Building communities
BANK FAILURES and foreclosures, holes in neighborhoods where developments failed to go forward, and pervasive unemployment - sound familiar?The mess we're in now mirrors much of what Boston and other cities in Massachusetts struggled through in the 1970s. We emerged from that period stronger, more united, and with some of the most vibrant and livable neighborhoods in the United States. Part of the answer for that period's problems applies today: hard grassroots community work that turns a neighborhood around - one vacant lot, one abandoned house, one family, and one worker at a time, so that everyone can participate in the economic recovery to come.
Community Development Corporations began forming in the 1970s as a neighborhood answer to neighborhood problems. They recognized a truth that we may have lost sight of today: Real change isn't top-down, it comes from the bottom up. A few trailblazing CDCs grew into a statewide movement thanks in large part to community activist turned state legislator Mel King. It was King who led efforts to pass a comprehensive legislative agenda designed to build and strengthen CDCs across the state.
And it worked. Massachusetts now has more than 60 CDCs working in communities from Provincetown to Great Barrington. Since 2003, these locally-run, grassroots organizations have engaged thousands of community residents to build or preserve 7,811 homes, created 11,609 job opportunities, supported 6,211 local entrepreneurs, served 123,556 families, and attracted $1.362 billion worth of investment to struggling neighborhoods.
As much as today's challenges remind us of the past, the world today is certainly much different from the world in which CDCs first emerged during the 1970s. Demographic, social, economic, technological, and political changes require new, innovative solutions that build on the lessons we have learned but break free from old orthodoxies and stale strategies. The successful CDCs of the future will be those that most effectively adapt and respond to these changes.
Many CDCs and their community development partners are doing just that. In Lawrence, a CDC has used a new model of network organizing to engage 4,000 residents in an effort to energize civic life; in Franklin County, the CDC is helping to "green" local businesses with environmental consulting services and access to financing; Worcester CDCs are working with the city to use the state's receivership law to rehabilitate foreclosed homes that are blighting neighborhoods; Boston and Chelsea CDCs have created partnerships with for-profit developers to undertake larger-scale redevelopment efforts that include both housing and commercial properties.
The activists who helped create the CDC movement are graying, and once again they are turning to Mel King for help.
State and local officials will join with bankers, foundation executives, and community leaders this week to celebrate the launch of the Mel King Institute for Community Building. The Institute will help create a new generation of neighborhood advocates who will be reminded every day of the work that King did fighting urban renewal in the South End, battling for neighborhoods at the State House, and running the MIT Community Fellows program for more than 20 years.
Funded by public, private, and individual supporters, the Institute will give hundreds of professionals and volunteer leaders the chance to gain the skills, knowledge, and leadership ability that they can take back to Worcester or New Bedford or Franklin County to produce magic: turning abandoned buildings into homes, vacant lots into locally owned businesses, residents into civic leaders, and distressed neighborhoods into thriving communities.
Chuck Grigsby is former president of the Massachusetts Community Development Finance Corp. and chairs the founding committee for the Mel King Institute for Community Building. Joe Kriesberg is president of the Massachusetts Association of Community Development Corporations. 