Community Development Needs to be Part of the Response to Ferguson

By Todd Swanstrom

Todd Swanstrom is the Des Lee Professor of Community Collaboration and Public Policy Administration at the University of Missouri-St. Louis and co-author of Place Matters: Metropolitics for the Twenty-First Century.

In Governor Jay Nixon’s words, the first charge of the Ferguson Commission was “to conduct a thorough, wide-ranging and unflinching study of the social and economic conditions underscored by the unrest in Ferguson.” The killing of Michael Brown was the spark that started the protests but the fuel that sustained them was the accumulation of frustrations and resentments by citizens consigned to communities that not only failed to help them get ahead but actually dragged them down. The media has generally portrayed events in Ferguson as the result of old-fashioned racism but, in fact, the underlying conditions that sparked the unrest were a toxic mix of race and place.

The Ferguson Commission Calls to Action recognize the need for targeted, place-based investments to lift up disadvantaged communities. This is wise. The St. Louis region needs to invest now in a community development system that enables every community to succeed.

Where we live makes a big difference in our lives, independent of our individual characteristics. And you don’t need to have studied the impact of geography on people for over 30 years like I have to understand that. People who live in areas of concentrated poverty, for example, often pay more for groceries and lack access to fresh vegetables. The stress of living in areas of high crime can compromise the immune system and damage children’s capacities to learn with negative effects that last a lifetime. The researchers at For the Sake of All reported that children growing up in a disadvantaged zip code in the City of St. Louis can expect to live 18 years less than children in a privileged suburban zip code. Controlling for individual characteristics, residents of high-poverty neighborhoods are less successful in job markets and often must commute longer distances.

The new scrutiny in Ferguson revealed another place effect: poor municipalities are more likely to use the police like an ATM to fund municipal budgets. Municipal fiscal stress is driving the widespread pattern of police abuses. Senate Bill 5, which limits revenue from traffic fines to 12.5 percent of municipal revenue, does not address the underlying cause – the simple fact that many municipalities lack the tax base to provide decent services at reasonable tax rates.

Economic segregation also divides neighborhoods within municipalities. The shooting of Michael Brown occurred on the eastern side of Ferguson where the poverty rate is 33 percent. Political divisions in Ferguson are rooted in patterns of economic and racial segregation.

Fortunately, there is something we can do about economic segregation and concentrated poverty. Research I conducted with Hank Webber and Molly Metzger of Washington University found that, even though concentrated poverty is growing in the region, some 35 neighborhoods have successfully rebounded. The Central West End is the most prominent example but there are many more, including Shaw, Botanical Heights, Carondolet, and Maplewood.

Is there a silver bullet that can guarantee the renewal of a blighted community? No. But we did find one factor that was common to all rebound neighborhoods: strong civic engagement.

The simple truth is that neighborhoods need involved citizens and leaders. Neighborhood renewal is not going to succeed if outsiders come in and tell a community what to do.

So where does strong civic engagement start? Often, a community development corporation (CDC) leads the way. A CDC is a nonprofit with a mission to improve life in a specific neighborhood, city, town, or region. As part of my endowed professorship at UMSL, I have worked with a network of CDCs, lenders, foundations, and government agencies called the Community Builders Network (CBN). The CDC members are doing incredible work, but many of them lack the capacity or financial resources to implement sophisticated neighborhood plans. Many disadvantaged neighborhoods do not even have place-based community nonprofits at all. The network has 18 CDC members in the City of St. Louis but only five that operate in suburban St. Louis County – even though more poor people live there.

Most regions like St. Louis, including Kansas City, Milwaukee, Cleveland, and Pittsburgh, have community development systems that are funded by local and national foundations. St. Louis has not had a major foundation that has invested in community development and so we have not been successful at attracting national foundations to this work. The Greater St. Louis Community Foundation has stepped into the vacuum and is working with a coalition of banks and nonprofits on a proposal, called Invest STL, to create a community development support system in St. Louis.

Community development is not a magic bullet that will correct the social injustices that drove the unrest in Ferguson. But it can give communities the chance to bounce back and create an environment where all their citizens can succeed. Unless we invest now in leveling the playing field of metropolitan development, distressed communities will not only drag down their residents – they will drag down the entire region.

Articles in “From the Field” represent the opinions of the author only and do not represent the views of the Community Builders Network of Metro St. Louis or the University of Missouri- St. Louis.

Fulfilling the Promise of the Fair Housing Act

By Will Jordan

Will Jordan is the Executive Director of the Metropolitan St. Louis Equal Housing & Opportunity Council (EHOC), which works to ensure equal access to housing for all people through education, counseling, investigation, and enforcement. EHOC was recognized in 2008 with HUD’s Blue Ribbon Award and by FOCUS St. Louis in 2003 with a “What’s Right with the Region” Award. Will personally was awarded the 2012 Missouri Commission on Human Rights Fair Housing Advocate Award and the 2005 Governor’s Human Rights Award from the State of Illinois. Will received his B.S. in Psychology from Southeast Missouri State University and his J.D. from Southern Illinois University in Carbondale. Before coming to EHOC, he served as Program Manager for the Emerson Park Development Corporation’s YouthBuild Program in East St. Louis, as Hearing Officer for the Missouri Department of Elementary and Secondary Education, as Regional Trainer for the Missouri Division of Youth Services, and as Community Outreach Coordinator for the Urban League of Metropolitan St. Louis. He is a member of Stand for Children’s grassroots organizing initiative.

The Obama administration’s newly released Final Rule on Affirmatively Furthering Fair Housing (AFFH) is, potentially, one of our nation’s most substantial housing policy changes in decades. The Final Rule on AFFH was announced in the Federal Register on July 16, 2015: http://www.gpo.gov/fdsys/pkg/FR-2015-07-16/pdf/2015-17032.pdf. The rule clarifies already existing Fair Housing obligations for states, counties, municipalities and even Public Housing Agencies that are receiving federal monies. The rule will use market-based incentives to encourage the construction of affordable housing in high opportunity neighborhoods. HUD will also be creating custom, localized, digital tools to provide local governments with extensive data and analysis of residential segregation.

From access to good schools and healthy food, to proximity to jobs and transportation, where we live impacts almost every aspect of our lives. The Obama administration’s new Fair Housing policy will help ensure that all people – regardless of race, ethnicity, family status or disability – have a range of choices about where to live. In a metropolitan region with numerous school systems and over three hundred political subdivisions, housing mobility is extremely important. Low- to moderate-income families should be able move to better school districts. Much of their children’s lives will be determined by where they go to school and the neighborhood in which they grow up.

This rule will also benefit those who live in the urban core, as it will seek to encourage development that helps ensure that all neighborhoods are good places to live, regardless of the demographics of their residents. Packing almost all of our affordable housing into a handful of disadvantaged neighborhoods has led to stark location-dependent differences in our fellow citizens’ quality of life.

By encouraging development of affordable housing in high opportunity areas, this new rule will help us to reduce the concentration of poverty and the social costs that accompany it. In one of the country’s most segregated metropolitan areas, we must overcome historic patterns of discrimination. The tools provided by AFFH will let communities evaluate segregation and make informed, data-driven decisions to help break down the invisible barriers in our region.

Our region will continue to grow more diverse, and we must take proactive steps to ensure that every family has a fair chance of living in a safe, nurturing community. AFFH will give our civic leaders the information that they need, to make sound housing development decisions that open the doors to opportunity. Failing to build affordable housing in high opportunity areas (due to prejudices against low-income families and people of color) risks the perpetuation of segregation and the dooming of future generations to continued limited opportunities and shorter lifespans. To quote Dr. King, “It is a torturous logic to use the tragic results of racial segregation as an argument for the continuation of it.”

The one-year anniversary of Michael Brown’s killing, August 9th stands as a stark reminder that we need to get to work. We are hopeful that our region’s leaders will take advantage of these new tools that can help us build a better, more inclusive St. Louis. Our children deserve nothing less.

Articles in “From the Field” represent the opinions of the author only and do not represent the views of the Community Builders Network of Metro St. Louis or the University of Missouri- St. Louis.

Viable Student Transfer Program, Aid to Troubled Home Districts Not Mutually Exclusive

D.J. Wilson is a former staff writer for the Riverfront Times, the Houston Press and the Houston Post. He currently freelances for St. Louis Magazine and Stlmag.com. His weekly radio show, Collateral Damage, was on KDHX from 2001 to 2015 and continues to via podcast at collateraldamage.KDHXtra.org.

For all the talk about the need for a legislative “fix” for the student transfer program in St. Louis County, it’s time for people to realize the transfer option isn’t going away, and basically, that is good news.

About 11 percent of students in the unaccredited districts of Normandy and Riverview Garden took advantage of the chance to go to an accredited school in another district. Those decisions are both a benefit for the child and the community where he or she lives, and a wake-up call to the region that public education’s problems and solutions aren’t confined within the gerrymandered boundaries of each of the county’s 24 districts.

The recent agreement by county districts to participate more fully in assisting troubled districts is a small positive step, even if it were akin to a shotgun wedding consummated three days before Gov. Jay Nixon vetoed the erroneously named transfer fix legislation. That bill, opposed by St. Louis County school district superintendents, would have allowed charter schools in St. Louis County and provided public compensation for the use of private “virtual” school programs.

The real fix that is needed is for all the districts that receive transfer students to accept a reasonable “cap” tuition that does not needlessly drain state and sending district finances. Some have agreed to a cap of around $8,000, others have not.

Offering a viable transfer option and devoting personnel and resources to improve education in the sending districts are not mutually exclusive propositions. Both can, and should be pursued.

The state Department of Elementary and Secondary Education (DESE) stepped into this fray because it is the state’s responsibility to provide a tuition-free education to its school-age residents. School districts administer that education, but when those districts fail, the state steps in.

The state, and to a lesser degree the federal government, try to compensate for the vast discrepancies in financial capacity among school districts caused by the jigsaw puzzle nature of their boundaries. Local district funds come largely from property taxes, and no two districts are created equal.

The assessed valuation for the Clayton School District, all 3.2 square miles of it, is $1 billion. The assessed valuation per average daily attendance is calculated by dividing a district’s financial base by its number of students. In Clayton, that number is $427,415. In Riverview Gardens, it’s $35,616. In Normandy, it’s $64,179.

According to 2014 DESE and census data, Clayton spends $17,394 per student on an enrollment where the median household income is $89,479. Jennings, one of 11 provisionally accredited districts in the state, has a median household income of $28,429. It spends $9,911 per student.

Normandy and Riverview Gardens are dependent on state funds. Last school year 53 percent of Normandy’s revenue came from the state, 32 percent was local, and 14 percent was from the federal government.

Various academic metrics further document the chasm between districts. In Riverview Gardens, 65 percent of students take the ACT, with a composite score of 15.6. In Clayton, virtually all the students take the ACT and the composite score is 25.7. Statewide, the composite score is 21.8.

The multiplicity of school districts is one of the most divisive jurisdictional barriers to a sense of community. The fractured local delivery system of state-guaranteed public education accentuates socioeconomic differences and perpetuates gaps in employment, income, and access to post-secondary education.

In St. Louis, it’s far more than where you went to high school that matters, it’s what school district did you have the fortune – or misfortune – to call home. Those invisible yet real walls between districts are kept high and thick by jacked-up housing costs and apartment rents in highly regarded districts.

To the extent that the transfer program can be enhanced by a reasonable set tuition price paid by the sending district, some of those walls that divide privilege and poverty might be weakened and more students, no matter where they live, might have a better chance for a better life.

Meanwhile the surrounding districts, with help from state and federal governments, can pay more money and attention to help the many students who choose not to transfer.

It’s no mystery that the school districts in trouble have high degrees of concentrated poverty. When Normandy and Riverview Gardens lost their accreditation, they had the highest rate of free-and-reduced lunches in St. Louis County.

Consolidating districts to achieve economies of scale and a better mix of poor and not-so-poor students would go a long way to improve public education in every community.

Sadly, that won’t happen. Due to economic segregation, misplaced fear of those from a lower income bracket, and prior home purchasing decisions based on school district boundaries, chances are slim people will accept any substantive change.

Around 1900, there were 125,000 school districts in the United States. That number has dwindled to about 15,000 today. Change has happened, over time, yet more jurisdictional change is not on the horizon.

If school district boundaries won’t change, allowing a few industrious students to follow their dreams and ambitions outside those artificial boundaries, while working to improve the schools that made them flee, will have to do.

Articles in “From the Field” represent the opinions of the author only and do not represent the views of the Community Builders Network of Metro St. Louis or the University of Missouri- St. Louis.

A New Stadium, A New Opportunity

By David Stiffler, Community Affairs Manager, Equifax

Stadium financing is controversial. The idea of the public shouldering considerable financial burden to attract or retain a single owner or wealthy group of investors remains distasteful to many.  Adding to negative public perception is the relative lack of examples where sports facility construction correlated to significant economic development for the surrounding communities. However, there is an effort underway in the Westside of Atlanta that offers more than just hope that stadium construction can be a catalytic driver of comprehensive community improvement – it offers a blueprint for strategic public/private collaboration. Equifax Inc. (www.equifax.com) has been involved in that effort from the beginning.

Headquartered in Atlanta, Equifax Inc.’s second largest population of employees is in St. Louis. In both cities, we are committed to geographically-focused community investment strategies that are collaborative in nature, evidence-driven and long-term. Our St. Louis “footprints” are Old North and the South Jefferson corridor where over the past five years we have invested close to a million dollars.

The Westside has always been central to Atlanta’s African-American social and economic fabric. It remains home to some of the city’s most significant and influential cultural institutions and iconic leaders. Dr. King lived in Vine City at the time of his assassination. Anchor institutions, such as Morehouse College and Spelman College, historic restaurants, and small businesses are still owned and/or largely staffed by people who grew up in the Westside. Yet, years of challenges have led to properties and people neglected and disconnected from the core of Atlanta. It’s a situation not dissimilar to many of the realities and challenges that impact downtown, North City and County, and East St. Louis. With the likelihood of a new stadium, or at least a “Plan B” here in St. Louis, we also have a unique opportunity to share something more positive: best practices.

Several community leaders in Atlanta reminded me that the Georgia Dome (1992) and the Atlanta Olympics (1996) fell short on the promise of economic development for the surrounding neighborhood including the Westside. Arthur M. Blank, co-founder of Home Depot, noted philanthropist and owner of the Atlanta Falcons football team, had that in mind when he set about a plan to do things differently with the construction of the new Atlanta stadium.  The foundation made strategic hires, bringing in first rate leaders specifically to work in the Westside.  His Atlanta Falcon’s leadership structured their corporate partnerships with a component around Westside engagement and support.  He reached out to the Atlanta Committee for Progress (akin to St. Louis’ Civic Progress) and helped jump start a task force to consider the best way for the most powerful companies in the city to work with the Mayor’s office and all of its major public entities. The task force, in turn, created of a new non-profit (The Westside Future Fund) that will lead comprehensive revitalization work alongside The Arthur M. Blank Family Foundation.

St. Louis can and should learn from this work.  We have wonderful regional examples of public and private collaboration:  CityArchRiver, St. Louis Graduates, 24:1 and the nascent Ready by 21 initiative. All point to our ability to work across sectors to accomplish important results.  We have tremendous leaders across sectors. We need to view the potential for a new stadium as a tie that binds development efforts in North City with development efforts in downtown and East St. Louis. We need to view this opportunity as a chance to drive racial and economic inclusion through workforce development, job creation, social entrepreneurship and a variety of other economic opportunities.  We need community and non-profit leaders, elected officials and private sector leaders to use this moment to connect our regional work. We need to consider how we sustain this work – whether we create something like our own Westside Future Fund or consider building capacity for an existing agency to take on this work.

Our work in the Westside coupled with our five years of work in North City allows Equifax Inc. a unique vantage point. We have begun to align our efforts between the two cities particularly around economic development. We co-lead an economic development roundtable in the Westside with Frank Fernandez, VP from The Arthur M. Blank Family Foundation, and will kick off a similar effort in North City in late August. Equifax Inc. is just one piece of the overall redevelopment puzzle

However, The Arthur M. Blank Family Foundation is exceptionally well-resourced and especially committed.  National reports tell us that St. Louis has great family wealth. Having a strong philanthropic foundation or family trust step forward would help galvanize a comprehensive effort and help create a common narrative and shared future for North City, downtown and East St. Louis. Committing to such a course has value regardless of a new stadium. Whether St. Louis hates or embraces the idea of a new stadium, the region should not lose this rare opportunity to unite the great efforts underway in North City, downtown and East St. Louis around a shared resource.

Articles in “From the Field” represent the opinions of the author only and do not represent the views of the Community Builders Network of Metro St. Louis or the University of Missouri- St. Louis.

The Crime Rise in St. Louis: What We Know, Don’t Know, and Can Do to Stop it

By Richard Rosenfeld

Richard Rosenfeld is the Founders Professor of Criminology and Criminal Justice at the University of Missouri – St. Louis.  He is a Fellow and past President of the American Society of Criminology and currently serves on the Science Advisory Board of the Office of Justice programs, US Department of Justice.

Between January and late July of this year, 110 homicides had occurred in the city of St. Louis — an increase of more than fifty percent over the same period in 2014.  At the current pace, the number of homicides will substantially exceed last year’s total, which itself was up more the thirty percent over the previous year.  Other violent crimes (serious assault, and robbery) and property crimes (burglary, larceny, motor vehicle theft) have also increased.  Crime increases of this magnitude are too large to qualify as statistical “blips.”  They are real and they are worrisome.

The natural question about the St. Louis crime rise is “why”?  The honest answer is no one knows, at least not yet.  More crime could be related to an expansion of illicit drug markets in the city.  Heroin use has increased throughout the region in recent years, and the street price of heroin has fallen during the same period.  Disputes among drug sellers over territory and supply, and between buyers and sellers over price and quality, are often settled violently.  More buyers bring more sellers into the market, leading to more disputes and more violence.

Another hypothesis is that the crime rise is related to a “Ferguson effect.”  The idea is that the police are not fully engaged in their jobs, because they are fearful of or frustrated by the community tensions and possible legal liabilities surrounding the Michael Brown killing last August and subsequent controversial police shootings around the nation.  A related idea is that street criminals have become “emboldened” by the events in Ferguson and elsewhere, in part because they perceive that the police have withdrawn from the streets.

I have my doubts about this explanation, especially as it applies to the increase in homicide.  For one thing, homicides began to rise in St. Louis several months before Michael Brown was killed.  In addition, the best indicator of police engagement is the arrest rate.  The arrest rate did decline in the immediate aftermath of the Ferguson events, as the police were redeployed from their normal patrol activities to address street demonstrations around the city.  But arrests have long since returned to normal levels, and yet crime continues to rise.

It will take some time to figure out the causes of the crime increase in St. Louis, but here are some facts that should be kept in mind as the police and researchers diagnose the problem.

First, St. Louis is not alone.  Several other cities, though not all, have also experienced crime increases in recent months.  Second, crime, especially homicides and other violent crimes, are not random occurrences that are equally likely to strike anywhere and anyone.  They are highly localized in specific places.  About half of the increase in gun assaults during the first half of this year, for example, occurred in just five of the city’s 79 neighborhoods.  Fully half of all violent crimes take place on just five percent of the street blocks in the city.  That means that violence is unevenly dispersed even within high-crime neighborhoods.  Third, the victims as well as the suspects in homicides and other serious violence tend to be criminally involved.  As mentioned, violence is a potent means by which criminals, who cannot appeal to the police or courts, settle their disputes. The single greatest risk factor for becoming the victim of a violent crime, by far, is involvement in criminal activity.  So, if you aren’t a criminal and don’t live in or frequent violent places — in other words, if you’re among the great majority of St. Louis residents — your chances of becoming a victim of violence are very low.

But the localized nature of violent crime should not produce complacency.  When hundreds of our fellow citizens are killed or injured in violent crimes every year, everyone is affected, directly or indirectly.  On some streets, children grow up hearing the sound of gunfire almost daily and, in too many cases, may be caught in the crossfire.  High rates of violent crime generate fear, lead to population loss, retard economic growth, and undermine the tax base.  The entire region, not only the central city, suffers as a result.  Stemming the tide of violence, therefore, should be on everyone’s agenda.

So, what can be done?  Fortunately, two decades of sound research have shown that certain policing strategies can reduce violent crime in the areas where it is concentrated, without displacing it to other areas.  These are the so-called hot spot approaches that concentrate police patrols in high-crime locations.  Once in those places, other research indicates that crime is reduced when the police engage directly with the “hot” people in the area, especially those who have been arrested frequently for unlawful gun possession or use.  The police, sometimes accompanied by probation and parole officers, juvenile court officials, and members of the local prosecutor’s office, send a direct message in their meetings with individuals who are at high risk as both perpetrators and victims of violence: We know who you are, we’re watching, and the next time you participate in acts of violence, we will respond swiftly with the full force of the law.  No exceptions.

But the police cannot, and should not, act alone.  They must act with the law-abiding community behind them.  Most people want the violence to stop, but they may fear retaliation from criminals if they cooperate with the police, or they may fear or not trust the police.  The police must engage directly with these community members as well.  In this case, the message is: We have your back and will do everything we can to protect and assist you.  But we need your help.  We can’t do it alone.  And the police must be prepared to make good on these promises.

None of this is easy.  There is no quick-fix to the violence problem.  But when hot spot policing, a focus on violent offenders, and community outreach are done well and sustained over time, violent crime subsides.  Nor is more effective law enforcement sufficient to reduce violence over the long run.  It must be coupled with enhanced service delivery, housing rehabilitation, code enforcement, and economic opportunities in the disadvantaged communities where violent crime is concentrated.  Those initiatives to rebuild communities will have a better chance of succeeding, however, if the police and their community partners use proven practices to halt the current rise in violence.

Articles in “From the Field” represent the opinions of the author only and do not represent the views of the Community Builders Network of Metro St. Louis or the University of Missouri- St. Louis.