On September 15^th MACDC joined with partners from the Massachusetts Smart Growth Alliance, MAPC and CHAPA and testified before the Joint Committee on Community Development and Small Business in support of legislation to update the Commonwealth’s zoning laws. S.122, An Act Promoting the Planning and Development of Sustainable Communities is co-sponsored by Senator Dan Wolf, Rep. Sarah Peake, and Rep. Steve Kulik who noted “Our zoning laws are widely known to be as antiquated  and as out of touch with the modern world as any you’ll find anywhere in the country.”

S.122 will encourage new jobs and more housing, offering new models and resources for community planning and additional safeguards for public health and natural resource protection. Massachusetts and, in particular, the Greater Boston region will undergo dramatic changes in population over the next 25 years. More than a million workers will retire during this time, and we will need to attract younger workers from other places to sustain and grow our economy. With this shift in demographics and housing needs, the Metropolitan Area Planning Council (MAPC) and other experts suggest we need to build 500,000 new housing units between 2010 and 2040; 87 percent of that projected housing need is in Greater Boston, approximately two-thirds of which should be multifamily housing.

The bill presents a balanced, well-crafted approach that offers greater certainty and predictability for developers and property owners, enhanced protections for important natural and agricultural landscapes, and an enhanced set of tools and incentives for local officials and citizens to guide and shape the future of their communities. MACDC members have a long track record of balancing these three goal. CDCs work collaboratively with local residents and local governments to identify community goals and develop projects with strong local support. Over the years, our members have developed more than 17,000 apartments and hundreds of homeownership units as well as dozens of commercial buildings and green spaces. CDCs will benefit from the additional and expanded definitions and authorizations for many useful zoning techniques, including cluster development, inclusionary zoning, and variance provisions that will facilitate more community-scale residential projects as well as a consolidated permitting process that will benefit larger, more complex projects.

In 2008, at the height of the recession, the staff at Nuestra Communidad Development Corporation began to notice a pattern. As homes in their Roxbury, MA neighborhood became foreclosed and abandoned, neighbors began to increasingly complain about violent and criminal activities in or near the properties.  They also felt that the police were not helping.

“People were angry. They felt like the police weren’t doing enough, that they didn’t care.” said Monica Dean, Director of Community Organizing and Resident Services. “Neighbors accepted activities like prostitution as the norm because it wasn’t being addressed. They would call and nothing would happen”

Public health research has shown that fear of crime in a neighborhood has a negative impact on mental health and overall wellbeing, even if people are not directly affected by the crime.  Dean, who lives in the neighborhood, noted how crime affected her:

“Public safety just has a huge impact on your health and overall wellbeing. If you live in an environment that is safe, you are happy, you are comfortable, you’re not stressed.” said Dean, “You’re not planning your day around how to protect yourself.”

To confront the safety issues in the neighborhood, Nuestra CDC developed its Community Safety Initiative (http://nuestracdc.org/community-safety-initiative).  The initiative identified problem areas, redeveloped abandoned property and created coalitions of residents, police and other nonprofit organizations to address safety issues.

Nuestra CDC’s approach is one that has worked across the country. As addressed in Bill Geller and Lisa Belsky’s Building Our Way out of Crime: The Transformative Power of Police-Community Partnerships, communities in Charlotte, NC, Minneapolis, MN and Providence, RI have reduced crime and violence through similar approaches of addressing blight and creating community-police partnerships.

While these partnerships can be lasting and productive means to ensure safe communities, they can also be difficult to begin and navigate. There are some best practices, many of which Nuestra used along the way:

Use data to inform approach

Nuestra CDC’s first step was to work with the police and use their crime data to create a map of where crime was taking place in the community.

“Sure enough there was a connection between the vacant property and the drug dealing and prostitution that was going on” said David Price, Executive Director.

Focus on redevelopment in problem areas

After the mapping exercise, Nuestra CDC immediately filed code violations with the city to secure and clean up vacant buildings. They then bought some of the properties and worked to place residents into them. They began to have regular meetings where the police and community members would discuss problem properties in the area and create joint plans to address them. They also did larger multifamily development projects on vacant land in the area, where crime had been taking place even before the recession.

Take time to cultivate lasting relationships

Nuestra had to forge stronger relationships between the police and their organization as well as between the police and the broader community.

“One of the first things to do as a CDC is to get to know your local precinct captain at the police station.” said Price, “Find someone who understands community policing”

Nuestra brought their police officer partners to trainings on crime prevention provided by Local Initiatives Support Corporation (LISC) and NeighborWorks. Attending the trainings together allowed the organization and police department to get to know one another and also to make sure both were learning the same skills and approaches to community safety.

To facilitate relationships between police and community members, they organized weekly meetings between to discuss local crime, and also organized block parties to give police officers opportunities to get to know residents and build trust. Building mutual trust throughout the neighborhood made it easier for community members to call the police during an incident.

Engage partners

Once Nuestra had built up partnerships between residents and the police, they noticed that an important demographic was missing from their program: youth. Teenagers were the most likely to engage in gun violence in the neighborhood.

Nuestra did not have capacity as an organization to engage local youth, but they knew that Teen Empowerment, another Boston based organization, specialized in it. Nuestra provided one of their underutilized community rooms to Teen Empowerment and helped them expand their programs into the neighborhood.

Since working with Teen Empowerment, Nuestra has seen an increase in teen volunteers at their events. By getting to know young people, they have been able to tap into networks of youth and reach out to those engaging in criminal and violent activities. This year, Nuestra had the highest level of attendance ever for their youth peace march (shown in picture)

Now the recession is mostly over and crime levels have gone down, but the Community Safety Initiative still thrives. The partnerships that were developed have remained strong and are now working towards new challenges.

“Now that we’ve brought crime down, what neighbors really want to do is change the image of the neighborhood.” said David Price, “We have shifted our focus from preventing crime to neighborhood beautification by improving storefronts or adding new street art.”

While issues of violence and crime in any community will differ based on local circumstances, the approach of forging partnerships between police, community developers and residents, using data and redeveloping neighborhoods  is one that is adaptable to every community. As Nuestra CDC has also shown, the program can evolve to tackling new challenges as they emerge, creating truly resilient and thriving communities.

The Mel King Institute offered a training, Community Safety Seminar: Safe Streets, Sound Neighborhoods on September 21^st with the Local Support Initiatives Corporation. Check out the storify on the training.

Island Housing Trust Executive Director, Philippe Jordi, provided exceptional remarks at their annual event on August 16th.  They were also published by the MV Times.

"Have you ever stood outside on a clear Vineyard night and gazed at the mass of stars the Island sky offers us? I know I have, and I know that what I find fascinating about the night sky is that if you try to focus on an individual star, it immediately disappears from sight. The only way to appreciate the magnitude of each star is to take in the expanse of the night sky as a whole." CONTINUE READING

Cambridge based Just-A-Start Corporation just announced having received a $200,000 grant from the JP Morgan Chase Foundation for their 23 year old Biomedical Careers Program. This nine-month, tuition free program prepares Cambridge area adults with low-incomes for Biomedical Careers.

Starting a business is hard work. But Cassandria Campbell and her business partner Jackson Renshaw were determined to make it happen. Their goal was to bring fresh, locally-grown food to neighborhoods in Boston where healthy and affordable food can be hard to find. They created Fresh Food Generation, a farm-to-plate food truck and catering business that would source ingredients from the greater Boston area.

Cassandria and Jackson needed help to get off the ground, and they found it in Dorchester. Years ago, Dorchester Bay Economic Development Corporation saw the old, vacant Bornstein and Pearl Meats factory as a potential resource for growth in their community. They partnered with Crop Circle Kitchen to revitalize this former community landmark into a state-of-the-art culinary incubator. Dorchester Bay EDC spearheaded the $14 million project, and Crop Circle Kitchen shared their expertise in what food businesses need to get started and keep growing.

This collaboration produced the Bornstein and Pearl Food Production Center, a 36,000 square foot facility specially outfitted for food trucks and small enterprises. The Center provides businesses with commercial kitchen equipment and space to operate, as well as specialized technical assistance and access to capital.  By the end of 2014, there were 17 businesses and 71 people working there. And these businesses are growing.

Fresh Food Generation now employs five people and serves roughly 3,000 customers each month. For Cassandria and Jackson, it has been “the ideal kitchen space for us to start and build our company…Crop Circle has whole-heartedly supported our mission and has helped us work towards achieving our goals. The staff helped us streamline our operations so we were more efficient in the kitchen and helped us connect to funding and catering opportunities.”

Small businesses like Fresh Food Generation play a critical role in increasing access to healthy, local food in underserved communities. But they can’t do it all on their own. In the Pearl Food Production Center, the ingredients are all there for these businesses to grow.

Check out the MACDC GOALs report.

It’s rare that a pilot program can generate $45 million in new contracts in less than two years. But that’s just what happened when MACDC and the Massachusetts Minority Contractors Association (MMCA) came together to create the Boston Pilot Program. For John Cruz, winning one of those contracts was “like coming out of the drought” after the great recession. Cruz Construction won the $7.5 million contract to build the Walnut Avenue Apartments, a 31-unit project developed by Jamaica Plain Neighborhood Development Corporation. As a result, John Cruz has been able to build wealth in the community by hiring local residents. “Being from the community and also being a black-owned company, we have a commitment – and should have a commitment – to give more back to the community in which we reside.”

Minority-owned businesses like Cruz Construction often have a hard time getting contracts for Boston-area development projects. Women-owned businesses face a similar challenge. This means that they miss out on lucrative contracts and on the chance to grow their businesses and reach new markets. 

To address this problem, MACDC partnered with the Massachusetts Minority Contractors Association (MMCA) to launch the Boston Pilot Program in 2013. Six CDCs, including JPNDC, came together and pledged to boost the participation of minority- and women-owned businesses in their projects. 

While the City of Boston has targets for local, minority and women workers for city-funded projects under the Boston Resident Jobs Policy, there are no such requirements for projects to contract to businesses owned by women and/or people of color. The Boston Pilot Program is addressing this gap.   

By the end of 2014, the twelve participating projects had generated more than $45 million in business for minority- and women-owned firms. The projects exceeded the goal of having 30% of hard and soft costs awarded to minority-owned businesses, at 37%. Women-owned businesses received 9% of these costs, just shy of the program’s goal of 10%. This translates into real opportunity for businesses that are often overlooked or sidelined. 

As these twelve projects come to completion, the six CDCs, MMCA, and MACDC are planning the program’s next phase with a goal of sustaining and deepening the program’s impact. That’s good news for quality businesses like Cruz Construction that stand to find new opportunities for growth.

Check out the MACDC GOALs report.

Quarterly Reports Update:
As of the end of June 2015, $50 million in new contracts generated for MBE and WBE businesses.

Viet-AID announced yesterday that Hue Pham was their new Executive Director.  MACDC's board and staff looks forward to working with Ms. Pham as she builds upon Viet-AID's 21 year legacy of successfully helping lead the revitalization of the Field's Corner neighborhood in Dorchester.

Since the CITC program started last year, there has understandably been much discussion about how CDCs across Massachusetts are raising new funds and diversifying their overall funding base (CITC: By the Fundraising Numbers). But what’s of even greater importance is how these organizations are actually using these funds to deepen their impact on people and places. Even though 2014 was the first year of the Community Investment Tax Credit, and the majority of donations arrived during the final quarter of the year, we are already beginning to see the impact of this program.

MACDC and DHCD surveyed all 36 CDCs that participated in the CITC program in 2014 and found that 64% of them expanded their organization’s goals and 89% deepened their community engagement. Check out the table (PDF) to see all of the results from our survey.

A core goal of the CITC Program is to encourage and support CDCs to meaningfully engage local residents in leadership roles. So we were pleased to see that 89% of the CDCs reported that the program helped them expand their community engagement work, 67% said it resulted in more board engagement, and 58% said it helped generate more volunteers. A second goal of the CITC program was to help CDCs offer a more comprehensive array of programs to their community that combines real estate development with business development, family asset building and community programing. Many CDCs are using their new CITC funds to do just that with CDCs also using it boost their small business work (25%), their workforce development activities (22%), their family asset building programs (33%) and their programs for youth & seniors (25%).

CITC funds are typically unrestricted, which means that they can also be used to build internal capacity. Therefore, we were not surprised to learn that 83% reported that they increased their operational capacity, with 33% of CDCs using CITC to expand their communications capacity; 28% to expand fundraising capacity; and 28% to improve information systems critical to measuring impact. This was indeed part of what we hoped to accomplish with the program since these capacities are key attributes of successful, 21^st century CDCs. Equally exciting, 89% of the CDCs said the program would help them increase their organizational budget and 75% said it would help them leverage non-CITC funding.

The CITC program is just getting started.  The early results suggest that the program is both growing resources for the field and enabling CDCs to strengthen and deepen their efforts. At the same time, we have room for growth and room for improvement. MACDC looks forward to working with our members and partners to ensure that CITC program reaches its full potential to help the people and places of Massachusetts thrive.

MACDC set out earlier this year to learn more about what our members are doing to participate within and grow the creative economy here in Massachusetts. We knew our members were involved in a wide variety of activities, but what we learned surprised even us!

According to our newly released report, Creative Community Development in Massachusetts,  22 CDCs are actively engaged in fostering the creative economy, while 17 are involved in creative placemaking and 14 use arts and culture in their community organizing work (a total of 29 groups responded to our survey).  Clearly, CDCs across Massachusetts are investing significant time, energy and resources to stimulate and draw upon creative enterprises and expression to further their organization’s mission and goals.

Some of MACDC’s members have been engaged in these efforts for decades, while others are new to exploring methods where an emphasis on creative engagement through arts, literature and music, can further transform their work. Their activities may add renewed vitality to their communities and further transform neighborhoods and towns across Massachusetts. An emphasis on local culture and geography is a way for people to celebrate their communities, connect with a transcendent history – through art, music and storytelling – and reimagine a vibrant future view of a community that connects seamlessly with its past.  And the trend line is clear – more and more groups are incorporating the arts into their work in exciting and creative ways.

Learn more about what CDCs are doing to develop and support the creative economy in their regions through our report:  “Creative Community Development in Massachusetts.”

Members of MACDC met with leaders from Boston 2024 on July 24 to learn more about the proposed Olympic bid and to discuss how the games will ensure an equitable legacy in terms of housing, displacement, jobs, parks and transportation. The meeting was in response to an earlier letter that MACDC had sent back in February. Boston 2024 outlined impressive plans for 8,000 new housing units, new roads and infrastructure and expanded green space and parks. At the same time, MACDC urged Boston 2024 to increase the proposed amount of affordable housing at Midtown and Columbia Point and to develop a strategy for minimizing displacement during the summer of 2024 when millions of out of visitors could displace low income tenants. MACDC members also raised concerns about the loss of local jobs and the need to make sure that business and employment opportunities generated by the Olympics are shared broadly and fairly across the City.