This report explores what Community Development Corporations (CDCs) contribute to the workforce development system in Massachusetts' neighborhoods, towns, and regions. This report argues that CDCs are assets in the state workforce development system because CDCs create and administer programs for low- and moderate-income workers to build individual skills, to connect people to job and social networks, and to expand working people's assets and opportunities.

Author: James Stevens

The Journal of Community Power Building is an exploration of power building among community development corporations (CDCs) and their leaders, working to achieve significant change in urban and rural communities throughout Massachusetts. In the first volume of the Power Journal, contributors were asked to explore fears and ambivalence about power in the move toward community change. In this second volume, we ask people from the community development field - leaders, organizers, as well as other staff members - to define justice, and describe how it informs the work they do.

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While the lack of affordable housing in Boston has been a chronic problem, recent years have proved critical to a workforce that has struggled to find homes that it can afford. In 2004, nearly half (47%) of Boston tenants spent more than 30% of their incomes on rent. Many families are paying beyond their means to stay in Boston, while others, especially young professionals, are leaving the city in search of cheaper housing. Between 2000 and 2004, Boston lost 18% of its population aged 20 to 34 and 11% of its overall population.

The City of Boston has employed its Inclusionary Development Policy to combat this problem. The policy requires developers to set aside 13% of each residential project as affordable housing in exchange for increased density allowances and other negotiated cost-offsetting bonuses. The City targets these affordable units to moderate-income and middle-income families, those earning up to $99,000.

Boston's policy has brought about measured success, having produced more than 600 affordable units and raised $11 million toward affordable housing production since 2000. However, cities across the Commonwealth and across the nation have generated higher production rates and stronger earnings, demonstrating that there is room for improvement here in Boston.

(Adapted from the Power Journal's Editors Letter)

The fourth edition of The Journal of Community PowerBuilding is a publication that chronicles power building within the neighborhoods of Massachusetts’s community development corporations(CDCs). With each edition of the Power Journal, we are collecting stories about community development “from the field.” They are written by CDC staff, board members, leaders and program participants and they document successes, reflections, and frustrations. We hope that over time, the Power Journal will become a critical reservoir of field observations about the community development field. In this issue, we talk about building relationships and revitalizing our communities, and specifically empowerment. We want to empower the communities in which we live and work;we want people to be empowered to effect change in their lives. We use empower so frequently that we can take its meaning for granted,and never fully understand the relationships that we have created when we empower others, become empowered ourselves, or build power together. But these relationships can be fragile, as we bring into them our own needs, expectations, and abilities and must mediate these with the needs, expectations, and abilities of others. Some of the questions we posed in this year’s call for papers:

How do we build relationships in a healthy community?
How does your position as a staff member or an activist affect your role in the power-building relationships you develop in your community?
How do you feel community empowerment benefits you, either materially or spiritually?
We hope you enjoy the Power Journal! Please contact shirrondaa@macdc.org for a complimentary copy.

This report surveyed non-profit housing agencies that provide counseling to homeowners facing foreclosure. These counselors are on the front lines of the foreclosure crisis working everyday with hundreds of homeowners across the state. The purpose of the survey was to learn which of the major servicers were the most and least responsive to the needs of homeowners and to see how the industry as a whole was responding. Responses to the survey were based on counseling done with over 1,100 Massachusetts homeowners facing foreclosure. The report found that the Mortgage Lending Industry’s response remains too slow, ad hoc and inconsistent. The report assigns letter grades for 10 major servicers in Massachusetts. Saxon and GMAC received the lowest grades. The report includes recommendations for action by the Federal Government and the industry.

Community development corporations (CDCs) have aggressively sought to green their community development activities in areas as diverse as developing green affordable housing to creating green parks and playgrounds to fostering green jobs.

CDCs promote environmental sustainability through a wide variety of means. MACDC has identified fifteen green strategies employed by CDCs through their green projects, programs and initiatives and tallied the number of CDCs employing each of these strategies.

As part of its work to continue to leverage educational partnerships, the Mel King Institute undertook an assessment of university-CDC collaborations in Massachusetts in 2012-13. We sought to understand the nature of those partnerships, and to identify places where the Mel King Institute might further these partnerships going forward.

Arts, culture, and creative placemaking are playing an increasingly important role in community development nationally and in Massachusetts. This topic has garnered significant attention in recent years, as more and more advocates, practitioners, and funders are recognizing the nexus between these fields and mobilizing more of this collaborative work.  Through this report, MACDC seeks to understand the entire landscape of creative community building in Massachusetts, from organizations like IBA that have years of experience at the intersection of arts, culture and community development, to relative newcomers like Worcester Common Ground who are in the beginning stages of taking on this work and everyone in between.

With nearly $24 million raised in 2014, 2015, and 2016 combined, the CITC program is driving success across the Community Development sector in Massachusetts.

The Community Investment Tax Credit was enacted by the Massachusetts Legislature in 2012 in order to “enable local residents and stakeholders to work with and through community development corporations to partner with nonprofit, public and private entities to improve economic opportunities for low- and moderate-income households and other residents in urban, rural and suburban communities across the Commonwealth." (M.G.L. c. 62, § 6M and M.G.L. c. 63, § 38EE)

This report examines whether the program, during its first three years of operation from 2014 to 2016, made progress toward this goal.

Click here to view the report. This report describes Massachusetts CDCs’ engagement in the health space and creates a basis from which to deepen this engagement – as individual CDCs and as the Community Development movement as a whole. 

Working with community residents is the core work of CDCs.  We interviewed dozens of people and reviewed many documents and websites to get a sense of where organizing and engagement work stand within our membership. We also worked with an Advisory Committee made up of CDC staff, organizers from other groups and a funder to garner additional input. The findings are documented in this report.