post-Dispatch (10-29-02), between 1970 and 1990 four redevelopment plans were proposed for this area with little success.  Only in the mid 90’s could new homes be built and sold to owner occupants.  I closely observed in my neighborhood and in adjacent neighborhoods where Neighborhood Enterprises, Inc. managed property that after rental units were stabilized new home owners were again attracted—without subsidy.

Articles in “From the Field” represent the opinions of the author only and do not represent the views of the Community Builders Network of Metro St. Louis or the University of Missouri-St. Louis.

Everyday Fragmentation: Why service providers need to work across boundaries to better serve our communities

By Paul Sorenson

Paul Sorenson is the Director of Strategic Communications & Planning at Grace Hill Settlement House. He is on the organizing team for the Northside Service Provider Conference and works with Grace Hill on connecting families to resources across the City. You can reach him at psorenson@gracehillsettlement.org and register for the conference here.

St. Louis is grappling with substantial barriers that separate us from each other, those drawn in thick red lines — municipal boundaries, legal hurdles, and persistent systems of inequality and racism. But our fragmentation can persist even in individual neighborhoods, lines drawn in pencil that many are still hesitant to cross. These thin borders — between neighborhoods and wards, across thoroughfares and parks, between nonprofits and congregations and personalities — should be easy to erase, though many continue to define our work.

The good news? More and more people are crossing these lines, renewing a primary commitment to serve kids, families and communities wherever we are asked.

Over the past few years, many neighborhoods in North St. Louis City have recognized that service providers (loosely defined as organizations working to better their communities) need to collaborate for greater impact. From College Hill to O’Fallon, JeffVanderLou to Old North, The West End to The Ville, providers partner with residents to define and respond to critical issues. The building blocks for better educational outcomes, tackling health disparities, and connecting families to economic opportunity are crafted here — necessary first steps in shrinking larger regional barriers.

In my time at Grace Hill Settlement House, we have seen how such collaboration can work, and how much work it takes to accomplish. Our Water Tower Hub in the College Hill neighborhood assembles early childhood, banking, job training, supportive housing and community building efforts under one roof. Even so, making sure that neighbors knew about these efforts and could easily interact with them didn’t happen overnight. Neither did integrating staff and data systems so referrals were consistent and outcomes were shared. But through persistent efforts to collaborate, we know the families we serve have a much better chance to thrive.

If we can erase these lines at one address, we must also try across zip codes. While many service providers work on the nuts and bolts undergirding smaller communities, focusing on housing redevelopment, block-by-block organizing and family engagement, many of the resources they utilize are actually shared across neighborhoods. Financial empowerment, health and government services are equally accessible beyond ward boundaries. Community schools often share academic enrichment programs and can learn from each other. And with a decline in home ownership, it’s more likely that residents of one neighborhood this year will become residents of another the next. How do we tie everything together?

Bethany Johnson-Javois, Managing Director of the Ferguson Commission, will be the keynote speaker at the Northside Service Providers Conference, May 12th from 8am to noon at the O’Fallon Park YMCA Recreation Complex.

The first annual Northside Service Providers Conference aims to be the starting point in North St. Louis City, one of many areas that would benefit greatly from enhanced community collaboration. To date, over 90 people representing over 55 organizations have registered to attend this planning and resource sharing session at the O’Fallon Park YMCA Recreation Complex, 8am to noon on Tuesday, May 12th. The conference, organized by a grassroots team of northside community building organizations and sponsored by the Incarnate Word Foundation, features Bethany Johnson-Javois as its keynote speaker. As the Managing Director of the Ferguson Commission, Johnson-Javois can speak directly to the negative impact that service fragmentation has on low-income communities, and the positive impact that cross-provider collaboration can have on neighborhood progress.

The bulk of the morning will be interactive, beginning with a planning session centered around two questions: What are the pressing issues our communities? What could make our jobs easier?

The first question speaks directly to our missions, but that second question is equally as critical. Service providers need capacity — staff, money and expertise — to do our daily work well. This conference gives us the space to work with each other on overcoming capacity gaps, visit vendors that provide resources for service providers, and end the day with panel discussions around actionable fundraising, community engagement, and innovation tactics that participants can bring back to their neighborhoods.

True collaboration, however, is more than just another meeting. That’s why each attending organization will fill out a detailed survey outlining where they work, who they serve, the programs they run and what they need to grow. This information will be compiled and shared (online and in print) with participants and the communities they serve. Ultimately, we hope to follow up with additional planning sessions, events and other opportunities to ensure that service providers can support each other and share resources across neighborhoods.

The Northside Service Providers Conference is a first step in addressing the everyday fragmentation that makes it difficult for our communities to thrive. We need to come together on the ground, stepping across small lines, to be able to erase the big barriers that hold our region back. Will you join us?

Articles in “From the Field” represent the opinions of the author only and do not represent the views of the Community Builders Network of Metro St. Louis or the University of Missouri-St. Louis.

The Ferguson Moment: Putting our Foot on the Accelerator in Community and Economic Development

The following op-ed is an edited version of Hank Webber’s keynote address at the Community Builders Network Annual Awards Reception on March 19, 2015.

By Hank Webber

Hank Webber is Executive Vice Chancellor for Administration and Professor of Practice at Washington University in St. Louis. His career has focused on community development, universities and cities.

My topic tonight is community and economic development in St. Louis: what we have achieved and what we must do to achieve even more.

I want to begin with a story. Seven years ago my wife Christine Jacobs and I announced to our friends and colleagues that we were leaving Chicago and moving to St. Louis. When we said that I was joining Washington University in a senior leadership position, most people were very supportive. When we said we were moving to St. Louis they thought we were a bit crazy.

Our friends were wrong. Chris and I love living in St. Louis. We love living in the Central West End, walking down Euclid on a cold winter night, stopping in for an informal dinner. We love running and walking in Forest Park. We love the Tower Grove Farmers Market, watching adults doing yoga and the little kids playing in the fountain, and listening to the often not very good bands in the background. We love the fact that you can eat outdoors in St. Louis in months other than July and August.

It is a delight to live in St. Louis. And much of the reason for that delight is the work of the community development professionals and community leaders who have helped to rebuild urban neighborhoods, invested in critical community initiatives and revived the St. Louis economy. Thank you.

But for all of our many successes there are also challenges. Some of those challenges are long-standing. They are the challenges of the transition away from a manufacturing economy: the challenges of reviving neighborhoods whose economic base has been lost. This year however, we faced a new and potentially devastating challenge when on August 9, 2014, a date that many of us will remember for the rest of our lives, Michael Brown was shot and killed in Ferguson. Denny Coleman, the CEO of the St. Louis Economic Development Partnership, noted that in the first 52 days after Michael Brown’s death there were 100 billion media impressions of St. Louis. Most of those impressions of St. Louis, probably 98% of them, were very negative. I spent late August in Copenhagen, Berlin, and Amsterdam. St. Louis led the news in each city almost every day.

The question for every citizen of St. Louis and for every community leader is “What are we going to do in the wake of Ferguson?” Do we allow St. Louis to become an international symbol of the divides of race and class? Will we become to the next decades what Selma has been to the last fifty years? Or is this the time to do what we’ve done well in the past, but with the foot on the accelerator, with a new dedication to action. Are we going to build off the recent successes of CORTEX and T Rex and build a new economy for the twenty-first century? Are we going to extend the success we have had in revitalizing the Central West End, Botanical Heights, Forest Park Southeast and Soulard to fifteen more neighborhoods in the next ten years, including many of the neighborhoods north of Delmar? Are we going to face our Achilles heel, which is race?

That’s the choice we have to make. It’s a choice that New Orleans had to make after Hurricane Katrina. To me, and I expect to you, there’s only one acceptable answer. To go backward is to condemn our children and our grandchildren to a St. Louis that is not a place they want to live.

From my point of view the only option is to put the foot on the gas. And we will only succeed at that if we do it together. Community and economic development are team sports. You can’t succeed as an individual superstar. The deal that brought IKEA not to Chesterfield, not to O’Fallon, but to the City of St. Louis took two years. Success required the efforts of probably 20 people, all of whom were necessary and none of whom were sufficient in and of themselves. Almost everything that matters has that characteristic—success requires big diverse teams of people dedicated to working together.

So if we are going to put our foot on the gas, and if Ferguson becomes not a step toward decline, but a moment of positive transformation—if it becomes our Katrina—then what should we do? I offer three simple propositions.

First, we need to build a stronger and more collaborative community development system. In St. Louis, we work together predominantly through personal relationships. We have relatively few institutions that bring us together. We have a lot of great CDCs in town, but they tend to work independently. The Community Builders Network has produced a useful task force report on strengthening St. Louis neighborhoods. It makes a set of important points about how to build a community development system; about the need to focus on both the most distressed neighborhoods and middle neighborhoods; about the need to build capacity; and about the importance of collaboration in order to make progress.

Second, community development is not just about housing and retail development and parks, but it’s also about schools and safety. If we want to attract families to neighborhoods we must offer high quality school options and neighborhoods that people feel safe walking in. On the school side we are making progress, but we have a long way to go.

Finally, attitude matters. History is not destiny. The past is not the future. The first time Chris and I ever visited Seattle, which was in the early 1980s, there was a big billboard that said, “Will the last person that leaves Seattle turn out the lights?” Boeing was downsizing dramatically, just as McDonnell Douglas did in St. Louis. The future of Seattle was unclear. Now Seattle is one of the high tech hubs of the world. Twenty years ago everyone wanted to leave Brooklyn. Now Brooklyn is where our children want to live. Cities can transform themselves.

All cities go through cycles. Sometimes those cycles are longer than we would like, but after cities decline, they can experience tremendous rebirth. I have absolute confidence that by working together the 2020s can be the greatest decade in St. Louis’ history.

Articles in “From the Field” represent the opinions of the author only and do not represent the views of the Community Builders Network of Metro St. Louis or the University of Missouri-St. Louis.