For the

Corporation for Supportive Housing and

the Annie E. Casey Foundation

Discussion on Neighborhood-Based

Employment Strategies

For me, the most heartening piece of the Winter 2000 report from the Annie E. Casey Foundation’s "CONNECTS" was contained in one simple word in the title of the lead article, "Casey Refocuses on Family and Neighborhoods." "Refocuses:" an acknowledgment of the work of decades of community development activism; and an effort to place what we now consider "new initiatives" into proper context.

The work we are here to discuss has its roots in the civil rights movements, the Poor People’s March on Washington, and student social activism that lent passion and commitment to organizing and revitalizing low income neighborhoods in the wake of nationwide urban riots in the summer of 1964. The Johnson Administration’s fabled "War on Poverty," the creation of the Office of Economic Opportunity, the establishment of legal services for poor people to secure entitlements provided by the OEO, and the statutory mandate for "maximum feasible participation of the poor" in programs funded by the federal government were truly groundbreaking.

With the passage of this seminal legislation, the community development movement, and community development corporations ( CDC’s), were born. Many of the early CDC’s engaged in a program of economic development, education, and advocacy. The OEO legislation itself spoke of the need for comprehensive efforts to attack the problems of poor communities: social, economic and physical revitalization; job development; improvement in the social service infrastructure; and creation of indigenous leadership. However, as Pablo Eisenberg has noted, funders’ philosophies and priorities, corporate donors and the federal government, "institutions not often known for their courage, tenacity, and risk-taking," shifted the focus of CDC’s to housing and economic development, and, in the process, created a more "business-like" orientation. Investment in bricks and mortar to the exclusion of investment in human capital resulted.

By the mid 1970’s the War on Poverty had been largely defunded. The Nixon administration began government’s swing to devolution, federal cuts, the inception of block grants and restrictions on "controversial" programs, like legal services. The sole true survivor of the War on Poverty, the Head Start program, has experienced bipartisan, steady increases in funding and is widely viewed as a major success. One can only wonder whether long term and consistent federal support for the comprehensive strategies and programs begun by the OEO would not have yielded, over time, similar success. The War on Poverty was not lost; it was de-funded, after a very short run.

And so again in the 1990’s comprehensive community development has become, once again, in vogue. Why? Because broadening the focus of community development – to families; to employment; to a deeper social service infrastructure- were fundamentally correct approaches all along.

As we discuss neighborhood-based employment strategies—utilizing the relatively recent experience of programs we all represent—it is important to revisit our past and to acknowledge the valiant and pathbreaking work of colleagues of earlier generations.

Nancy Biberman

President

Women’s Housing and Economic Development Corp.

The Women’s Housing and Economic Development Corporation was founded nine years ago as a nonprofit organization dedicated to the economic advancement of low-income women and their families, through the integration of housing, workforce development, and social services. With our cornerstone project, the Urban Horizons Economic Development Center, WHEDCO transformed the abandoned Morrisania Hospital complex in the South Bronx into a vibrant community anchor that has provided affordable housing to 132 low-income families (including 48 that were formerly homeless), placed more than 545 people in jobs, fostered the creation of over 100 small businesses in family day care and catering, cared for over 600 children in daycare and afterschool programs, enrolled 300 people in our health club, trained 50 aspiring culinary workers in our Culinary Arts Training Program, and housed a new food company. Along the way, we have tried to listen to what people in our community really wanted, joined forces with community activists and local officials, and enlisted the support of a broad network of program partners and funders. We continue to work very hard to design, evaluate, and fine-tune programs that make a tangible difference in the lives of the people we serve.

WHEDCO’s economic development strategy takes its cue from decades-old community economic development "best practice," which is neighborhood-based and focused on the symbiotic development of housing, social supports, and economic activity. While more recent community economic development efforts have attempted to stimulate business investment in low-income neighborhoods, WHEDCO has concentrated on investing in human capital. We empower our clients with the skills and supports they need to get jobs, increase their incomes, and thus build up the purchasing power that businesses evaluate when considering where to locate.

WHEDCO’s focus on employment within a broad array of social supports, while a common-sense departure from more recent strategies (e.g housing only; housing with social services for residents only; "special needs" housing; housing with employment services for residents only) is also a necessary consequence of welfare reform that affects all organizations working in community development, and indeed, all people living in poverty. Pressure from statutory work mandates and time limits have impressed a special urgency upon our efforts to engage and retain clients in meaningful education and training programs that will increase their chances to find and keep jobs. In New York State and City welfare reform has been implemented in an unduly restrictive manner which runs counter to the very goals it was set out to achieve. All but the most minimal job-readiness training and job search coaching are permissible, and inadequate attention has been paid to surmounting the barriers to employment, such as lack of childcare, transportation, and treatment for substance abuse and other health and mental health disorders. As evidenced by the case studies analyzed in the Annie E. Casey Foundation’s report, Stronger Links: New Ways to Connect Low-Skilled Workers to Better Jobs, as well as by a recent evaluation of Minnesota’s sensible and successful Family Investment Act, state welfare policies that demonstrate a reluctance to provide work opportunity—the second pillar of the Personal Responsibility and Work Opportunity Reconciliation Act—are failing to the achieve the results of more forward-minded state policymakers.

Despite our local policy climate, and because we are committed to serving the diverse and multiple needs of our clients, WHEDCO offers a wide array of training opportunities and services that clients can piece together to suit their individual needs. Young and risk-taking, we have stepped outside of the mold of traditional social service programs and adopted some market-based strategies that focus on employment, micro-enterprise development, and revenue-generating training businesses, or "social ventures." And like any responsible job training program operating today, we continually track our clients’ outcomes in order to better understand what works in moving people out of poverty. Since 1998, we have placed 558 people in jobs paying an average hourly wage of $8.43. This hourly wage has been on an upward trend, reaching an average of $9.47 during the period of December 1999-May 2000. Approximately 75% of our placements include medical benefits.

THE IMPORTANCE OF "PLACE"

WHEDCO operates as a "place-based" organization in a variety of dimensions: from the location of our cornerstone project in a highly-visible, historically-significant building; to our concern for creating beautiful surroundings; to our involvement with local advocacy alliances in the planning of our projects; and finally, to our belief in the necessity of co-locating multiple services under one roof. The neighborhoods we serve have been described as "the most devastating urban calamity America has seen." The decline of the Bronx over a two-decade period from the 1950’s to the 1970’s was precipitated by a confluence of factors including federal highway construction, suburban development, disinvestment in basic municipal services, abandonment, and arson. By the early 1990’s when WHEDCO was formed, the rehabilitation of much of the abandoned housing stock was well underway; however, we recognized that accelerating the "come-back" of the Bronx required a large, highly visible project capable of addressing multiple needs of housing, employment and family well being. By creating a comprehensive, multiple use, place-based project, we sought to simultaneously address the need to stabilize families financially, educationally, and emotionally over the long term.

The Urban Horizons Economic Development Center is located in a building which, at separate turns, has been a focal point of both community disintegration and renewal. The massive Morrisania Hospital, built in 1926, once provided health care and stable jobs to thousands of area residents. In 1976, as the neighborhood was falling into disrepair and the city’s financial troubles made it impossible to sustain, the hospital was abandoned, and soon became a rat-infested denizen of drug use and crime—the symbol of all that was wrong with the Bronx. When Nancy Biberman led WHEDCO’s effort to reclaim the site and turn it into affordable housing and job programs, she aimed to restore not just the building, but also community pride. As Paul Goldberger, Architecture Critic for the New Yorker, so eloquently stated at WHEDCO’s opening ceremonies;

Creating a unique "sense of place" has been integral to WHEDCO’s mission ever since the serendipitous acquisition of the Morrisania Hospital demonstrated to WHEDCO’s founders the importance of physical beauty and quality architecture and design in awakening the hearts and minds of community residents. As was recently noted in a report by the Department of Housing and Urban Development, "simply giving people a roof over their heads is no longer enough. HUD now aims to boost community pride—and even revitalize distressed areas—through the provision of well-designed, high-quality housing." With this in mind, when WHEDCO adapted the hospital for low-income housing, we included details such as sconces and pilasters in the hallways, solid oak cabinets and ceramic tiles in the kitchens, and decorative flooring patterns—details that require higher up-front costs but reap long-term rewards in terms of easier maintenance and better stewardship by tenants.

In addition to beauty and good design, creating a prized sense of place also involves including citizens in decisions that will affect their lives, which in turn helps to build a long-term support structure to maintain the livability of neighborhoods in the future. From the inception of construction on this $23 million dollar restoration in 1995, WHEDCO has maintained an organizational commitment to the use of local and minority-owned businesses, subcontractors, suppliers, and construction labor. Of the more than 400 construction workers renovating Urban Horizons, over 85% were minorities and approximately 80% were from the local community. Approximately 28% of the subcontracts (percentage of total contract value) went to minority and/or women-owned firms. Over 93% of the contract value was subcontracted to local (NYC) based firms. The general contractor was a Bronx-based firm.

WHEDCO also worked closely in an advocacy alliance with the Parents’ Association of a local public school P.S. 235, which sought half of the former hospital site for a new public school. WHEDCO and the Parents’ Association became a "team" which made presentations about both our proposed projects at venues around the community and at required public approval meetings. Together, we achieved our goals: next to Urban Horizons now resides the Rafael Hernandez Dual Language Magnet School (CES/CIS 218), where WHEDCO offers an afterschool program for 350 children as well as Family Support services. [Over the next year, we aim to more fully integrate our staff into the academic portion of the school day].

During the planning process for Urban Horizons, WHEDCO also began to cultivate a cadre of neighborhood women in the South Bronx who could advise us in the project’s development. A series of leadership training sessions on public speaking, developing action plans, advocacy, handling racial and cultural differences, and other topics led to the formation of Bronx United Sisterhood Together (B.U.S.T.). The group served as a community advisory committee along with the Parents’ Association. Subsequent community leadership training initiatives have focused on other groups of women who are active in Morrisania schools, churches and tenant organizations.

The legacy of this collaborative planning process is reinforced everyday, when inspired residents, active in community political and economic life, walk down the street and remind themselves, "I helped build that." WHEDCO is committed to hiring staff from within our own neighborhood. We are proud to have hired 23 local low-income people, including 14 graduates of our own vocational training programs. Hiring local staff deepens our credibility in the neighborhood: "we walk the walk."

Although WHEDCO is place-based, with a strong and visible community presence, we are neither supportive housing nor a saturation project. The 132 families who live at 50 East 168^th Street—the renovated hospital building—are simply tenants. They enjoy easy access to our programs and free membership to our fitness center; however, they are under no obligation to participate in any of the center’s programs. In designing the building’s restoration, WHEDCO created separate entrances for the tenants and the economic development center participants in order to emphasize the distinct identities of both. This served to demonstrate beyond a doubt that the center "belonged" to the entire community, and at the same time freed the tenants from any notion that they were "living in a program," or subject to the landlord’s prescriptions of "how to live."

Working in a large urban neighborhood, WHEDCO cannot realistically achieve total saturation of its employment services. Rather, our strategy is to "seed" the community with new role models—people employed, upwardly mobile, linked to services, and in stable housing. Concentrating services in a single locality is made harder still by the stipulations of certain funding streams. For example, funding for one of our early job training programs from the Bronx Overall Economic Development Corp. required us to serve clients from the Empowerment Zone, located adjacent to, but not within, our own zip code. Funding from the Dept. of Housing and Urban Development (HUD) for our job readiness program for homeless families required us to outreach to Tier II homeless shelters located throughout a broad area of the Bronx. Similarly, our HomeBase program that moves families from dilapidated city-owned housing into Section 8 housing and employment requires us to work with a restricted population over a wide geographical area. The same holds true for our CasaWorks substance abuse treatment and employment program for mothers on public assistance. Recent funding from the Community Service Society for a Medicaid Managed Care Assistance Project was awarded on the basis of our ability to reach clients in the underserved North Bronx.

Once we step outside our immediate area, our referral base grows, creating a multiplier effect on our network. A recent geographic analysis of our client population revealed that, apart from participants in the After School program (located at the adjacent school that shares the former hospital complex), the majority of our clients come from outside our immediate zip code, from other South Bronx neighborhoods. Roughly 15% percent of our clients live outside the South Bronx, in other Bronx neighborhoods, and the remaining 5% travel from other boroughs—primarily for our highly specialized Culinary Arts Program, the likes of which is nearly impossible to find in other parts of the city.

WHEDCO recognizes that one size does not fit all when it comes to poverty alleviation strategies. We offer a range of employment services geared to adults, children, and families; within programs we have fast track and slow track strategies; we accommodate different learning styles through multi-lingual training, experiential and interactive adult learning; we encourage entrepreneurship through microenterprise training and support initiatives; and we build our participants’ confidence through hands-on work experiences.

Underpinning our pre-employment and vocational training are supportive services to address the multiple barriers to employment that many of our clients face, such as low literacy levels, poor English comprehension, chronic health issues, poor housing, and substance abuse. These services include social work advocacy and counseling; referrals to treatment for mental health and substance abuse problems; housing assistance; on-site childcare, youth programs, and family health care; and access to a network of home-based day care providers trained by WHEDCO staff. We also operate a fully equipped fitness center, (the first of its kind in the South Bronx) based on the belief that healthy lifestyles, fitness, and stress reduction are key contributors to job retention. The fitness center is open free of charge to our tenants and program participants (a modest membership fee is charged to community residents), and is a requirement for participants in several of our job training programs.

WHEDCO’s special commitment to serving the needs of low-income women is tied to the fact that women so often bear the dual responsibility of being wage earners outside the home as well as primary caregivers within the family. This situation is often compounded by the burdens of single parenthood. WHEDCO’s service orientation has always included the family unit. Women, men, and children are all participants of our programs. We serve them individually and in groups as the case calls for, but always with an awareness of the interpersonal, familial, and environmental influences on problems or needs, particularly those related to employment. This time tested "family systems" mode of social work practice imbues all of our efforts, as we work to strengthen the relationships within family groups, and between families and outside systems. For example, if a child at our afterschool program presents a serious discipline problem, our family support workers will begin by bringing that child’s family members to the table. Similarly, our CasaWorks program for substance-affected mothers often utilizes family counseling sessions to both uncover the roots of substance abuse (which are often generational) and to work on family strategies for recovery and relapse prevention.

WHEDCO offers on-site childcare for 94 children in our Head Start/Universal Pre-K Center, as well as afterschool programs for 350 students in our neighboring elementary school and summer camp for 150 youngsters. Lack of access to quality affordable childcare has proven to be one of the most serious obstacles facing low-income women joining and remaining in the workforce. By offering childcare as well as afterschool educational and recreational opportunities for elementary schoolchildren and teens, WHEDCO takes into account women’s responsibilities within the family unit.

Beyond solving the logistical question of childcare, WHEDCO also deploys its programs for children as a way to engage parents in our work. Our Head Start program follows the classic Head Start model of using Family Workers to involve parents in "action plans" for job training. Our afterschool program works to build parent involvement and leadership in a failing school where participation of parents in school activities is low. We stage a minimum of three types of events and joint parent/child projects each year. In addition, we assign our AmeriCorp worker as a parent organizer who facilitates parent-school communication through newsletters and flyers sent home with the kids, face-to-face contact with parents at bus stops, and telephone calls to parents prior to events.

At the social service and therapeutic levels, family interventions are deployed to deal with problems such as substance abuse, domestic violence, child abuse and neglect, and housing relocation. For example, our Family Support workers offer group counseling, peer support and mentoring programs, and workshops focusing on parent-child interaction and communication skill-building both at Urban Horizons and in our neighboring school. In some cases, we have even been called upon to conduct school workshops on bereavement and on conflict resolution. In another example, our forthcoming CasaSafeHaven program will focus on the dual and often competing needs of mothers recovering from substance abuse and their developing children, who are often at risk of abuse and neglect. CasaSafeHaven will use a family-centered model that simultaneously cares for both mothers and children, and serves as the glue holding together the traditionally disparate agendas of treatment, the family court/ child welfare system, and employment services.

All too often in the current environment of welfare-to-work, the long-term success of a client is sacrificed for expedient results in getting them off the rolls and into jobs. (As noted earlier, this is particularly problematic in New York’s welfare policy environment). Less attention is paid to whether those jobs are a good match for that individual, pay a living wage, offer health benefits, coordinate well with their family responsibilities, or hold out any chance for upward mobility. WHEDCO’s job training and placement staff are continually working to ensure the long-term success of their clients by a) providing them the right skills to get out the door, b) creating a sustainable match between employer and employee, and c) utilizing retention specialists to follow-up on clients once they are in the workforce, settling differences between employer and employee if necessary, helping a client resolve personal problems, or simply brushing-up skills. While many performance-based contracts require us to track their clients’ job retention over 30-, 90-, and 180-day periods, WHEDCO keeps in touch with our clients for a full year through phone calls to both clients and employers, advocacy regarding transitional benefits, invitations to speak with current WHEDCO classes, newsletters, "alumni" gatherings, continuing education offerings, and individual meetings on an ad-hoc basis. We hope to lengthen further still this period of contact, and are currently working with the Westchester Dept. of Social Services to help devise an effective long-term communication strategy to assess employee retention.

Apart from building trust and improving our relationships with clients, keeping track of clients over the long-term helps WHEDCO to better identify what among our programs works and what doesn’t in moving people out of poverty. All too often, information regarding client outcomes is poorly recorded or not recorded at all. To help WHEDCO track client outcomes, we have developed an automated database with 3,500 data fields and 350 screens that will allow us to correlate client outcomes with a wide range of variables, from demographic data to patterns of service utilization. This system is in its final testing stages, and should be fully implemented by Fall 2000.

PUBLIC POLICY

While data collection is essential for fine-tuning programs and improving accountability to funders, it is also fundamental to shaping public policy. As the consequences of welfare reform begin to manifest themselves, it will be incumbent upon community-based organizations like WHEDCO to contribute empirical learning to the debate. WHEDCO is fortunate to combine our direct community-based services to clients with an active public policy agenda. It has been our experience that operating as a "hybrid" benefits both ends of our agenda, because our service and policy work is mutually enriching. We work regularly with other organizations in the areas of welfare reform, housing development and finance, and nonprofit innovation. WHEDCO sees no contradiction between operating as a "place-based" organization whose voice can be heard at state and federal levels.

CONCLUSION

WHEDCO believes that the transition from welfare to work is a protracted process with a natural pattern of setbacks and incremental achievements. For this reason, we offer a variety of services over an extended period of time, and underpin all our employment initiatives with the necessary social supports, services, and follow-up activities to help people get and keep jobs. We recognize the importance of families in this process and the difficulties faced by single parents and households with a single wage earner, and therefore engage parents in our youth and childcare programs, address family needs through supportive services, and teach wage-earners how to build assets and "package" income through strategic use of wages, self-employment income, tax credits, savings, and public benefits. By embracing the concept of comprehensive community development in its fullest degree—from housing, to employment, to social supports in a family-centered framework—we seek to carry forward the best of community economic development of the past.