Community Development as a Response to Community-level Adversity:

Community Development as a Response to Community-level Adversity:

Ecological Theory and Research and Strengths-based Policy

Douglas D. Perkins, Vanderbilt University

Bill Crim and Pamela Silberman, Utah Issues

Barbara B. Brown, University of Utah

[chapter for APA Divisions 27 and 37 edited volume: “Strengths-building research and policy: Investing in children, youth, families, and communities”]

We thank Michael Krownapple, Bonnie Leadbeater, Kenneth Maton, Kenneth Reardon, Susan Saegert, and Mariano Sto. Domingo for their helpful comments, including recommendations and analyses we have incorporated. The first and fourth authors were partially supported during work on this chapter by grant number 98IJCX0022 from the National Institute of Justice. Points of view are those of the authors and do not necessarily represent the position of the U.S. Department of Justice. All correspondence should be sent to Douglas Perkins, Human and Organizational Development, Box 90, Peabody College, Vanderbilt University, Nashville, TN 37203 (Email: douglas.d.perkins@vanderbilt.edu).

Despite the unprecedented prosperity of the past decade, millions of families live in communities beset, not only by the social adversities discussed throughout this volume, but also by poverty, physical deterioration and danger, and a lack of political organization and clout. Section II of this volume focuses on individual and family-level adversities. But community and environmental psychologists have come to understand what most advocates for the poor have known for a long time-- that individual problems are often caused by factors outside the individual, family, or group and that individuals' problems ultimately become community problems (Caughy, O’Campo & Brodsky, 1999; Wandersman & Nation, 1998). Thus, individual change is not the key to solving community problems. Indeed, unless community adversities are understood to be rooted more in the environment than in individuals or families, we risk blaming the victim. This is antithetical to the strengths orientation of this volume. We therefore believe that both strengths and adversities must be examined from an ecological perspective, which (as with organisms in an ecosystem) places individuals, families, and communities in a broadly systemic context. That context includes the institutions and environments that, interdependently, both affect people and are affected by their collective action.

This chapter takes such a view of community-level adversities and argues that to adequately address them, our theories, research, and policies must strive to be comprehensive and systemic. We first describe four interconnected forms of community-level adversity-- economic, political, social, and physical environmental. We then describe how these adversities can be countered with five strengths-oriented community development (CD) theories. Empowerment, social capital, capacity building, asset-based CD, and sustainability have guided many promising and successful local and international CD programs. But their influence on state and national-level CD policy-making has been more rhetorical than substantive. The centerpiece of this chapter is an ecological model for community economic, social, environmental, and political development with parallel, complementary, and interdependent roles for policy makers and local communities. The chapter concludes with our review of, and recommendations for, CD policies that are both strengths-oriented and address community adversities broadly and ecologically.

FORMS OF COMMUNITY-LEVEL ADVERSITY

Economic Adversity: Neighborhood Decline

With low-wage service jobs replacing unionized manufacturing jobs and welfare time limits expiring, economic problems may be the most pressing adversity to consider. Poverty is also a primary cause of poor health and health care, educational deficiencies, and most of the other social, environmental, and political problems discussed below and throughout this volume. Although most of the political and media attention to poverty has been at the individual (e.g., minimum wage) or family (welfare reform) levels, much of the variation in economic status occurs at the community level. Factors triggering neighborhood decline include Skogan's (1990) “four Ds:” disinvestment or even systematic "redlining" (the illegal refusal to make loans in poor communities); de-industrialization (factory closings) and the resulting decline of wages that can support a family, tax base, schools, and services; demagogues (e.g., in media or real estate) whose negative portrayal of a neighborhood creates a self-fulfilling prophecy as the resulting residential instability and fear decrease community confidence, collective efficacy, and safety; and demolition and construction (e.g., highways, redevelopment projects). Ironically, large-scale building projects are seen by many politicians as the cure for neighborhood decline. But they often lead to what we would call the fifth and sixth Ds: displacement of those who can afford to leave and those who cannot afford to stay and discouragement of those who do stay in communities destroyed by the cycle of decline and urban renewal.

Political Adversity: Disempowerment

Communities that are oppressed, that lack connections and influence with larger social and political institutions, or have significant segments of disempowered or difficult to organize members, face political adversity. Government agencies often have community advisory boards and hold public hearings. But they rarely pay more than lip service to real grassroots participation in decision-making. This sets agencies up for failure as community knowledge is ignored and the community is more likely to be suspicious of, and resist, the decisions made (Perkins, 1995).

Political adversity contributes to all other forms of adversity. For example, the lack of affordable housing is as political, at root, as it is economic or physical. Since 1980, housing costs have risen, sharply in many areas, while real federal spending on low-income housing has fallen. Despite shelter being a basic need (some would say a basic right), public housing for the neediest has been all but abandoned, politically. Housing projects remain ghettos of concentrated poverty, crime, and despair while much private housing in declining neighborhoods has deteriorated, been abandoned, and burned down for profit. The Fair Housing Act of 1968 has not prevented subtle forms of housing discrimination (e.g., against renters with children or those who pay with assistance vouchers).

Housing adversities are political because renters-- especially low-income ones-- are difficult to organize, although tenant unions have often improved housing conditions (Gulati, 1981). By contrast, homeowners participate more in their communities and are more empowered than renters, even among lower-income residents (Perkins, Brown & Taylor, 1996; Saegert & Winkel, 1996; 1998). The political clout of homeowners may explain why they, not public housing or other renters, receive 77% of all federal housing subsidies, mainly via mortgage interest and property tax deductions. Developing and maintaining an adequate supply of safe, decent, and affordable housing is a challenging political (as well as economic) problem. Low-income housing construction faces political roadblocks, such as complicated financing regulations, the “not in my backyard” response of nearby homeowners, and policies that favor homeowners, on the one hand, and disinvestment in poorer areas, on the other.

Social Adversity: Crime, Disorder, and Cultural Diversity

Crime is just one manifestation of social adversity, but it is consistently one of the top two issues of concern in opinion polls. As with poverty, criminal victimization and justice are not distributed equally. Both victim and offender rates are significantly worse for poor, minority communities. More young African-American males are serving criminal sentences than are going to college and the rate is rising (Palen, 1997, p. 191). There is also geographic variation in police practices even within the same city.

Much more prevalent, and thus insidious, than serious crimes are “incivilities:” social and physical symbols of disorder. Social incivilities include "victimless" crimes (drugs, prostitution) and such non-criminals as loitering or rowdy youths and homeless persons. Although controversial, there is evidence (Perkins & Taylor, 1996; Skogan, 1990) to support the theory that broken windows, or any incivility, if left unrepaired, lead to more disorder and perceptions that local law enforcement is ineffective. Residents become fearful and withdraw from outdoor space, which reduces community cohesion, informal social control, and organizational and commercial life. Group conflict and actual crime may increase as the downward spiral continues.

Group conflict may also be exacerbated by cultural diversity, which is not in itself an adversity. However, prejudice and discrimination based on race, nationality, religion, income, age, sex, sexual orientation, or length of residence are community problems due to the conflict engendered and to the difficulties of diverse groups sharing the same concerns and goals and working effectively together.

Environmental Adversity: Deterioration, Disasters, and Contamination

As discussed above, the physical deterioration of neighborhoods is an important factor in housing conditions, economic decline (Skogan, 1990), crime, fear (Perkins & Taylor, 1996), and urban out-migration. Beyond the neighborhood level, urban blight and decayed infrastructure (roads, bridges, water and sewer systems) are fiscal time bombs for older cities and towns and the nation (Palen, 1997). Instead of investing in established urban areas, housing and road subsidies have favored development at the suburban fringe (Calthorpe & Fulton, 2001).

Two other forms of community-level environmental adversity are natural disasters and ground, water, and air contamination. There are an estimated 425,000 toxic waste sites in the U.S. (Rich et al., 1995). The distribution of the problem is highly concentrated-- geographically, economically, and racially-- which has led to charges of “environmental racism” (Bullard, 1994). Consequences of toxic exposure include serious health, psychological, family, and community cohesion problems (Edelstein, 1988). Communities that are decimated by the ecological/health disaster or threat itself may be disempowered by the government response to it. Emergency or recovery policies and agencies often take a top-down, rather than bottom-up, approach and concentrate on rebuilding without necessarily restoring the community fabric.

COMMUNITY DEVELOPMENT: COMMUNITY-LEVEL STRENGTHS BUILDING

What is community development?

All four of the above types of adversity underscore the need for widespread community development (CD) efforts. We define CD broadly as a process whereby government, nonprofit organizations, voluntary associations, or public-private partnerships ameliorate adversities in a community’s economic, political, social and/or physical environment and prevent future adversities. Economic CD encourages business and job opportunities. Political CD implies effective community improvement associations with broad and active participation. Social CD encourages safer streets and more neighborliness. Environmental CD improves housing conditions, city services, recreational facilities, and helps clean up or prevent toxic or littered sites, and instill pride in one’s home and community.

CD policies and practitioners typically concentrate on one of three types of locations: central business districts, residential neighborhoods, or rural areas. For all three types, we strongly advocate a broad-based, public-private approach rather than the more common isolated public or private programs that focus mainly on one issue, be it commercial development, housing, crime, or toxic cleanup. Government funding, regulation, and support at all levels (federal, state and local), community support and participation, and an encompassing (ecological) perspective are all necessary for CD to be effective.

Strengths-based Principles of Community Development

In the past, CD policies were often paternalistic, imposed from above and from afar, and based on the assumption that poor communities had little to offer besides cheap land and labor and social problems. But CD theory and practice worldwide have become more consistent with the strengths-orientation of the present volume. A 1995 United Nations Development Programme report cited four essential components of human, or strengths-oriented, development: productivity, equity, sustainability, and empowerment. The last two, along with the equally strengths-oriented concepts of social capital, capacity building, and community asset identification and development have become guiding principles for CD.

"Sustainability" concepts, popular in international development (Ginther, Denters & de Waart, 1995; Rao, 2000), are also relevant to CD policies and practices in the U.S. (see, e.g., 1999 President’s Council on Sustainable Development). Economic sustainability, developing a local economy that can be maintained without reliance on regular infusions of outside capital or credit, was the original goal. Since the U.N.-sponsored Earth Summit conferences, however, environmental sustainability, developing a means of production that does not contaminate the ecosystem or exhaust natural resources, has also become important. Analyses of sustainable development rarely transcend the economic or bio-ecological.

Yet the principle of sustainability can be usefully expanded to include the political and social domains of CD as well. Political sustainability at the local level can be thought of as maintaining the momentum, through active and meaningful participation, of grassroots community organizations and avoiding leader burnout and developing new leaders. Development decisions must also be politically sustainable, in legal and governance terms, on a societal level (Ginther et al., 1995). Social sustainability can be considered the degree to which communities can develop and maintain social capital and avoid delinquency, crime, drugs, racism, and other social problems. Sustainability is strengths-based in its emphasis on ecologically healthy development over time based on renewable community resources.

Grassroots community empowerment involves residents organizing and acting collectively on democratically or consensually defined CD goals. Decisions are made from the bottom-up by local organizations. Empowerment operates at many levels from psychological to organizational to community. Block and neighborhood improvement associations and tenant groups-- found in virtually every U.S. city, suburb, and town-- aim to empower their members while engaging in CD (Perkins et al., 1990; 1996; Saegert & Winkel, 1996; Speer & Hughey, 1995). Internationally, empowerment has become a guiding principle for many CD organizations-- public and private, secular and faith-based (Friedmann, 1992; Perkins, 1995). Empowerment is strengths-based in that it focuses our attention on people’s and communities’ rights, abilities, assets, and resources rather than their needs or problems.

Social capital has become a popular concept among CD professionals and policy makers. It is the level of residents’ integration into the community in terms of informal networks and mutual trust, participation in community civic and service organizations, and the links among those organizations (Coleman, 1988; see Social Cohesion, below). Faith-based CD is a form of social capital with a long and effective history, especially in Latin America and the African-American community. Recently, CD researchers have emphasized the role of group learning processes in building social capital in communities and organizations (Falk & Harrison,1998). Social capital fits well with our ecological focus because, in contrast with the older term “human capital,” it focuses on the strengths related to interdependent social networks (not simply individual strengths, such as education levels). As with empowerment, however, it is important for researchers and policy-makers to be specific about defining social capital, its formal and informal sources, the dynamic processes to achieve it, and how to measure those and its material effects (Saegert & Winkel, 1998; see also the rest of the same issue).

Capacity building refers to the development of skills, information, or other organizational resources, or the development of organizations and coalitions within an entire community. While social capital describes the small-scale community social and political conditions for grassroots CD to occur, capacity building is a resource development process applied to extant CD organizations. Both concepts are based on the notion that communities have indigenous human resources and other strengths that can be developed and used to address community problems.

Asset-based Community Development (Kretzmann & McKnight, 1993) is an approach to mobilizing people and local organizations for the social, economic and physical revitalization of a community. It is based on the identification, mapping, and development of community assets, or strengths, in contrast with social researchers’ and policy makers’ traditional preoccupation with identifying only needs and problems. "Assets" are broadly defined and overlap well with our ecological model: they may be physical (e.g., land, community gathering places), social (cohesion, volunteers), economic (consumers, entrepreneurs and workers, funding agencies), and political (voters, advocates, local officials and community leaders).

An example is Building a Healthier Mesa (AZ) Neighborhood Development Initiative (http://www.mc.maricopa.edu/academic/compact/carter.html). When residents identified the need for a youth program and community center, they used local assets to create a small one in a backyard. When they outgrew that space, the city donated a new property and hired a neighborhood liaison. The Initiative has grown into a coalition that is headed by a committee of block and neighborhood leaders, with representation from United Way, the Chamber of Commerce, public schools, and the local community college.

Challenges and Opportunities for Government Support of Strengths-based CD

All five CD principles (sustainability, empowerment, social capital, capacity building, and community assets), as well as the terms “strengths” and “resilience,” are so overused and co-opted for different ends that they have become buzzwords. But despite their popularity among theorists and politicians of every persuasion, strengths-oriented CD concepts have not received the systematic research and programmatic support they deserve. While there has been a plethora of government policies based, at least nominally, on empowerment (e.g., Empowerment Zones), most have failed to apply the concept of empowerment clearly or consistently (Perkins, 1995).

By their very nature, strengths-based CD principles do not generally require large public expenditures. Indeed, social capital and asset-based approaches, by definition, rely primarily on local private resources rather than on public funding. Sustainability implies that new outside resources should not be needed in the future. Yet many local CD programs would be greatly enhanced with more government funding, technical assistance for capacity building, sponsored research, and dissemination of best practices (Schorr, 1997). How to support grassroots CD efforts without compromising their autonomy or making them dependent on that support is both a tremendous opportunity and a challenge for policy-makers.

An Ecological Framework for CD: Economic, Political, Social, & Environmental Components

Most of the CD literature addresses one, or at most two, domains of adversity. In contrast, our conceptual framework is ecological in that it places CD simultaneously in the economic, political, social, and physical environmental contexts in which community adversities and the policies and community action addressing those adversities all reside (see Figure 1). It is also ecological in viewing CD as a dynamic and interdependent system, operating at multiple levels, in which change in one area and level affects the other areas and levels.[1] In the following sections, examples of public and private CD strategies are given. The interdependence of these spheres of development becomes readily apparent in these examples.

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Economic Development

Urban redevelopment policies in the U.S. have focused on large, downtown projects and freeways at the expense of revitalizing older neighborhoods. Cities have experienced fiscal crises, declining federal support, crumbling infrastructure, and myriad social problems (Palen, 1997). But can waterfronts, ballparks, convention centers, and hotels undo the "malling of America" (the flight of economic activity to the suburbs)? If they could, how much good would it do the vast majority who live, not in downtowns, but in residential neighborhoods? Following are some promising public and private strategies for community economic development.

Community Development Block Grants represent a sizable federal expenditure that could address many community-level adversities. But during the 1980s, much block grant funding went to less needy neighborhoods to fund infrastructure (new curbs, gutters, sidewalks, street lights) instead of housing, physical improvements, or economic development in poor areas (Catlin, 1981; Watson, 1992). How should they be targeted? Neighborhood revitalization’s track record in the U.S. is mixed at best (Ginsberg, 1983), but four generally successful strategies are: (1) involving a broad base of residents; (2) building on existing community strengths; (3) promoting active cooperation among local public and private agencies along with funding and technical support from higher levels; and (4) targeting common urban problems: e.g., low sense of community, high crime and fear; housing and dilapidation problems; poor school quality; inadequate youth programs; and lack of economic opportunity (Schorr, 1997).

The 1990s’ Empowerment Zones/Enterprise Communities federal policy was based on the 1980s' "urban enterprise zones" of targeted capital investment and training and employment tax incentives. Reviews of the policy have been mixed, with critics arguing the incentives were either too small (to offset entrenched poverty and related individual and community disadvantages) or too large (essentially a business subsidy that does little for local residents; Palen, 1997). But it incorporated several “strengths” approaches, including a "bottom-up"-orientation requiring local planning; partnerships between business, government and community organizations; and local hiring requirements. Some Empowerment Zones enhanced resident opportunities and skills through job training, daycare programs, and micro-credit (see below).

Community Development Financial Institutions and Local Exchange Trading Systems are two of the newest and most innovative economic development strategies. The former include CD corporations, CD banks, CD venture capital funds, and micro-enterprise (micro-credit) funds. They are specifically dedicated to serving the needs of low-income individuals and communities by developing investments, entrepreneurs, and jobs. Micro-credit extends small business loans to those who cannot qualify for a loan from a traditional lending institution because they are too poor or have no credit history. Loans are usually small (e.g., for a sewing machine) and come with technical assistance and peer supports. The most famous example of micro-credit is Grameen Bank in Bangladesh, which focuses its lending on very poor village women and organizes the borrowers into groups, whose collective responsibility for loans gives borrowers a greater incentive to repay on time. In the U.S., South Shore Bank in Chicago has made hundreds of millions of dollars worth of loans in poor, inner-city neighborhoods. Working Capital in Cambridge, MA, organizes low-income, small business owners into peer-lending groups.

Local Exchange Trading Systems are organized bartering coops that include local currency programs and “time dollar” exchanges. Ithaca (NY) Hours is an alternative economy that pays $10 an hour in a local currency that can be traded for both goods and services (even home utilities). “Time dollars” are similar in equalizing the value of different services, but have no monetary value. In rural Utah, the Emery County CD Initiative developed a program in two schools called “Computers for Kids,” which matched junior high tutors with elementary school readers. The tutors earned one time dollar for each hour of tutoring and, after one semester, many had accumulated enough time dollars to “purchase” their own (donated) computer.

Political Development and Housing Policy

Grassroots organizing, or political CD, is a key, though often ignored, activating ingredient for any CD program’s chances of stopping and reversing the process of neighborhood decline. It empowers residents, is a long‑term solution, costs little (other than time and energy), and helps maintain neighborhood stability (Perkins et al., 1996; Speer & Hughey, 1995). Political CD means both pressuring every level of government through community organizations and larger coalitions and creating private, nonprofit community self-help programs.

Local, nonprofit CD housing programs address the political and economic gaps in the housing market. They turn the homeless into renters and renters into homeowners. Homeowners are less likely to move and more likely to have a material stake, not only in their own home, but in their entire neighborhood, upon which property values depend. Many such programs are based on the limited equity home ownership model ("urban homesteading" or "sweat equity") for providing privately owned housing to low- and moderate-income families. These “third sector” housing programs differ from for-profit housing in both their initial and their permanent affordability (Davis, 1994). A limit is typically placed on the future price at which units may be rented or resold. New York City has seized hundreds of tax-defaulted apartment buildings and turned them over to the existing low-income residents as limited-equity co-ops. Empowering those residents to take control over the revitalization and maintenance of their buildings has resulted in significant improvements in housing quality (Saegert & Winkel, 1996; 1998).

Community land trusts can be used for any particular land use (housing, commercial, or open space) or purpose (historic preservation, local control, neighborhood revitalization; Peterson, 1996). Similar to conservation trusts, which are used to protect open space or agricultural land, community land trusts also acquire land but usually for affordable housing or other CD ends. In general, democratically run groups, such as Share the Future in Heber, Utah, own the land collectively for the public or common good, but lease parcels of it to individuals for long‑term use. Buildings on the land are sold to the individual lessee. This, along with resale price restrictions, helps keep ownership affordable for the duration of the trust. Community land trusts have preserved family farms, helped stem the cost inflation associated with speculation and gentrification, educated first-time home buyers, and developed special needs housing and commercial space for lower-income entrepreneurs (Peterson, 1996). They protect or improve the physical environment, are a political and economic innovation, and can result in social benefits and so illustrate well the interdependence of all four domains of CD in our framework.

Direct government roles to improve low-income housing rest largely on returning public and subsidized housing budgets to an adequate level. Other housing-focused CD policies include encouraging incumbent upgrading (housing improvements by long-term residents, not gentrifiers and speculators) through CD block grants and subsidized loans, increasing management accountability in public housing through tenant organizations[2] and improved quality assurance and grievance procedures, and mixing housing cost levels to avoid concentrated ghetto effects.

Social Development

Cultural diversity, described above as a potential adversity (if prejudice, discrimination, and conflict are left unchallenged), is better viewed as a community asset. Diverse neighborhoods can be interesting and vibrant places to live. Different groups bring different perspectives, knowledge, connections, and strengths to the community and its organizations. But CD efforts must include public events that celebrate diversity and help residents learn about and appreciate their differences. Organizations must actively recruit members of different groups and accommodate differences around language, religious and cultural holidays, and other customs.

Social cohesion consists of a variety of behaviors, attitudes, and emotions which signify the social and psychological creation of community (Perkins et al., 1996). Areas with more neighborliness, greater use of outdoor space, and informal social control of behavior exhibit a better quality of life and greater commitment to the community (communitarianism). This commitment both is motivated by, and leads to, a stronger sense of community and empowerment (collective efficacy), as well as satisfaction with, pride in, and attachment to the people and place, and confidence in its future (Perkins et al., 1990). Social cohesion is the strongest and most consistent predictor of citizen participation in CD (Perkins et al., 1990; 1996). CD organizations, in turn, encourage greater community cohesion by helping residents to discuss and work to address shared concerns and by sponsoring cultural events. Public officials, community leaders, and organizers cannot afford to ignore social cohesion. Communities without it will be hard to mobilize and communities with it will be better able to change policies with which they disagree.

Community crime prevention programs may be organized by civilians or police or may focus on changing the physical environment. Civilian crime prevention encompasses (1) various victimization prevention approaches (e.g., publicizing crimes and encouraging households to increase their own security; resident surveillance, such as block watch or civilian patrols; and pressuring local government for improvements in the criminal justice system; Rosenbaum, 1986) and (2) broader, more strengths-based approaches aimed at addressing the root causes of crime (via youth development, employment, or other CD programs). Community-oriented policing consists of a variety of methods (foot patrol, neighborhood mini-precincts, school programs, community crime information meetings and newsletters, home security checks) for officers to interact more with the community, gain their trust, and address local crime and delinquency problems. Related to community environmental development (below), Crime Prevention Through Environmental Design, or “defensible space,” is a set of architectural and planning principles which encourage natural surveillance, a sense of ownership, and limiting access in ways that deter crime (Taylor & Harrell, 1996).

A project in Hartford, CT, combined all three approaches: civilian block organizing, local team policing, and changing traffic patterns and informal social control by closing some neighborhood entrances and making boundaries more noticeable. Results of even this intensive, multi-pronged strategy were mixed, however (Rosenbaum, 1986). Despite politicians and police chiefs grabbing credit for the recent drop in crime rates in the U.S., there is little solid empirical evidence for any of the narrowly focused crime prevention programs being responsible for that drop. Furthermore, crime and fear tend not to elicit broad or lasting citizen participation (Perkins et al., 1990; 1996). A more promising study of neighborhoods and crime found that, controlling for demographics, “collective efficacy” (in the form of community social cohesion and informal social control) predicts less violence (Sampson, Raudenbush & Earls, 1997). Taken together, these findings suggest that community anti-crime policy must take a more comprehensive, empowerment approach that addresses the root causes of crime and motivates active community participation through a combination of CD and prevention programs for youth.

Environmental Development

The condition of the local physical environment is closely linked to resident fears, confidence in the community’s future, and participation in community organizations (Perkins et al., 1990; 1996; Skogan, 1990). People’s attachments to place, their pride in and satisfaction with their block and neighborhood, are linked to crime, fear, disorder, exterior housing conditions, home repairs and improvements, and home satisfaction (Brown & Perkins, 2001). Organized activities to clean up parks, streets, and yards and to replace vacant lots with urban gardens are excellent ways to get and keep people involved in their community.

In terms of new development, city and regional planning, design, and transportation must be geared toward people (and transit)—not cars, density—not sprawl, and mixed-use zoning—not suburbia (with its isolated subdivisions, shopping malls, freeways, and office parks), all with the goal of promoting community social development (Calthorpe & Fulton, 2001).

Some communities must pay even more serious heed to environmental conditions. Contamination and other environmental disasters and threats require government support for cleanup and protection. But they also require community organization and development to keep local residents united (Edelstein, 1988). CD focused on protecting the environment can have an empowering effect at both the individual and community level (Rich et al., 1995).

Although community developers have become more environmentally conscious, they have not benefited from as much collaboration or coalition building with environmental groups as they could. Yet environmental development is perhaps the ideal context for sustainability theory. For new construction (e.g., highway, housing, natural resource development, manufacturing plant) to be sustainable, it must not pollute or deplete resources (e.g., open space), nor poison the social and economic climate. It must also be politically acceptable: the decision process must be open and truly participatory from beginning (gathering and evaluating information) to end (ideally using a partnership rather than an adversarial approach to making and implementing decisions).

The Sawmill neighborhood in Albuquerque is an example of a community that started out by rallying around an environmental issue and kept residents involved over the long-term by thinking ecologically about the economic, social, and political, as well as physical, health of the community. The community initially organized against a particleboard factory that had been polluting the neighborhood for years. After a successful clean-up campaign, the residents formed a CD corporation to help the city develop the abandoned property. As the neighborhood began to gentrify, they formed a community land trust in order to keep housing affordable to successive generations. The Sawmill Community Land Trust continues to thrive and recently broke ground on a 27-acre commercial, residential, and open space development.

POLICY RECOMMENDATIONS TO ADDRESS COMMUNITY-LEVEL ADVERSITY THROUGH STRENGTHS-BASED COMMUNITY DEVELOPMENT

The strengths approaches to community level adversity outlined in this chapter point to specific policy recommendations at the local, state and federal levels. In most cases, these policy recommendations are not new—they are being implemented in individual communities or states and are included here as examples of policies that can be replicated or adapted in other localities. Some of the federal policies discussed in this chapter can be made more effective by strengthening community control and implementing programs in more coordinated and integrated ways that address all four forms of community adversity.

Although government entities can and should be partners in facilitating, financing, and coordinating CD programs, the process for planning and implementing programs should be community driven. This is a critical point. The call for “maximum feasible participation” of the community has been with us for decades. Yet in practice we still see minimum necessary efforts by government to elicit meaningful participation (Perkins, 1995). That is where both research and practice in participation and empowerment may be helpful (Friedmann, 1992; Kretzmann & McKnight, 1993; Perkins et al., 1996; Saegert & Winkel, 1996; Speer & Hughey, 1995).

The common thread, and some would say the root cause, running through each form of community adversity is the economic marginalization of certain individuals and communities. Thus, it is in this area that we offer the broadest range of recommendations, all of which attempt to focus economic resources and control at the local level. We have not categorized the recommendations by area of adversity (economic, social, environmental, and political), because we believe approaches should be designed to address multiple areas in an integrated manner.

These recommendations fall into the following categories: 1) facilitating the ability of individuals and neighborhoods to address adversity on their own; 2) directing state and local resources to community and economic development, controlled by neighborhoods and communities; and 3) strengthening existing federal policies to support a strengths-based approach. The first category most clearly represents the CD principles of empowerment, social capital capacity building, asset-based CD, and sustainability. But those working at the grassroots level know best how critical government resources are at every level to address the most entrenched adversities and support communities’ own efforts.

Facilitate Grassroots Initiatives: Local governments can support the development of organized mutual supports, such as block and neighborhood associations and local exchange trading systems. City staff and resources can be applied to a broad range of indigenous CD approaches by providing training and technical assistance as well as community outreach.

State and Local CD Policies: State and local governments are well positioned to direct resources to the communities most in need, but often fail to do so or to connect related policies to each other. Strengths-based local and state CD policies would invest in programs that provide opportunities for economic development at both the individual and community levels, such as: micro-credit programs, CD financial institutions, community land trusts, and Individual Development Accounts that match the savings of low-income individuals with public or private funds for purposes of education, business start-up, and/or housing acquisition.

There are numerous examples of communities that use local or state economic development subsidies or financing mechanisms to overcome adversities. These include tax increment financing or industrial revenue bonds for job creation and affordable housing development (e.g., housing trust funds) and tax credits and other incentives to increase wages and benefits or establish “1^st source” agreements (in which employers commit to offer jobs first to local workers or other target populations (i.e., welfare recipients) or to achieve greater permanency in the jobs created). Other communities use these subsidies to develop “Industrial Retention and Expansion” programs aimed at keeping higher wage manufacturing jobs in a community. Some communities have successfully addressed economic and environmental adversity by improving transit for low-income citizens, and others have developed elaborate “sectoral” job creation strategies that target unique local skills, assets, or resources to strengthen the local economy. For example, a rural community in Utah that suffered the closure of a sawmill formed a partnership between local unemployed workers and environmentalists to practice sustainable harvesting of wood products and to develop a market for the value-added products created by a cooperative of local woodworkers.

Local planning and zoning authority can be used in more strengths-oriented ways to promote low-cost housing, improve the social and environmental characteristics of neighborhoods, and assist small business (e.g., mixed-use zoning). “Inclusionary zoning” ordinances require that a certain percentage of new housing be affordable. Local governments are seizing abandoned, unsafe, and tax-defaulted properties for low-income rehabilitation.

One proposal for keeping the most concerned and resourced residents involved in their own communities is to improve neighborhood public schools (as opposed to vouchers for private school, magnet and charter schools, etc.) so that children stay in the neighborhood. Schools are one of the most important institutional anchors for any community and the second most common place for community participation (after religious organizations). Parents and even local businesses are playing a more direct role in education. Federal leadership and resources are also needed. But the biggest responsibility still rests with state and local government.

Strengthening Federal Policies: Fannie Mae, the U.S. Rural Development Agency, and other agencies are beginning to support such strengths-based CD initiatives as community land trusts, self-help housing, Individual Development Accounts, and micro-lending institutions. The Council for Urban Economic Development recently issued a detailed federal policy agenda, including a focus on skills training for the knowledge economy, encouragement of private investment in CD, and other strengths approaches advocated above (Garmise, 2001). We would add that many existing federal programs, while consistent with a strengths orientation to community development, are underfunded (e.g., low-income housing, Empowerment Zones, CD Block Grants, Earned Income Tax Credit). Others have inadequate provisions for private investment, including the Community Reinvestment Act (which is currently under serious political threat), the Home Mortgage Disclosure Act, and minimum wage laws. Some should be expanded to other agencies (e.g., Housing and Urban Development's Community Outreach Partnership Program and its HOME Program’s incentives for subcontracts to local CD organizations), or to younger target populations (e.g., Americorps service or CD job opportunities for high school and college students). Student loan forgiveness programs could be expanded to include college graduates who do community development work in poor urban and rural areas (similar to what has been done to encourage teachers and doctors to select underserved areas in which to work).

There is also a need for more federal funding of ecological research (i.e., systemic, interdisciplinary, multi-method, longitudinal, and analyzed at multiple, ecologically valid levels) and for strengths-based CD research (i.e., participatory, driven by locally defined needs, and leading to the identification and development of individual and community assets). The Ford Foundation is not the major supporter of CD research it once was. Fannie Mae Foundation has filled some of that gap, but tends to emphasize housing rather than the broad range of CD issues. The Department of Housing and Urban Development continues to fund a broad range of CD projects, including some major university-based ones, however it has always funded more interventions than research. Another important federal role in CD research is to ensure that national data gathering better reflects the ecological and strengths orientation toward community-level adversities and development (and not just individual or household indicators).

While funding is important, federal leadership is also critical for regulatory changes. For example, often CD block grant and other resources are captured and redirected by political interests outside the control of marginalized communities. State and local applications of federal strategies could have greater impact if their regulations specifically required broader and more meaningful participation, not only by the general public, but by the low-income communities facing the greatest adversities. A more specific example of a regulatory problem is that limited-equity, low-income housing cooperatives do not have access to Tax Credit Financing. Federal underwriting practices often prohibit mortgages for extended families or coops and restrict the construction of common spaces that would make group life more productive. A recent exception is the loosening of restrictions on common space in housing for the elderly, which may open the door to better accommodations for collective ownership models.

In conclusion, dividing CD policies by level of government helps to target advocacy. But it runs counter to the ecological and systemic perspective we advocate. Some of the most compelling examples of CD are the growing number of comprehensive community revitalization initiatives (e.g., Dudley Street Neighborhood Initiative in Boston and Sandtown-Winchester in Baltimore) and comprehensive community health and substance abuse prevention initiatives, which are encouraged by multiple public and private funding agencies. Thus, CD policies at all levels must include (a) programs to address as many of the social problems discussed in this volume as possible (not just infrastructure and economic development, as important as those are), and (b) meaningful participation at the grassroots level. By the same token, interventions that only deal with the social and psychological symptoms of poverty and injustice, and do not address the economic and political root causes of those problems or make real and tangible gains in people's lives (e.g., decent affordable housing, livable-wage jobs, crime reduction, cleaned up neighborhoods and toxic sites), may be doomed to fail.

Implicit in this chapter are at least three different, but equally valid, strengths orientations: CD policies and organizations which strengthen individuals and communities by (a) building upon existing strengths (e.g., community assets, citizens as social capital vs. communities and citizens viewed only as problems); (b) developing new strengths (i.e., empowering, capacity-building vs. top-down, bureaucratic decision-making, blaming victims, and trying to fix them); and (c) making the goal economically, physically, socially, and politically sustainable and healthy environments (vs. the mere absence of adversities).

CD is relevant to each of the other chapters in this volume since CD programs and policies reduce, at the community-level, many of the adversities discussed in the other chapters. Furthermore, CD directly contributes to the capacity of individuals, organizations, and communities to cope with any remaining adversities, thereby strengthening children, youth and families in the process.

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What is community development?

Strengths-based Principles of Community Development

Political Development and Housing Policy

Larger Scale Public Policy Role Smaller Scale Citizen/Community Role Process and Outcome

Environment