CPN is designed and maintained by ONline @ UW: Electronic Publishing Group.

Manuals and Guides: Community

Community Building in Public Housing
Ties That Bind People and Their Communities, continued

April 1997

Manual Index

Foreword
Preface
Acknowledgments
Introduction

I. Community Building: Emerging as a Key Strategy for the 21st Century
What Is Community Building?
Principles of Community Building
Why the Community-Building Trend Is Emerging Now

II. Community-Building Steps for Public Housing Authorities
Preparing a Mission Statement
Naming a Community-Building Facilitator
Creating a Representative Community Organization
Assuring that Management Is Connected and Responsive to Residents Modifying the Physical Setting

III. Community-Building Strategies: Some Examples
Engaging in Community
Setting Community Standards
Increasing Access to Opportunities

IV. Community Building Through Partnerships: Some Examples
Building Bridges to Resources and Real Opportunities
Addressing Health Problems
Combating Substance Abuse
Helping Families Acquire Survival Skills
Addressing Teens' Physical and Emotional Health
Helping Residents Acquire Education and Skills to Succeed
Opening a Wide Range of Opportunities

V. Conclusion
Endnotes

Contents

I. Community Building: Emerging as a Key Strategy for the 21st Century
What Is Community Building?
Principles of Community Building
Why the Community-Building Trend Is Emerging Now

Part I

Community Building:Emerging as a Key Strategy for the 21st Century

Today's changing policy environment is causing public housing managers to seek new ways to accomplish the traditional goals of providing decent, low-cost housing and helping residents to move toward independence. Historic changes occurring through welfare reform are bound to have a major impact on public housing. Federal housing subsidies also seem to be on an irreversible downward path. Meanwhile, demolition of some of the largest and most troubled public housing projects, and far-reaching reforms of Federal rules, are changing the face of public housing.

As Federal resources diminish, public housing authorities (PHAs) are increasingly turning toward a largely untapped resource of public housing communities themselves: the self-help energy of residents. They are providing childcare and helping residents combat crime and drug activity, improve their children's school performance, create small service businesses, learn trades through apprenticeship programs, provide input into building and grounds design, and much more. Moreover, they are coming to appreciate that directing efforts toward strengthening the public housing community itself can begin to build a supportive social environment that creates a more fertile ground for the struggle for independence of individuals.

Given this new policy environment, PHAs are initiating new activities and reexamining existing ones with the purpose of furthering two goals:

• Helping residents out of poverty permanently.
• Strengthening public housing communities to create an environment supportive of lasting independence.

Activities that further these outcomes-whether part of long-existing programs or growing out of new initiatives-have recently come to be grouped under the name of community building.

Recognition of the importance of community building has evolved out of experience in public housing as far back as the community-organizing efforts of the Model Cities programs of the 1960s and 1970s, and including the social and supportive services component of the Community Development Block Grants of the 1970s and 1980s, the Family Self Sufficiency and Family Investment Center programs of the 1990s, and, most important, the new HOPE VI program. Community building is not a program or a procedure but is instead an approach to carrying out familiar activities engaging residents in community service, providing job training and supportive services, and stimulating resident's participation in economic development-that actively fosters stronger communities and enhances the capacity of communities and individuals to help themselves.

This report explains what community building is, why it makes sense for public housing communities today, and how PHAs can work with resident organizations to implement it. By becoming more aware of community-building principles, public housing managers can more effectively evaluate their existing supportive service programs and design new ones with these principles in mind. This first section explains the nature and goals~s of community building. Part II explains specific institutional steps that housing authority managers can take to implement community building activities. Part III and Part IV present examples of programs that exemplify community-building principles from public housing and other poor communities around the country.

Back to top

What Is Community Building?

The dynamic of community building tends to operate spontaneously in neighborhoods marked by a strong social infrastructure an extensive grassroots network of churches, schools, banks, businesses, and neighborhood centers-that nourishes and supports the life of the community. The purpose of community-building activities as described in this report is to develop and strengthen the basic dynamic of community functioning in neighborhoods where it is not operating well.

Beneath the obvious problems of even the most distressed low-income urban neighborhood lies a great reservoir of human energy and aspiration. But many residents in these neighborhoods are trapped in poverty, in part because intangible catalysts found in the community's social life, institutions, and relationships have become weakened.

Unlike most approaches, community building is not about simply giving money or services to poor people. Its aim is developmental rather than transactional, community-oriented rather than focused on individuals. That is, unlike traditional supportive approaches, it is not centered on transmitting a specific service or package of services to an individual in need, transactions that can be clearly defined and completed. Rather, community building is a process. Its goals are to build the independence of individuals and increase the healthy functioning of communities. These goals are seen as reciprocal, each strengthening the other.

Other strategies to improve conditions in poor neighborhoods have tended to be categorical in nature. Traditional human service programs-sometimes called people-based strategies-offer a defined service or package of services to individuals. The place-based community development corporations, in contrast, focus on physical development, such as housing or commercial structures. Community building is both people- and place-based and this strategy brings together "top-down" management styles and "bottom-up" resident-driven initiatives within a community to provide effective solutions to community problems.

A well-functioning community-regardless of socioeconomic level-provides an environment within which its members are able to establish standards of acceptable behavior that reflect the values of the group and advance its common goals. Community links provide the means to hold individuals accountable to those values. In communities, people pool assets to create opportunities, interacting and cooperating to foster the quality of life they want for themselves and their children. They come together to form the clubs; churches; scouting programs; educational institutions; and financial, recreational, and other associations that support and transmit the values shared by the community. Such cooperation supports families in their work of nurturing future productive members of society. Community networks carry invaluable information concerning paths to success, the progress of role models, educational resources, and employment opportunities.

Through neighborhood institutions, people shape the community's agenda, establish its priorities, and influence community outcomes.

The relationships created and nurtured by such community structures become a kind of social capital. Social capital is analogous to human capital, a term that economists use to refer to the education and skill that individuals build by going to school, engaging in job training, taking on apprenticeships, and so on. All things being equal, individuals with a greater investment in human capital will achieve greater lifetime earnings. Similarly, when individuals direct their time and energy to building the social capital of the communities in which they live, they create an enriched social environment for everyone. Community-building initiatives that work do so by redirecting the energy of residents away from dependency and a victim mentality toward positive and constructive goals for the wider community. Creative partnerships with government agencies, nonprofit groups, and local businesses result in new resources and broader horizons.

Individuals then can access a greater range of opportunities. In these initiatives, each partner-public sector, community, and private sector-plays an essential role. Without the input and energy of each group, community building could not go forward.

Community building is intended to aid public housing residents in rebuilding social structures and relationships to replace the functions of the formal and informal community institutions and networks weakened by decades of outmigration, disinvestment, and isolation. It aims to restore the functions of the lost mediating institutions-community groups, extended family ties, and employment networks -that once flourished in even the poorest inner-city neighborhoods. The mediating institutions that are infusing new social capital into public housing neighborhoods include, for example, Community Education Teams in Portsmouth, Virginia; the Alonzo Watson Housing University in South Bend, Indiana; 1-year construction apprenticeships through Baltimore's Step Up program; a Family Investment Center with a holistic approach to getting families on their feet in Montgomery County, Maryland; a resident-run co-op grocery store in the Rhoads Terrace public housing community in Dallas, Texas; a health clinic, tutoring program, daycare centers, and a learning center run by the Bromley-Heath Tenant Management Corporation in Boston, Massachusetts; and the thriving condominium association of LaSalle Place in Louisville, Kentucky, a former public housing development converted to homeownership. Typically, these joint endeavors between private citizens and public systems are conceived, planned, and implemented in the neighborhood.

The experience of working together on community-building activities of their own choosing-as well as the substantial benefits of these endeavors- tends to knit residents together and strengthen neighborhood institutions, adding to the human, social, and economic capital of the community. In line with this approach, community building focuses not on the problems of public housing neighborhoods but on identifying the underutilized assets and resources within the community and turning them to new or more effective uses. The underutilized asset in which the community chooses to invest could be as familiar as a public school building, its potential as an adult learning center suddenly realized. Community assets can also be as unique as 266 abandoned commodes in a group of public housing apartments slated for demolition, a hidden asset that netted $11,000 for an El Paso, Texas, resident association that removed and sold them for road-fill material.

Community building involves residents taking on leadership and responsibility. Its projects are community-driven, often chosen with resident input, and run largely on resident energy. Community building relies on resident self-help, collective action, and mutual support. Residents can wield a substantial portion of control over these projects. For example, in Fargo, North Dakota, residents of the Lake Agassiz Regional Council/Fargo Housing Authority are learning how to start and operate their own businesses under a U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development/Small Business Administration program. The San Antonio Housing Authority's Self-Sufficiency Program has seen 23 resident-owned businesses come into being, employing a total of 130 public housing residents.

In some places small groups of public housing residents with a common goal have come together in what some call chapters to support each other and gain access to the resources they need, for example, to start small businesses or have healthy babies. Some chapters are sponsored by such local institutions as churches or schools, and may even include non-public-housing residents from the surrounding neighborhood. Several chapters are fostering connections with larger entities that can help them tap into area resources, such as community colleges, labor union training programs, or large local industries, and develop technical or professional expertise-building mechanisms to advance the community agenda.

The community-building approach sees a link between personal benefits -such as earning a general equivalency diploma (GED) or starting one's o~ n small business-and overall community betterment. When people enjoy some measure of control over their fates, feel that they have the ability to set standards that will be enforced, can contribute to setting priorities, share common assets, and are real stakeholders, a neighborhood can begin to function as a supportive community. Further, rich social relationships-extended family, church networks, and ethnic and neighborhood associations-provide ladders of opportunity into the mainstream. Thus, not just specific project outcomes, but the very process of carrying on community-building activities adds to the strength of community functioning.

Community-building outcomes advance the interests of residents because each project adds to the networks of healthy social ties that people need both to enter the job market and to stay in their jobs as the inevitable childcare and transportation complications arise. It advances the interests of public housing managers because, as residents become more autonomous, they become less dependent on scarce PHA resources. Residents also develop greater pride, a greater sense of responsibility toward the maintenance of property, and more determination to combat crime and other neighborhood problems.

The residents of many public housing neighborhoods often have been isolated from each other and cut off from the larger community and its opportunities. They have been defined as dependent, passive recipients of services, subject to other people's priorities. They have been at the mercy of many forces over which they have no control, such as poor maintenance, drugs, and other criminal activity- much of it the doing of outsiders.

Too often they have spent what collective energy they have mustered to work on obtaining basic services or fighting off terribly negative conditions in the "projects." These residents have lacked the means of creating the kind of social capital that binds families to one another and creates access to opportunities.

Community building works because it builds the capacity of residents to:

• Take charge of their own lives.
• Support each other's efforts to improve life for themselves and their children.
• Participate constructively in the life of the community, thereby improving conditions and prospects for all.

Community-building strategies such as those described in parts III and IV of this report provide practical opportunities for residents of public housing to invest in their community and in their children's future. Through these activities residents are being reconnected to the life, the resources, and the opportunities of the larger community. They are gaining access to the supportive services, expertise, relationships, and positive experiences they need to have a realistic chance of realizing the goals of self-sufficiency and sustainable independence.

Back to top

Principles of Community Building

Initiatives that successfully help residents out of poverty permanently and strengthen public housing communities to create an environment supportive of lasting independence originate in many different programs. However, these efforts tend to share certain principles of community building.

Involve Residents

Community building blends traditional top-down approaches with bottom-up, resident-driven initiatives to create a network of partnerships among residents, management, and community organizations or enterprises. Through resident participation in setting goals and designing implementation strategies, residents assume ownership of the process. They are then more likely to participate in the programs that are developed and likely to experience a greater percentage of success than with a top-down approach. Management can provide resources, opportunities, and options, to help facilitate the residents' chosen course of action. Community partners-nonprofit organizations, educational institutions, or businesses-bring resources, special skills, and certifications that provide bridges for residents into the larger society.

For public housing managers, providing the opportunity might be as simple as asking residents what they would like to see in their community or how they would allocate resources among such items as building design features, play areas, child immunization programs, and onsite job-training programs. Management can foster the partnerships that enable such programs to go forth. Management follow-through on recommendations from residents then creates a new level of trust for further joint action. There must be a parity between residents and other partners, although each party may define the problems somewhat differently.

Build on Assets

Any effective strategy begins not only with an understanding of needs but with an inventory of the community's or group's assets: all those material and human factors that constitute its often underutilized resources. Besides its collective consumer buying power, a community's assets include such intangibles as the life experiences and skills of individual residents and their readiness to commit time and energy to a sustained effort. Unemployed people may have a substantial asset in free time to invest in their personal development or in neighborhood improvements. Still other assets include nearby churches, educational institutions, and other organizations willing to collaborate; proximity to public transportation or to a major employer such as a health complex; or even vacant buildings. Boston's Harbor Point public housing development discovered that the neighborhood's scenic view of the harbor constituted an asset that would attract working families, creating the basis for a mixed-income neighborhood. Community building seeks to find ways to invest these assets to create opportunities for the community and individual families.

Significant community development, says John McKnight in his groundbreaking monograph Mapping Community Capacity, "only takes place when local community people are committed to investing themselves and their resources in the effort."[1] In a neighborhood context, the emergence of an entrepreneurial, investment and asset-oriented way of thinking is a key to achieving many things.

To productively invest their assets, however, communities must first understand what they have. Communities can begin the process with a capacity inventory, suggests McKnight, grouping neighborhood assets in three clusters: neighborhood-owned and neighborhood-controlled, neighborhood-owned but externally controlled, and externally owned and controlled

Inside the Neighborhood

Within the Community

Public schools, institutions of higher education, hospitals, social service agencies, police and fire departments, libraries, parks, energy and waste resources, and vacant land or buildings are all examples of community resources that are largely controlled by outsiders. Articulate community groups can often exert important influence on decisions concerning the use of these resources. In Greensboro, North Carolina, for example, vacant public housing units were converted into community police substations. In Cleveland's King-Kennedy Estates, residents and management saw an outmoded high-rise as an asset that could be transformed into a multipurpose social service mall and persuaded others of their vision.

Outside the Neighborhood

Resources originating and controlled from outside the community include welfare expenditures, public capital improvement expenditures, and metropolitan area wide transportation systems. Another such resource is information that, while officially available to the public, is rarely readily accessible to residents of public housing. For example: How many area teachers have skills that could be useful to a certain neighborhood project? What does the city plan to invest in infrastructure improvements? What funding is available for small business development? How do reduced crime rates in the community compare with other sections of the city? Objective evidence of improved security of El Paso's Kennedy Brothers apartments, coupled with citywide comparative statistics, became an asset the community could parlay into decisions to reroute buses into the development. The greater access to public transportation in turn became another asset, making residents more competitive with citizens in other neighborhoods in accessing employment opportunities across the city.

Target a Manageable Sized Area

Tailor the Strategy to the Neighborhood

No specific strategy, set of programs, or way of organizing residents will suit every public housing community. Studies such as the ongoing one conducted by the Center for Urban Poverty and Social Change at Case Western Reserve University have shown that poor neighborhoods, contrary to popular belief, are not all alike.[2] Closer scrutiny will reveal that they have different characters and resources and are affected differently by economic and other trends. Cultural differences are also important. For example, the Providence Housing Authority in Rhode Island, recognizing the power of traditional African-American culture to inspire and empower youth, contracted with The Music School of Providence and the Providence Black Repertory theater to provide culturally relevant artistic activities for African- and Hispanic-American youth while matching them with arts professionals as mentors. In Oakland, the Institute for the Advanced Study of Black Family Life and Culture provides a program for young African-American men called HAWK (High Achievement, Wisdom, and Knowledge). The program teaches values that are transmitted in traditional African cultures: truth, justice, righteousness, propriety, balance, order, harmony, appropriateness, and excellence. In another example, the E1 Paso Housing Authority's recognition of the Mexican/Native-American preference for decision making by consensus, symbolized by the circle, rather than through hierarchical structures, proved critical to making positive breakthroughs toward community building in public housing there.

Maintain a Holistic and Integrative Perspective

Every program and strategy should keep the larger picture in mind. People often focus on a single problem, such as jobs or substance abuse, and miss the other problems that can torpedo their best efforts again and again. A single mother who never finished high school, unable to find work because she has small children to care for, has sought solace in drugs-which undermine her ability to be an effective parent-which results in the children developing delinquent behaviors or health problems that go unattended- which makes seeking employment for herself an even more overwhelming prospect-which drives her further into drugs or alcohol, and perhaps into an abusive relationship, in a desperate and self-defeating circle.

The best way to deal with such a tangle of mutually aggravating problems is to create a strategy that acknowledges and builds on these linkages to open up new possibilities for that mother and her family. In the Cuyahoga Metropolitan Housing Authority's (CMHA's) Miracle Village, a young woman who makes a pledge of sobriety (which is supported and monitored by other mothers who live and work there) receives comprehensive chemical dependency treatment; preparation for the GED; vocational training; job-readiness training; daycare and after-school programming for her children; school liaison services; medical and dental services; and, last but not least, a clean, secure, safe house in which to live.

To continue to enjoy these benefits for the full 24 months allowed, these drug-free mothers must also agree to attend classes in wellness education, nutritional counseling, parenting, and budgeting, along with evening family groups and educational trips in which families share positive experiences and learn about opportunities available to them and their families.

While it is not a]ways possible to address every aspect of family or community life in every case, managers and residents of public housing should begin to think holistically about the lives of the families and households that make up the community: that is, organically, with a sense of how any one problem relates to the person as a unique whole. A variety of resources-educational, health, employment, and social services- should focus on those families, their goals, the assets they have to invest, and their legitimate needs. The goal in every case should be not to make social service bureaucracies function easier or do things as they have been done in the past, but to determine what works better for the families; what configuration of services enables them to concentrate, rather than dissipate, their energies; and how to help them achieve progress toward self-sufficiency and independence. A resident-based approach to community building and program development will have these attributes.

For this reason the design and implementation of these programs and services should be coordinated, not solely by management or some outside agency, but by a joint effort between PHA management and the resident organization, whose duty is to the community agenda. Where a resident organization lacks capacity in this area, it needs to be developed.

Build Social and Human Capital

The relationships fostered between individual residents and families by cooperative endeavors become a kind of invisible infrastructure of mutual trust and loyalty that makes other advances possible. However, community building will become more than a collection of individual projects if, while focusing on initiatives designed to improve some specific aspect of life in the community, planners and participants keep the broader objectives in mind. Managers and resident leaders should relate even seemingly prosaic activities, such as picking up trash or replacing broken windows, to the larger goals and values articulated by the community, such as building a safer environment for their children or building self-respect. This principle is used when public housing authorities involve young people in various beautification projects, such as planting flowers and trees or learning landscape design.

Access Resources and Opportunities

Saying that community-building strategies must be neighborhood focused and resident-driven is not meant to imply that these communities should see themselves as islands charting their own destinies, independent of the larger society. In fact true community building involves finding or creating the means to access the resources and opportunities of the entire city and region. Therefore, successful community building initiatives have forged creative partnerships with outside institutions, such as community colleges, foundations, corporations, and neighborhood organizations. In this way resources, technical assistance, and other forms of support can be made available to residents who are trying to build a stronger community and to gain access both to opportunities and to the training or help with personal needs that will enable them to take advantage of those opportunities.

Public housing community-building initiatives must utilize these principles in choosing and shaping their activities. Projects and activities based on these principles will make the transformation of distressed neighborhoods into well-functioning communities possible.

Back to top

Why the Community-Building Trend Is Emerging Now

• Transformation of the physical, social, and fiscal environment of public housing, as exemplified in the HOPE VI legislation.
  
• Welfare reform and the devolution of responsibility away from the Federal Government.
• New insights into the nature and dynamics of poverty.
• Shifting views about poor people and their values.

For decades, a consensus has been growing concerning the need for public housing reform. Recently, former Secretary of Housing and Urban Development Henry G. Cisneros articulated a four-part strategy to ensure that the public housing stock remains a stable source of affordable housing and to help make public housing a springboard to opportunity. The first element is to tear down the most physically distressed public housing developments and replace them with less dense, economically integrated developments, spurring neighborhood renewal. The second element is to correct chronic management and operational deficiencies in PHAs. The third element is to infuse public housing with positive incentives that support and reward responsible residents who commit themselves to achieving self-sufficiency. The fourth element is to impose tough expectations, holding public housing residents responsible for their actions and imposing the expectations that tenants work toward self-sufficiency, contribute to the community, and respect the rule of law.[3]

These intertwining elements were most fully realized in HUD's $2.6 billion HOPE VI program, which gave participating PHAs the resources and flexibility to apply the strategy as a whole and to do so in their most distressed areas. Under HOPE VI, 30,000 units of the most deteriorated public housing in the Nation are slated for demolition. Those units will be replaced with a combination of scattered-site homes, certificates and vouchers, and clusters of townhouse style public housing units. Signaling a dramatic break with past practice, which too often ignored the human dimension of public housing, the new units are being designed for the needs of real families. In the HOPE VI program sites, PHAs are reconfiguring open spaces to provide places to interact and to encourage residents to take responsibility for their common areas. Concurrent with these physical changes, new attention is being paid to more effective, resident-responsive management of PHAs.

The original HOPE VI legislation- introduced in 1992 by the Senate Appropriations Subcommittee for the Veterans Administration, Housing and Urban Development, and Independent Agencies under the leadership of Sen. Barbara Mikulski, and in the House by the corresponding subcommittee chaired by Rep. Louis Stokes, was designed to bring together "bricks and mortar" improvements with the "gateway" programs-such as health maintenance, drug abuse recovery, education, and literacy training-that are the first steps to removing people from welfare.

Perhaps most significant, however, was the expectation of HOPE VI that residents would participate in some form of community service. Residents of public housing could help stretch Federal dollars by assisting with such necessary programs as childhood disease immunization, tutoring, and cleanup, along with tasks that might lead to permanent employment, such as routine repairs, lead paint abatement and asbestos removal, or remodeling.

It is critical, said the Senate subcommittee in introducing the act, that public housing residents "be given the chance to acquire skills that will make them economically serf-sufficient'' end opportunities to learn firsthand the importance-and benefits-of"reinvesting in one's own neighborhood and community."

By linking self-sufficiency with responsibility to one's community, HOPE VI opened the door to a previously unacknowledged and tragically underutilized asset of PHAs around the Nation: their residents. In Cleveland alone approximately 365 public housing residents have been engaged with CMHA in a wide variety of initiatives involving full- or part-time community service, dramatically increasing the capacity of the PHA to address human needs and create opportunities for advancement. Such resident involvement reinforces the self-esteem of all residents and strengthens ties between the individual and the community.

Although HOPE VI provides the largest and most visible funding infusion for these changes, other PHAs have equally urgent reasons to create settings more conducive to normal community and family life, to reintegrate isolated public housing developments with the surrounding community (thus helping to change the way public housing residents perceive themselves-and are perceived), and to involve residents in the building of new possibilities for themselves and their neighbors.

Other policy changes are creating a groundwork for community building. Over the past few decades, some housing policies inadvertently contributed to the concentration of the poorest of the poor in public housing, which in its earliest years had contained a strong element of working families. The mandate that residents must pay 30 percent of their adjusted income as rent made rent rise with increases in income, discouraging working families from remaining in public housing. Federal housing preferences required local PHAs to give priority to the most disadvantaged families. In May 1996, as part of the Omnibus Appropriations Act, Congress temporarily eased these rules to allow PHAs to attract and retain low-income families with relatively higher incomes, thus creating a more mixed-income environment.

Reform Welfare and Transfer Responsibility

Public housing has two economic underpinnings: public subsidies and income from rents. Recent policy trends are threatening both of these income streams. Public housing subsidies are diminishing and seem likely to continue on their downward path. And since 36 percent of the citizens currently on the welfare rolls also live in some form of public or subsidized housing, welfare reform could affect the ability of a large group of public housing tenants to pay their rents.

The Welfare Reform Act passed in 1996 requires States to set lifetime caps of 5 years on welfare receipt, albeit with some provision for exemptions. It is unclear how residents who are dropped from welfare rolls but possess insufficient coping skills or education will be able to keep up their rental obligations if they prove unable to hold paying jobs. Unless large numbers of people are able to move toward work, and unless jobs are available to them, the problems of crime and social dysfunction that have hurt public housing communities so often in the past could increase. All of these factors challenge public housing itself to play a new and more constructive role in fostering its residents' independence, a major goal of community building.

Understanding Urban Poverty and Barriers to Independence

The research of William Julius Wilson and others has given us valuable insights into the social dynamics of persistent poverty-poverty that endures over many years and is passed from one generation to another.[4]

Such poverty, Wilson's research confirms, is not the result of a single factor, such as joblessness, that can be addressed by a single remedy, such as employment training. Instead it is the result of interwoven problems that include inadequate schooling, poor health, family troubles, racism, crime, and unemployment, that reinforce one another and work against solutions that are based on one type of intervention. These self-defeating circumstances combine to produce a kind of culture of poverty that becomes for many a way of thinking and behaving that effectively traps them in a cycle of discouragement and dependency.

Wilson's research revealed that this kind of chronic, multi-generational poverty tends to be found in neighborhoods marked by a deteriorated social infrastructure-a weakening of the grassroots network of churches, schools, banks, businesses, neighborhood centers, and indeed, families themselves-which nourishes and supports the life of a neighborhood community.

Wilson's research makes it clear why creating opportunity is often not enough. Other factors, most notably personal barriers and neighborhood isolation, can negatively affect the ability of public housing residents to achieve the goals they have set for themselves and their communities.

Studies have shown, for example, that one-third of the former welfare recipients who succeed in getting a job have lost that job within 2 years.[5] The negative factors that result in job instability may include inadequate education or training, poor attitude or work habits, physical or mental health problems, drug or alcohol dependency, or family-related problems.

Family problems might range from lack of dependable childcare to inadequate insurance coverage to meet the family's healthcare needs. Health problems, especially chronic conditions, can be one of the biggest stumbling blocks to success, especially for minorities. A 1984 study conducted by the Task Force on Black and Minority Health for the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services found that African Americans suffer in disproportionate numbers from such debilitating conditions as heart disease, high blood pressure and strokes, diabetes, and certain forms of cancer. One and one-half times as many black men die of lung cancer, and two and one half times as many black women die of cervical cancer, as their white counterparts.

Factors identified as contributing to these higher rates include stress, smoking, poor nutritional habits, lack of access to healthcare, inadequate coping styles, and a general lack of health education. While TIME and Newsweek report the dramatic improvements in the lives of many middle-class Americans made possible by Prozac and the whole new family of anti-depressive drugs, little mention is made of the undiagnosed and untreated levels of clinical depression, and the consequent diminished ability to cope with many problems, that exist in America's poor urban and rural communities. Real and perceived racism can result in what appear to African Americans and other minorities as institutional or systemic barriers to success. Such barriers, even if unintended, can also create stress and contribute to physical disease.

[6] Domestic violence can, and does, happen in any setting, including middle-class neighborhoods, but families in poor neighborhoods are less likely to have ready access to counseling and treatment. For this reason the availability, onsite if possible, of comprehensive, family-oriented support services-including addiction recovery, child immunization, and health education programs-are an essential component of any public housing development's community-building strategy.

Community service programs have been found to be effective aids to overcoming barriers to employment for many persons, because they help to build good work habits, positive attitudes, and the self-esteem necessary for success in the job marketplace. Job-readiness training coupled with a highly structured transitional paid work experience, such as an apprenticeship program or on-the-job training, has also proven an effective approach. For some people, opportunities to make up for educational deficits are an important prelude to serious job hunting.

A less obvious but no less troublesome barrier to public housing residents' succeeding in reentering the mainstream of American society with its range of opportunities is the isolation of public housing from the larger community. Housing authorities must confront and address these barriers. Where this isolation is reinforced by physical design, public housing communities must strive toward physical redesign and reconfiguration to reintegrate or ~reknit" public housing into the surrounding community. Public housing must also be reconnected in a host of other ways. The city may need to reroute buses or other public transportation to link residents to employment opportunities, community colleges, and other resources; PHA management must persuade social agencies or other area resources to open offices or facilities in public housing.

For this to happen, the larger community, or at least its decision makers and the shapers of public opinion, have to begin to see public housing and the residents of public housing in a new light. Some successful resident-run programs, such as those involving reduction of drug or other criminal activity, can be enough to get a dialogue going. Face-to-face meetings with residents are essential.

Some public housing residents are working with representatives of nearby neighborhoods to develop joint anti-crime strategies, share resources, and pursue other matters of common interest, perhaps through community service projects. Social service facilities based in public housing may welcome families and individuals from the adjacent neighborhoods.

Area churches and other institutions are often willing to participate in mentoring programs, providing positive role models to youth, parents, and individuals pursuing higher education, and providing connections to educational or employment opportunities. Some PHAs are developing mixed-income housing to create more traditional neighborhoods.

Research on the varying economic attainments of different ethnic groups in the United States has documented the importance of social bonds within these groups, confirming what has long been known by many Americans: Social networks can play a crucial role in finding employment and other economic outcomes.[7] Research has also confirmed that strong neighborhood social bonds act as a powerful deterrent and defense against drugs and crime.[8]

Indeed, a high level of civic engagement among adults seems to have a beneficial impact on the community's youth. A landmark study of Boston youth offers strong evidence that, independent of other factors such as race, education, parental education, and family structure, young people whose neighbors attend church are statistically less likely to use drugs or be involved in criminal activity and more likely to have a job-whether or not they attend church themselves.[9]

Social epidemiologists have shown that social ties even have a measurable impact on health and longevity.[10] People with comparatively few social and community ties face substantially greater risks of physical and mental illness and mortality; however, a study of anti-AIDS interventions among various at-risk populations (such as teenage runaways and IV drug users) suggests that such programs are noticeably more effective with people who feel more connected to one another.[11]

Thus a growing body of solid research is bearing out Wilson's conclusion that, in urban neighborhoods with a healthy social fabric and well-functioning social institutions, residents do better at getting and keeping jobs, staying out of trouble with the law, and continuing on to successful lives. This research suggests that PHA managers have much to gain from adopting a community-building approach that focuses on reknitting social ties and strengthening the capacity of the community to support the self-help efforts of residents.

Shifting Views about Poor People and Their Values

Traditionally, housing and social welfare agencies have tended to view residents as passive recipients of services. One result has been a highly specialized and fragmented social service system that is too often unresponsive to the complex needs and aspirations of its intended clients. Another equally damaging result has been to impress on recipients their own helplessness and dependency, thereby discouraging self-help activity. But a consensus is growing that community virtues- shared responsibility, hard work, giving back to the community, and, most important, the belief that people can better themselves through hard work-are shared by poor and middle-class people alike. In line with this thinking, recent HUD policies forcefully reflect a consensus that public housing residents have both rights and responsibilities. That is, they have rights to the benefits and services for which they qualify, and they have responsibilities that include obeying the law, abiding by the housing development rules, contributing to their own welfare, and moving toward independence.

Recent research supports the view that poor people share the larger society's abhorrence of crime and drug use, as well as its emphasis on the importance of work and on guaranteeing a good education for their children. For example, a 1989 survey of poor people in Boston found that:

Of all able-bodied poor respondents, 44 percent were working at the time they were interviewed, 38 percent said they would like to be working, 13 percent had a problem that prevented them from working (health problem, childcare, other). Only about 5 percent could not give a reason or said they just did not want to work.[l2]

Community building works to provide fruitful paths forward for the aspirations of public housing residents and to build and reinforce the positive values that they share with other Americans.

Through community-building activities, with their emphasis on self-help, collective action, and mutual support, public housing residents around the country are becoming engaged in the well-being and effective functioning of their communities, setting standards of acceptable behavior, and creating opportunities for themselves and their communities as a whole. It is hard to avoid the impression that something right is happening in these places. Formidable obstacles remain to be confronted, of course, but in increasing numbers public housing residents in some of the Nation's more distressed developments are turning to community building for getting off welfare, getting jobs, making up for educational deficits, freeing themselves and their children from drug dependency, and reducing crime in their neighborhoods.

Manual Index

Foreword
Preface
Acknowledgments
Introduction

I. Community Building: Emerging as a Key Strategy for the 21st Century
What Is Community Building?
Principles of Community Building
Why the Community-Building Trend Is Emerging Now

II. Community-Building Steps for Public Housing Authorities
Preparing a Mission Statement
Naming a Community-Building Facilitator
Creating a Representative Community Organization
Assuring that Management Is Connected and Responsive to Residents Modifying the Physical Setting

III. Community-Building Strategies: Some Examples
Engaging in Community
Setting Community Standards
Increasing Access to Opportunities

IV. Community Building Through Partnerships: Some Examples
Building Bridges to Resources and Real Opportunities
Addressing Health Problems
Combating Substance Abuse
Helping Families Acquire Survival Skills
Addressing Teens' Physical and Emotional Health
Helping Residents Acquire Education and Skills to Succeed
Opening a Wide Range of Opportunities

V. Conclusion
Endnotes