StoryCorps, PBS and WGBH were in residence at Viet-AID's center on Charles Street in Dorchester earlier in March. Their purpose was to interview and record Vietnamese-American refugees and US veterans telling their stories following the war. The interviews are a part of the "First Days Story Project." The project invites members of the Vietnamese-American community, and Vietnam veterans, with strong ties to the post war diaspora and evacuation to have a conversation with a loved one or friend, in order to document the Vietnamese-American refugee experience through the voices of those who lived it.

"This project is amazing in that until now, there has not been a large scale effort to collect the many stories, the many voices of Vietnamese-Americans and their exodus," says Van Paul Le, a Boston attorney and interim executive director of the Vietnamese-American Initiative for Development, Inc., who is also one of the participants of this project.

The participants’ experiences were very poignant, and it was truly meaningful for them to remember and share their stories. "I remember my own family's journey in April of 1975," Van shared. "We fled by boat at dusk, with gunfire aimed at us as we fled to the open ocean. We had no destination but were hoping to be rescued by the US Navy. After many days, we were finally picked up by a ship bearing the American flag, and ultimately resettled in America." Participants also brought in their photos and memorabilia, bringing their stories even more to life. Many participants expressed their gratitude for this opportunity to share their stories, not just with the public, but with their family as well, as they felt it brought them closer together.

"I think you will find that the stories are filled with simple, inspiring acts of heroism, charity and hope, reminding us of the sacrifices that were made so that we can enjoy the freedom and opportunities we have today," Van said. Viet-AID is thrilled and honored to be a part of this inspirational project.

Copies of the interviews will be posted on the First Days Story Project website and permanently archived at the American Folklife Center at the Library of Congress.

Vacant, abandoned and blighted properties have challenged community developers, housing advocates, tenants and municipal officials for years. Recently, the Center for Community Progress (www.communityprogress.net) brought together practitioners from Massachusetts and two other states to address the challenges posed by these properties through the Community Progress Leadership Institute (CPLI), a four-day symposium held at Harvard Law School.   

Three communities from Massachusetts (Brockton, Fitchburg and Lawrence) were chosen through a competitive process to participate in CPLI last month, along with MACDC, the MA Attorney General’s office, and representatives from cities in Missouri and North Carolina.  Each Massachusetts city delegation included a representative from a CDC (Neighbor Works of Southern MA in Brockton, Twin Cities CDC in Fitchburg, and Lawrence Community Works in Lawrence), along with city officials from local departments including City  Solicitors, Community Development Directors, and representatives from departments responsible for code enforcement, public health, and tax collection.  Most of the sessions focused on the numerous challenges associated with blighted properties and creative strategies for addressing them.  These included sessions on using data and analyzing markets; property tax systems and receivership; code enforcement, and land banking.  The Institute also offered some valuable sessions on the type of collaborative leadership needed to solve these challenges. The Institute culminated in State-specific planning sessions, where all the participants from Massachusetts could discuss how to take what we have learned and shared back to our communities.

Some of the key take-aways for me included:

Understanding markets is key to identifying successful strategies for a property or a neighborhood.  Markets are a driving factor when people consider where to live, invest, or build.  All strategies to address individual properties or neighborhoods are affected by the market, but markets are not all-powerful.  There are strategies than can influence the market.  Effective strategies are driven by data that can tell you how well the market is working and what affects the market.  There are national data sources (such as the Census and the U.S. Postal Service), local data sources (such as property records and tax records), and “point-source data”- data you can collect on individual properties.  Once you have the data, you can collaborate with others, in City government and outside of it, to develop a neighborhood action plan.

Code enforcement strategies should be applied strategically based on market factors.  Strategic code enforcement involves understanding your inventory of blighted properties, using data to identify a menu of remedies, and making market-driven decisions to deploy scarce resources.  This can be effective in all but the weakest markets.  In very weak markets, a strategy of boarding up vacant buildings and cleaning up illegal dumping may be appropriate.

Court-Ordered Receivership has proven to be effective tool.  Under Receivership, a Court appoints a receiver to manage blighted properties (vacant or occupied), spend on necessary repairs, and put a lien on the properties for the costs incurred.  In a middle-market neighborhood, where properties have value, the threat alone of Receivership may be enough incentive for a property owner to make the necessary repairs.  If there are a large number of blighted properties in a neighborhood, Receivership may be the best strategy for addressing blight.  Through the Attorney General’s Abandoned Housing Initiative, Massachusetts has aggressively addressed vacant properties in a number of communities.

Property tax systems need to be efficient, effective, and equitable.    An efficient system establishes clear timelines for each stage of enforcement, including what a property owner must pay and when the owner can redeem the property. An effective system yields maximum payments and avoids abandonment and deterioration.  An equitable system provides built-in circuit breakers for targeted populations (such as elderly, disabled and low-income people), with a clear program of hardship payment plans for certain properties.  While some municipalities sell their tax liens for an immediate infusion of cash, this means losing control of the properties and foregoing the interest payments associated with tax delinquent properties.

You don’t need to have a Land Bank to do land banking.  A Land Bank is a public entity that focuses on the conversion of vacant, abandoned, and tax-delinquent properties into productive use.  It can be an effective tool where other tools fail: when code enforcement is not effective because property owners have no economic incentive to invest in repairs, and where owners who acquire properties auctioned due to tax foreclosure repeat the cycle of disrepair.  Syracuse, New York pursued an aggressive strategy of tax foreclosure, resulting in a significant payment of delinquent taxes, a portion of which were used to fund the operation of the Greater Syracuse Land Bank to acquire many of the properties whose owners continued to neglect both their properties and their tax obligations.  While Massachusetts does not have State enabling legislation to allow municipalities to establish Land Banks, many communities have Redevelopment Authorities with untapped power and potential to acquire and convert properties to productive use, i.e. to “land bank”.

It all needs to work together.  On the last day of CPLI, all the participants from Massachusetts met to discuss their priorities and how they could work together to implement the strategies discussed over the prior three days.  We discussed the need for improved data collection systems, ideas for incentivizing compliance with code enforcement, strategies for dealing with tax title properties, and how to use the State’s Receivership statute to greater effect.  Within each City, all agreed that a more systematic and integrated system for addressing blighted properties can be accomplished through the cooperation of the various local stakeholders.  Statewide, we agreed that re-convening the participants to discuss strategies and share progress would be helpful- for the three communities involved in CPLI and other municipalities statewide.  MACDC and the MA Attorney General’s office agreed to convene the group and to organize a training on Receivership, as the first steps in an ongoing process.

Each vacant, abandoned and blighted property has a story, and typically its condition results from a number of inter-related and reinforcing factors- a weak real estate market, a neglectful property owner, and/or a lack of effective government response. By approaching the problems associated with these properties in a data-driven, collaborative, and aggressive manner, many of these properties can be turned around- resulting in better living conditions for residents, stronger neighborhood markets, and more housing for Massachusetts residents. 

Dillon Bustin, artistic director at Hibernian Hall, has announced that Jacqui Parker will be Visiting Playwright during 2015-2016.  "I'm very pleased that Ms. Parker has agreed to grace our stage with her acting and directing as well as her scripts during the next two seasons," said Bustin in making the announcement.  Parker says she is thrilled with the invitation from Hibernian Hall, and she plans to write and direct two plays in 2015 during the first half of the residency.   The first is "Roads to Wisdom," celebrating life stories of elders in Roxbury.  This play, written in affiliation with Project Right in Grove Hall, will be presented at Hibernian Hall on May 14-17.  Her original play "A Crack in the Blue Wall," about a young black male shot by a white police officer, will have a try-out production July 9-12, and a fully staged extended run in November.  In this drama Parker will address the breakdown of the family of the victim as well as a breakdown in the justice system.Photo Credit:  Redford Lee

When Kim Shkapich re-located to the Lower Cape from New York City almost a decade ago, she was prepared to ‘reinvent’ herself. She had had a thriving career in the city, but it was time for something new. Her background and expertise is in architecture and design. But, she had life-long talents for cooking and preserving—skills she had learned as a pre-teen from her working mother. She knew she wanted to incorporate these skills into her new livelihood. So shrubs and rubs, drinking vinegars, spices, and jams and jellies became her focus.

Creating the products came naturally to Kim, but on the business side she needed some support. Early on she participated in the Community Development Partnership’s Smart Start workshop and SCORE Cape Cod’s business planning series. From these she learned some business basics to kick start her business—Lola’s Local Food Lab. After that she started meeting monthly with SCORE mentors at the Community Development Partnership offices. During these sessions she received individual guidance for her business. “The mentors have been helpful with the business structure and financials. They keep me on track", said Kim about the meetings. "They have also been so enthusiastic and supportive. With thought provoking conversations that provide me with a different perspective on the business, they have been a tremendous resource as my business has grown.”

And that growth has included branching out in a variety of ways. She participates at local Farmer’s Markets (you can find her at the Orleans Winter Farmers’ Market right now). And—new this summer—Kim will be opening her own retail space. She’s thrilled to be able to have a home base from which to sell her products. And she's excited to expand her products and services to include food classes and foods to go. Also stay tuned for her new website, which she’s working on with a professional services grant the Community Development Partnership offers via the Massachusetts Growth Capital Corporation. This grant helps business owners access professional services at a more affordable rate. By using local resources, prudence, and lots of hard work Lola’s Local Food Lab and the new life Kim had envisioned for herself have flourished.

MACDC President Joe Kriesberg and Executive Director of Asian CDC, Janelle Chan, now serve as two of several new members to the New England Community Development Advisory Council. This council provides instrumental support to the Federal Reserve Bank of Boston on issues pertinent to community development and ways in which the bank can improve communities and the lives of low and moderate income families. The council is representative of several different sectors from across New England, including academic institutions, foundations, community organizations, private non profit  developers, state and local government, and banks. The work of the Advisory Council plays a role in the larger system of Federal Reserve Banks as well, providing national support to community development initiatives as a whole. ​Joe Kriesberg has also been chosen to serve on the Housing Matters Advisory Committee. How Housing Matters, an organization sponsored by the MacArthur Foundation and the Urban Land Institute, produces key research on how education, economy, and health​ can be improved by affordable housing.Congratulations Joe and Janelle!

Joe Kriesberg and David Bryant recently met with Steve Grossman and his staff from the Initiative for a Competitive Inner City (ICIC) to learn about two of their programs designed to help small businesses develop, thrive and grow at different stages. Here is a brief overview of the programs, Inner City Capital Connections and the Goldman Sachs 10,000 Small Businesses (10KSB) programs. We urge you to share this information with small business partners in your communities.

Both the Inner City Capital Connections Program (ICCC) and 10KSB Program help small businesses at different stages of their growth cycle. The 10KSB program provides the foundational tools necessary to build a growth plan. The Inner City Capital Connections Program works with companies who have a growth plan to help them build capacity and access capital needed to drive continued growth.

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Inner City Capital Connections (ICCC) is a national program designed to accelerate small business growth and access to capital. ICCC helps firms in the growth-to-exit stage overcome obstacles to reach their respective goals. Our participants experience different business challenges from the need for capital to restructuring growth strategies.

Our executive education will be held in Philadelphia, Birmingham, Dallas and Boston. The culminating conference will be held in New York.

Companies must have the following qualifications:

• Independent, for-profit corporation, partnership or proprietorship
• Inner city location—headquarters or 51%+ of physical operations in economically distressed urban areas of the U.S. or have 40% or more of your employees residing in an economically distressed area.
• Revenues of $2 million or more in 2014.

If you have any questions, please email Hyacinth Vassell at hvassell@icic.org.

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Goldman Sachs 10,000 Small Businesses Program

Goldman Sachs 10,000 Small Businesses is a world class entrepreneurship education program that provides small business owners with the opportunity to step away from day-to-day operations and focus on growth. In professional workshops, business owners will:

• Learn from some of the brightest minds in business
• Explore opportunities to access financial capital
• Build a powerful network of professional support

If accepted, program tuition is at no cost to the business owner!

With the launch of 10,000 Small Businesses at Babson College in late 2013, the 10,000 Small Businessesprogram is now available to business owners from all 50 states. This unique model of the program, our National Cohort, connects small business owners with a nationally-sourced class of peers for 11 weeks of practical business education delivered through a blend of online facilitated learning and on campus sessions at Babson College. All business owners graduate with a customized 5-year strategic growth plan for their business.

There is no cost to apply, and all accepted business owners receive a full scholarship to participate. All reasonable travel and accommodation costs associated with the trips to Babson College are covered as part of this scholarship.

The program’s qualifying criteria are as follows:

• The applicant is a small business owner or small business co-owner
• The business has been in operation for at least two years
• The business revenues were are at least $150,000 in the most recent fiscal year
• The business has a minimum of four employees (including the owner)

The application deadline for the upcoming fall 2015 National Cohort is April 20^th, 2015. Applications are reviewed on a rolling basis, so business owners are encouraged to apply early! For more information, please visit www.10ksbapply.com or email 10KSB@icic.org

Massachusetts is home to many outstanding “housers,” but sadly we lost two of our best last week when Michael Stone and Florence Hagins passed away.

Florence was the Assistant Director for the Massachusetts Affordable Housing Alliance until her retirement a few years ago, but she was much more than that too.  She was a devoted mother, community activist and the first person to ever buy a home with the Massachusetts Soft Second Mortgage program in 1991 – the first of more than 18,000 first-time homebuyers to use the program. Florence was just another community member hoping to buy a home when she ran into the same obstacles facing many moderate-income families of color in Boston. Then she discovered MAHA and the Soft Second Program and everything changed. She bought a house, became a volunteer, a staff member, and ultimately Assistant Director. Along the way, she negotiated with bank presidents and lobbied legislators and inspired all of us who do this work.  All of us who knew her and worked with her will miss her deeply. You can learn more about her extraordinary life by reading this tribute from MAHA.

Michael recently retired as a Professor at UMass Boston where he had taught and wrote about affordable housing for decades. Of course, it was hard to tell that Michael had retired because he remained so active – serving on boards of housing nonprofits, conducting research, developing policy proposals, advocating, teaching, mentoring, and motivating all of us who had the honor of knowing him. Michael worked with the Boston Tenant Coalition, the Coalition for Occupied Housing in Foreclosure (COHIF), City Life Vida Urbana, and many others. His book Shelter Poverty: New Ideas on Housing Affordability has been called "the definitive book on housing and social justice in the United States." I can recall many conversations and debates with Michael where we would pore over his numbers and try to reach a common understanding. Sometimes we did. Sometimes we didn’t.  But I also felt respected and always learned something in the course of our discussions.  A few days ago, Michael passed away tragically while on vacation in Hawaii. All of us are still in shock. He was a good man who did important and impactful work that will long be remembered.

May the memories of these two wonderful people serve as inspiration to the rest of us who carry on the work of making sure that everyone has a safe and decent place to call home.

This month, the Somerville Community Corporation's (SCC) First Source Jobs Initiative celebrates one year of connecting local job seekers with local jobs. It's a clear-cut mission, but one that takes many hands, minds and partners to make a reality.

Stemming from SCC's Jobs for Somerville organizing work, and in partnership with the City of Somerville and The Career Place, SCC launched First Source in March 2014 to provide soft-skill workshops and individual case management to best match Somerville job seekers to local employers. With an emphasis on residents facing barriers to employment, First Source quickly expanded its vision, participation and impact throughout the year, illustrating a great need for support services like this in Somerville.

First Source "Year 1" Highlights:

• Hosted 48 soft-skills workshops on things as financial education and  interviewing tips, reaching 125 individuals and enrolling 256 to the talent bank;
• Enrolled 154 people into talent bank through active intakes, identifying more than twice as many people than predicted actively seeking employment;
• Performed case management with over 130 people, assisting on a individual basis with resume preparation and mapping out a goals to secure ideal employment;
• Helped 61 people find job placements in Somerville;
• Registered 77 employers to support local hire;
• Held 2 Job Fairs, attracting 118 job seekers;
• Supported 53 youth ages 18-24 under the new Pocket Change with job training and short and long-term employment and 20 of them obtained employment

It truly is a time to celebrate 
While SCC's vision for First Source and its impact on the Somerville community continues to grow into its second year, so does its funding. We thank the City of Somerville for its continued support for this program which will benefit so many residents.
For more information on First Source, contact Jorge Colón 617-776-5931 x232 or jcolon@somervillecdc.org.

How do you know if your programming is making a difference?  How are you measuring your organization’s impact?  If you can provide direct first-hand experience in a compelling narrative for one situation or family with whom you provided critical support, then you’re off to a strong start.  But, of course, it’s not enough anymore to send along one or maybe two success stories to a funder; and personal narrative doesn’t help you identify trends and patterns as readily as data.  Of course, data is a vague term and even idea to many.  Often, discussing how to measure the impact of an organization can quickly become supplanted by how much is this going to cost and statements, such as “I can’t dedicate half my staff to measuring what the other half of the team is doing!”  This is where a consultant in operations can be of great value to identify what needs to be tracked, measured and quantified, and, of course, how to do it without consuming mission-critical resources.

As a professor in business operations and management at UMass Boston, I first became interested in the work of CDCs when I learned about the vital role they play in providing affordable housing. After coming to UMass Boston, I directed a class project with MACDC as the client, and saw how impactful the field was to many communities across Massachusetts.

My research and community service has taught me that many organizations struggle to acquire, use and share data to improve daily operations, or to make difficult strategic decisions. One community development corporation wanted to prevent blighted properties from falling into the hands of ‘slumlords’. The CDC, however, could not develop all of the properties it had acquired in a timely manner – putting it at risk of becoming, in the eyes of community members, just as bad as the slumlords they were acting against. Another CDC was well-respected for their work in acquiring and redeveloping distressed housing, but wanted to do a better job identifying acquisition opportunities on the basis of characteristics they didn’t know how to measure: a property’s ‘strategic value’, and its potential contribution to  stabilizing local property values.

How could these organizations, and many like them, use data to make their organizations and their communities stronger?

One answer to this question is provided by the field of ‘analytics’. Analytics is the process of applying know-how to data to answer questions that can enable organizations to better fulfill their missions. Analytics can seem unfamiliar, or maybe not relevant to the challenge of serving and uplifting our communities, but it’s an important aspect of solving daily problems and setting strategic priorities.

Community-based nonprofits, mission-driven and resource-limited, don’t have much time or expertise to devote to analytics – there are proposals to write, staff to manage, clients to be served, all in an environment of shrinking, or at least shifting, resources. How could these organizations afford to hire data-savvy consultants?

The Institute for Operations Research and the Management Sciences (INFORMS, www.informs.org) has developed a new initiative that can meet this important need of nonprofits, especially smaller, community-focused organizations. Called “Pro Bono Analytics," it connects nonprofits who need to use data to answer hard questions with volunteer experts who will work with these nonprofits to collect, analyze and share data – all for free.

If you work for an organization that would benefit from using data to help track performance and community impact, but can’t afford the time or resources to get the job done right, Pro Bono Analytics wants to help. 

For example:

• How do we know if our programs are making a difference? Do they justify the time and effort we put into them?
• We want to start a new program – but what is the need for it? How can we convince funders to support the initiative?
• How can we redesign our initiatives to be as efficient and as effective as possible?

Pro Bono Analytics exists to answer these and other important questions. We’re different from students whose good works may not last after they graduate, or researchers who may produce studies that will sit on your shelves. Instead, we’re professionals in analytics who are committed to community service, and we want to help your organizations become as successful as possible, for free. If you’d like your organization to start a project with Pro Bono Analytics, or just want to learn more about analytics for nonprofit organizations, contact Prof. Michael Johnson at michael.johnson@umb.edu.

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Michael Johnson is a professor in the Department of Public Policy and Public Affairs, University of Massachusetts Boston. His research focuses on decision models and analytics for housing and community development. He is a member of INFORMS and the Boston node of the Urban-Based Research Action Network, Urban.Boston. More information about his research, teaching and service can be found at http://works.bepress.com/michael_johnson/. 

Earlier this month, over 30 representatives from Massachusetts, including 4 MACDC staff, converged on Washington D.C., bringing snow and a city shutdown with them, to join peers from across the country for the People and Places Conference.  With close to 500 participants and 150 speakers, the conference highlighted the role that local practitioners are playing in fostering long-term, positive and durable change for low-income people and places. The conference was a joint project of the National Association of Community Economic Development Associations (NACEDA), the National Association for Latino Community Asset Builders (NALCAB), the National Coalition for Asian Pacific American Community Development (National CAPACD) and the National Urban League.

The conference had four major themes that provided an overarching outline to addressing critical needs in low- and moderate-income communities:  community control, capital flow, neighborhood level economies and thriving people.  Dozens of workshops were included within each of these four themes – with several Massachusetts –based practitioners highlighting their work.  

“I was very pleased to see this conference achieve both of its core goals,” said MACDC President Joe Kriesberg, who is currently serving as chair of the NACEDA Board of Directors. “First, we wanted to foster greater unity within the community development field by bringing together diverse leaders from throughout the country. Second, we wanted to highlight the exciting work being done by local practitioners who are adapting and innovating to the changing times and creating a community development movement for the 21st Century.  We did both.”

Going forward, the conference organizers will seek to build on their emerging partnership to create a stronger voice for community development practitioners in Washington, DC.  There also appear to be some emerging opportunities for new collaborations across the sector in such diverse areas as pay-day lending and responding to gentrification and red-hot real estate markets.  Keep reading the MACDC Notebook to learn about these and other efforts as they unfold.