In a year when policing controversies, mass shootings and debates over immigration have dominated the headlines and discourse, there’s a group of inspirational pioneers at work. Not all of these individuals, policy makers and entrepreneurs are household names, but they all are improving this country by developing new ways to solve America’s biggest challenges. Here, NationSwell’s favorite solutions of the year.
THE GUTSY DAD THAT STARTED A BUSINESS TO HELP HIS SON FIND PURPOSE
Eighty percent of the workers at Rising Tide Car Wash, located in Parkland, Fla., are on the autism spectrum. Started by the father-and-son team of John and Tom D’Eri, Rising Tide gives their son and brother, Andrew, who was identified as an autistic individual at the age of three, and its other employees the chance to lead a fulfilling life. John and Tom determined that the car wash industry is a good match for those with autism since they’re more likely to be engaged by detailed, repetitive processes than those not on the spectrum. [ph]
THE ALLSTARS THAT ARE TACKLING SOME OF AMERICA’S GREATEST CHALLENGES
The six NationSwell AllStars — Karen Washington, Eli Williamson, Rinku Sen, Seth Flaxman, DeVone Boggan and Amy Kaherl — are encouraging advancements in education and environmental sustainability, making government work better for its citizens, engaging people in national service, advancing the American dream and supporting our veterans. Click here to read and see how their individual projects are moving America forward. [ph]
THE INDIANA COUNTY THAT HAS DONE THE MOST TO REDUCE INCOME INEQUALITY IN AMERICA
The Midwest exurb of Boone County, Ind., has reduced the ratio of the top 20th percentile’s earnings compared to the bottom 80th percentile by 23 percent — the largest decline for any American county with more than 50,000 residents and an achievement stumped county officials. NationSwell pieced together the story of how a land battle and a statewide tax revolt altered the course of Boone County. Find out exactly how it happened here. [ph]
THE TESLA CO-FOUNDER THAT’S ELECTRIFYING GARBAGE TRUCKS
Ian Wright’s new venture, Wrightspeed, is far less glamorous than his previous venture creating luxury electric sedans. But Wrightspeed, which is installing range-extended electric powertrains (the generators that electric vehicles run on) in medium- and heavy-duty trucks for companies like the Ratto Group, Sonoma and Marin counties’ waste hauler, and shipping giant FedEx, could have a greater impact on the environment than electrifying personal vehicles. Click here to learn how. [ph]
THE ORGANIZATION THAT IS TURNING A NOTORIOUS PROJECT INTO AN URBAN VILLAGE
Los Angeles’s large, 700-unit public housing development Jordan Downs consists of 103 identical buildings. Entryways to the two-story beige structures are darkened with black soot and grime, and the doors and windows are crossed with bars. Soon, the dilapidated complex will be revitalized by Joseph Paul, Jr., and his outreach team from SHIELDS for Families, which provides counseling, education and vocational training services. Read more about the plan, which calls for recreational parks and retail on site and would double the amount of available housing with 700 more units tiered at affordable and market rates. [ph]
THE HARDWORKING GROUP THAT’S RESTORING THE SHORELINE OF AMERICA’S LAST FRONTIER
Chris Pallister and his small, devoted crew are leading the largest ongoing marine cleanup effort on the planet. Since 2002, Pallister’s organization, Gulf of Alaska Keeper, has been actively cleaning beaches in Prince William Sound and the Northern Gulf Coast. The nonprofit’s five boats, seasonal crew of 12 and dozens of regular volunteers has removed an estimated 2.5 million pounds of marine debris (mostly plastic items washed ashore from the Great Pacific Garbage Patch) from more than 1,500 miles of coastline. [ph]
THE STATE THAT’S ENDING HOMELESSNESS WITH ONE SIMPLE IDEA
Utah set the ambitious goal to end homelessness in 2015. As the state’s decade-long “Housing First” program, an initiative to place the homeless into supportive housing without any prerequisites, wraps up this year, it’s already reduced chronic homelessness (those with deeper disabling conditions, like substance abuse or schizophrenia, who had been on the streets for a year or longer or four times within three years) by 72 percent and is on track to end it altogether by early next year. Read more about the initiative here. [ph]
THE RESIDENT THAT’S REBUILDING NEW ORLEANS’S MOST DEVASTATED WARD
New Orleans native Burnell Cotlon wants to feed his 3,000 neighbors. So he’s turned a two-story building that was destroyed by catastrophic flooding during Hurricane Katrina in 2005 (along with most of the Lower 9th Ward community) into a shopping plaza. Already, he’s opened a barbershop, a convenience store, and a full-service grocery store in a neighborhood that has been identified as a food desert. [ph]
THE MAN THAT’S GIVING CAREERS TO UNEMPLOYED MILITARY VETERANS
“They had our backs, let’s keep the shirts on theirs” is more than just a motto for Mark Doyle. It’s the business model on which he built Rags of Honor, his silk-screen printing company based in Chicago that provides employment and other services to veterans. In the three years since its inception, Rags of Honor has grown from four employees to 22, all but one of whom are veterans at high risk of homelessness. [ph]
THE PRESIDENT THAT’S PRESERVING OUR ENVIRONMENT FOR FUTURE GENERATIONS
After promising to slow the rise of the oceans and to heal our planet during his 2008 campaign, President Barack Obama has faltered on environmental legislation during his first term, preferring to expend his political capital on the Affordable Care Act. But the 44th president’s use of regulatory authority and his agreement with China likely ensure his place in the pantheon of modern environmental champions. Here’s why. [ph]
Tag: los angeles
These Teach for America Graduates Left the Classroom. But They Didn’t Forget About the Kids
Every year since 1990, in what is practically a fall tradition, idealistic college grads arrive in public school classrooms in New York City, Los Angeles and all of Teach for America’s 52 regions in between. Straight from seven to 10 weeks of summer training, these TFA corps members commit to work for two years in unfamiliar schools that desperately need strong educators. After that, they’re free to leave the classroom. While the majority of TFA’s 42,000 alumni do continue teaching, the program’s turnover rate has led some to question its success.
“My argument was: let’s take the resources you’re investing in a corps member — tens of thousands of dollars per year — and put that into professional development for training current staff on campuses,” says Robert Schwartz, a TFA alumnus and advisor at the nonprofit New Teacher Center. “You’ll see teachers that are going to stick around longer and are really invested in the community.” Schwartz’s alternative plan is voiced commonly in education circles, and it’s mild in comparison to some pointed criticism of TFA. Sarah Matsui, author of a book that gives TFA a negative assessment, argues to Jacobin that the program is mere resume fodder for Ivy League students on the way to jobs at well-heeled consulting firms like Deloitte and Boston Consulting Group. In response, TFA’s spokesperson Takirra Winfield points out to NationSwell that 84 percent of alumni continue to work in fields related to education or serving low-income communities.
But perhaps the debate over retention rates misses the point entirely. TFA’s mission statement, after all, doesn’t reference teaching at all. Instead, the organization aims to enlist, develop and mobilize “our nation’s most promising future leaders” in pursuit of a larger movement for educational equity. NationSwell explored how five TFA alums are accomplishing that outside the classroom.
Sekou Biddle, United Negro College Fund
A member of the United Negro College Fund’s leadership team, Biddle has always prized service, but as an aspiring management consultant at Morehouse College, a historically black college in Atlanta, he figured giving back was something he’d do as a brief detour on the road to business school. Thinking that TFA sounded like an impactful way to give younger students the same educational opportunities he’d been afforded, Biddle joined the corps in 1993 and stayed in the classroom for a decade.
After, Biddle “wanted to share the things [he] had learned” and transitioned to policymaking as a school board representative and city council appointee in his hometown, Washington, D.C. He says his TFA experience informed his votes and taught him empathy for teachers, who throw themselves into a “180-day marathon grind,” and parents, whom schools too often failed. He keeps in mind one phone call on which a dad told him, “This is the first time someone has ever called to say something good about my child,” Biddle recalls. “I was struck by the power of a relatively simple thing. Just a call certainly had an impact on this parent’s perception on what the relationship with a school and teacher could be.”
In his current role as UNCF’s vice president of advocacy, Biddle engages local leaders and school administrators with the same personal touch. Explaining the achievement gap, he lobbies for more academic and financial support for minority students, ultimately to increase the number of black college graduates. “I thought I was going to do [TFA] for a few years and feel I had done some good in the world, put enough in the bank and be ready to move on,” Biddle says. “I committed to doing two years, and 22 years later, I’m still at it.”
Mike Feinberg, KIPP Schools
While working in the classroom, Mike Feinberg, who co-founded KIPP, America’s largest network of charter schools (with 183 and counting), with fellow TFA alum Dave Levin, became “acutely aware that our students were not receiving an education that would set them up for success in college and life,” so late one night he and Levin laid out plans for a new educational model that refused to let children’s “demographics define their destiny.”
As a teacher, Feinberg saw firsthand student accomplishments that were a result of the belief that kids could and would learn. “If we believe there are solutions to problems, we can create a learning environment where we set high expectations for our students and they not only meet them, but surpass them.” Feinberg readily admits that growing up in poverty creates enormous challenges, but he reaffirms the principle that, if given a chance, education can level the playing field for those students. TFA “shaped my understanding of what education and social justice could accomplish,” he says.
Andrew Greenhill, City of Tucson
Now chief of staff for the mayor of Tucson, Ariz., Greenhill entered a career in government after TFA, inspired to take a broader look at how the delivery of public services can be improved. During his time as a teacher, in addition to the regular curriculum, he seemed to be teaching an impromptu course on how to make it in America. “Students looked to me for all kinds of assistance and information. Most were new arrivals in the country,” he recalls of his middle school class. Greenhill took families to free healthcare clinics, to the library to check out books, to Western Union to send money home and even to the supermarket to show them how to ring up groceries. That non-traditional teaching translated well to local government, where Greenhill has “played a role in helping to understand and support and in some cases even streamline the different programs provided by the city and local nonprofits.”
“I think the more people know about how the education system works, the better informed they will be in helping community-wide efforts, whether they’re inside the classroom, an administrator or a citizen participating in the debates that we have at the local and national level about education,” he says. As a city official, Greenhill doesn’t believe he’s given up on his old students; in fact, he’s still trying to take care of their day-to-day needs, so that classroom teachers can stick to teaching.
Tim Morehouse, Olympic fencer
A silver medal-winning fencer at the 2008 Beijing Summer Olympics, Tim Morehouse has a stellar pedigree to match the perceived elitism of his sport. He attended a rigorous prep school in the Bronx (where tuition today costs $40,660) and Brandeis University, a top-ranked liberal arts college in Massachusetts. It wasn’t until Morehouse signed up for TFA in 2000 that he saw how different his path could have been. Assigned to teach seventh grade at a public school six blocks from where he grew up in upper Manhattan, Morehouse realized how privileged his education had been, compared to the schooling that most children receive.
Because of his TFA experience, Morehouse returned to public schools in Washington Heights and Harlem before the 2012 London Olympic Games to coach fencing, with the hope of giving students an extracurricular to bolster their college applications and a chance at athletic scholarships. His foundation, Fencing in the Schools, last year served 15,000 students in 11 states. Like TFA, Morehouse recruited other Olympic fencers to teach kids the sport and mentor the youngsters in life skills. He says he hopes the foundation will help kids not only get to college, but also succeed there. And who knows? “Maybe they can even go to the Olympics,” he says.
Jessica Stewart, Great Oakland Public Schools
A onetime political junkie and head of the College Democrats at Auburn University in Alabama, Stewart moved to Oakland, Calif., to teach sixth-grade math in 2005 and fell head over heels for the Bay Area City. Politics took a backseat to her work in the classroom, but Stewart’s activist streak resurfaced in 2008 when the city’s superintendent threatened to close 17 schools and a budget crisis post-financial crash generated a multi-million dollar budget shortfall.
Great Oakland Public Schools, where Stewart is senior managing director, was founded in the wake of those disasters and went on to become a major voice in city politics. In 2012, the coalition endorsed three people running for seats on the school board. “To support our candidates, we had 300 volunteers do 60,000 phone calls and 12,000 door knocks,” Stewart recalls. “On any given night in October 2012, walking into the office, you’d see people sitting on the floor (because we only had five staff members at the time) talking to voters. It would be a student next to a principal next to a parent next to a teacher. It was so inspiring to see people coming together to fight for equality.” All three candidates won soundly, but Stewart isn’t resting on her laurels, explaining, “There is still so much work to be done in our education system.”
Editors’ note: This story originally stated that Teach for America was founded in 1989. We apologize for the error.
5 Cities That Are Making Eco-Friendly Living a Reality
Darker winters and blazing heatwaves, higher floods and months without rain. It’s undeniable that our climate is changing. But some American cities are lagging behind; only 59 percent have a mitigation plan, the lowest rate for any global region.
There are are bright spots, however, as some municipalities are adapting with the weather’s fluctuations — and their early efforts are showing results. Last year, for the the first time on record, the global economy grew without an accompanying rise in carbon dioxide emissions. Cleaner energy sources and conservation are proving more effective than even most experts predicted.
Here are several American projects leading the way into a new century of climate consciousness.
[ph]
New York City
The largest metropolitan region — the Tri-state Area, which consists of New York, New Jersey and Connecticut and is home to nearly 20.1 million Americans — found itself taken off-guard by Hurricane Sandy in 2012. The devastating, 13.88-foot storm surge flooded the city, shuttering the subways and leaving the New York Stock Exchange, along with most of Lower Manhattan, dark for several days. One hundred and six people died along the East Coast, and thousands were displaced from their homes. Spurred into action, the Big Apple took immediate measures to stave off destruction from another nor’easter. A few days after, Mayor Michael Bloomberg said, “Our climate is changing. And while the increase in extreme weather we have experienced in New York City and around the world may or may not be the result of it, the risk that it may be — given the devastation it is wreaking — should be enough to compel all elected leaders to take immediate action.”
Following suit from Southern cities like Galveston, Texas, and Miami, which have built storm barriers and restored wetlands, The City That Never Sleeps proposed a $20 billion, 430-page plan to protect its coastline. A central aspect involves beautifying neighborhoods with miles of parkland wrapping around the island, placing some buffer between city and sea. Offshore, oyster beds could break the storm surges, an innovation Kate Orff, a Columbia University architecture professor, calls “oyster-tecture” or “living breakwaters.” She was awarded a $60 million grant by the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development to plant millions of pearl-producers off Staten Island. The artificial reef is bringing biodiversity back to New York’s harbor and using the water as an advantage before the next storm strikes.
[ph]
Chicago
From the 1871 inferno that burned 3.3 square miles to the 1979 airline flight that crashed seconds after takeoff from O’Hare International Airport, Chicago has been no stranger to its own tragic disasters. But the Second City is taking proactive measures to prevent the next climate change crisis. As part of the Chicago Climate Action Plan started by Mayor Richard M. Daley in 2008, the city is preparing for hotter heat waves and wetter downpours. Researchers have studied ways to combat the “urban heat island” effect, a phenomenon that can increase temperatures by as much as 10 degrees during already scorching summers. In response, the city council passed ordinances requiring more trees in and around empty parking lots as well as reflective covers on most roofs. And at City Hall, landscapers planted nearly 20,000 plants in a rooftop garden.
When it comes to preventing floods, Chicago is once again at the forefront. Almost all public alleyways (and in some districts, concrete sidewalks) have been replaced with pervious pavement, concrete mixed with fine sand that enables water to flow straight through. Under heavy traffic, this paving deteriorates faster than normal, but it also reduces stormwater runoff into the city sewer system by 80 percent, preventing flooding and pesky potholes. Rain or shine, the Windy City’s ready.
[ph]
El Paso, Texas
The pipes in this Southern city were running dry after years of drought, so researchers turned to another source: already-used water. Faced with an arid climate in the mountains along the border, El Paso launched the nation’s largest potable-reuse program. Derided by some critics as “toilet to tap,” the technology can seem icky, but most city residents were more worried about running out of water. “In an area where it doesn’t rain you have to explore every viable option, and that’s a viable option,” one resident said at a recent public meeting. While there are some worries about chemicals being poured down the drain, most experts say it’s completely safe since the water’s sent through a body of water, like a lake or aquifer, and then purified an additional time before being mixed in with the regular drinking water supply. The $82 million technology will be fully functional in 2018.
[ph]
Los Angeles
This sprawling metropolis is far from the City of Lights, but it’s trying to emulate its European counterparts. Notorious for smog and light pollution dimming out the night sky across Southern California flatland, L.A. has established itself as the definitive leader in smart street lighting, drastically cutting its carbon emissions. In concert with the Clinton Climate Initiative, the city has replaced 157,000 lampposts, more than two-thirds of the total stock. The lights, which used to emit an orange glow from high-pressure sodium vapor, will now be powered by brighter, white light-emitting diodes, or LEDs.
The city has cut energy costs from lighting by 63.1 percent and is saving $8.3 million annually, according to recent figures. To put it another way, by changing out all the bulbs burning through the night, L.A. cut down 94.3 gigawatt-hours — the equivalent power of four dozen Hoover Dams. “It’s a shining example of how green technology can be both environmentally responsible and cost-effective,” says Ed Ebrahimian, the director of the Street Lighting Bureau. Even better? It’s making streets brighter and safer at night: overnight incidents like vehicle theft, theft and vandalism declined by nine percent.
[ph]
Honolulu, Hawaii
Not only are its residents enjoying the constant sunshine, they’re also harnessing it for their electricity. The most populous city in the Hawaiian chain, Honolulu also claims the country’s highest per capita rate of homes outfitted with photovoltaic panels, with solar power being generated on at least 10 percent of rooftops.
Because much of Honolulu’s power currently comes from burning pricey diesel fuel, the savings from launching one’s own power source attracted many customers, so many in fact that the local utility fought to cap the energy customers could sell back to the grid. Lawmakers ensured solar power would continue to thrive by removing any caps. Last month, in a 74 to 2 vote, they approved a long-term plan that will have Hawaii running entirely on renewable energy by 2045.”Our state is spending $3 [billion] to $5 billion annually on importing dirty, fossil fuels, which is not good for the environment, our future sustainability, or our pocket books,” says Sen. Mike Gabbard, the bill’s sponsor. “Our islands are blessed with abundant, renewable energy. We should be using these resources for the benefit of our people.”
While Roads and Rails Crumble, These 3 Projects Are Rebuilding America’s Infrastructure
After decades of neglect, America’s infrastructure is in shambles. To get back on track, we need to invest at least $3.6 trillion in the next five years, according to the American Society of Civil Engineers. Coming up with all that cash will be a herculean task, especially since the Highway Trust Fund, which pays to build and repave our roads, is at its lowest balance since 1969 and is set to run out of funds this summer.
While Congress works to find a way to rebuild America, here are three innovative methods already underway.
[ph]
[ph][ph][ph]
Suspending Students Isn’t Effective. Here’s What Schools Should Do Instead
A decade ago, 60 percent of students at one South Los Angeles middle school were suspended at some point during the school year. Out of 1,958 sixth, seventh and eight graders, 1,189 were written up for drugs, violence or class disruptions. But this zero-tolerance discipline policy didn’t have the desired effects. Troubled kids isolated themselves, academics lagged and enrollment sharply declined.
Led by a new principal and funded by a federal grant, Audubon Middle School and Gifted Magnet Center, an inner-city junior high school with one of the largest proportions of African-American students in L.A., joined the growing movement of implementing restorative justice in schools: Instead of simply penalizing misbehavior, the strategy involves talking through the reasons why a child is acting out. Prioritizing resolution over retribution, it’s all about keeping kids in school while maintaining the best learning environment. Audubon has taken the idea to a whole new level. Last school year, out of 827 middle school students, only 13 were booted from class — an astonishing 98.9 percent drop from 10 years ago.
In this community, too many African American and Hispanic students fall victim to a life of crime and end up imprisoned, says Kevin Dailey, a behavior intervention specialist with 31 years of experience at Audubon. “People are behind the gray walls because they don’t know how to communicate or because they didn’t have those supportive relationships,” he explains. “We have to do whatever we can to keep them out of that. Knowing how to communicate, how to listen and how to speak from the heart are very important.” In his mind, communication is the difference between being facedown on the ground in handcuffs and enrolled in college.
Restorative justice teaches those skills primarily through something’s known as a “peace circle.” After an incident — whether it be mouthing off in class or shoving a student in the hall — the kids in the classroom talk about what happened over cups of hot chocolate. Rather than referring to “the victim” and “the perpetrator,” which establishes permanent roles for the kids, the circles focus on the action — “the harm” — and how it affects both students. As a small totem is passed around (determining who can speak), all of the participants try to arrive at some consensus for how to address the behavior moving forward.
Sure, there may be consequences, but that’s no longer the focus. Suspensions are now used very selectively because educators don’t want kids to fall behind in their studies. If there is a serious problem, administrators now find it’s better to hold conferences with parents and, if necessary, refer the student to anger management classes or other counseling.
“I don’t know if this is the definitive terminology in the textbooks, but what we see in action is restorative justice means giving kids an opportunity to speak their minds, to listen to them and agree on the next step,” explains Charmaine Young, the school’s principal since 2012. “We’re taking the punitive power of the referral slip and getting to the why of the behavior.”
It’s also why Young encourages teachers to get to know kids outside of the classroom — so they can understand them as young people with personalities and ambitions, rather than just as students who perform well or falter academically. She believes that teachers need to balance academic instruction with social development, like a seesaw. A class can’t be all fun and games, but it also can’t be entirely lessons, Young says. Students are more willing to learn if they feel the teachers actually care about them personally.
That’s where the new policies come into play: if there’s a problem in class, teachers will tailor the response to a student’s unique situation, rather than worrying about getting back to the lesson plan. It’s why administrators no longer issue suspensions for not wearing a uniform, for example, and instead ask if the student’s family has money for the right clothes.
Restorative justice isn’t a new concept, but its adoption is gaining traction, particularly in the Golden State. Last year, the California Commission on Teacher Credentialing required all new principals and administrators to receive training on positive school discipline, and in September, Gov. Jerry Brown signed the nation’s first law eliminating suspensions for young children (grades K-3) for minor incidents like talking back or showing up without school materials. Los Angeles Unified School District went one step further and said that no student in any grade should ever be suspended for “willful defiance,” a catch all offense (outside of two dozen specific categories like bullying and possessing drugs) that had been disproportionately targeted at minorities.
We must “change direction, keep all children in all schools and invest in restoring our children’s sense of purpose, despite so many institutions wanting to throw them away,” says Roslyn Broadnax, a core parent leader of CADRE, a group of minority parents with kids in South L.A. schools. “Over the past 10 years, we have begun to chip away at the belief that removing children of color from school for minor behavior, and leaving them vulnerable to harm and disconnected from the classroom, somehow improves our school safety and test scores.”
Recently, one boy in the after-school program at Audubon accidentally hit a fire alarm, disrupting a school site council meeting. A star basketball player, the youngster was worried he wasn’t going to be able to play in the upcoming league games. The very next morning, he arrived at the main office at 6:45 a.m. — more than an hour before the first bell rings at 8 a.m. — and sat in a chair waiting for the principal to arrive. “I just wanna know, Ms. Young, if I can have a cup of hot chocolate and explain what happened?” he asked. “Before you hear it from anyone else,” he added.
“Who does that?” Young wonders aloud. These are the kind of young adults Audubon is nurturing: kids who can own up to their mistakes or ask for help when it’s needed. Either way, the graduates will be students who know how to speak up for themselves.
Young points out a recent example of their success: Last year, the valedictorians at several L.A. high schools were all alums of Audubon.
Inside the Revival of One of the Nation’s Most Notorious Housing Projects
You hear four words — “South Central Los Angeles” — and images immediately come to mind. Empty streets of boarded storefronts, riddled with bullet holes. Sidewalks peppered with shattered crack pipes and hypodermics. It’s a place you recognize from the evening news. The birthplace of modern gang warfare and the short fuse that’s exploded into riot after riot. Welcome to Watts.
At one corner of the two square miles that make up the neighborhood looms the large, 700-unit public housing development Jordan Downs. It’s among the country’s most notorious projects and is where Joseph Paul, Jr., and his outreach team from SHIELDS for Families, an organization that provides counseling, education and vocational training services, come to work. They’re out to revitalize the property from a graveyard of crumbling postwar buildings and an abandoned industrial site tainted with lead and arsenic into an Arcadian “urban village.” The plan, created by the Housing Authority of the City of Los Angeles (HACLA), calls for recreational parks and retail on site and would double the amount of available housing with 700 more units tiered at affordable and market rates. But more importantly, Paul wants to see the residents revitalized, too.
“We don’t just want to toss opportunities onto folks or introduce them to an existing mindset that’s not conducive to really growing or evolving,” says Paul, SHIELD’s project manager at Jordan Downs. “We need a physical change, as well mental and emotional change.”
Service providers have been deployed, but HACLA is still in the early phase of what will be an ambitious, expensive and years-long redevelopment of Jordan Downs. It’s one of L.A.’s largest public works projects. If it succeeds, it could rewrite the nation’s public housing policies.
NOT SOON ENOUGH
Jordan Downs’ 103 buildings (located coincidentally on E. 103 Street) all look identical. The two-story beige structures are distinguished only by signs like “BLDG 67.” Entryways are darkened with black soot and grime, and the doors and windows are crossed with bars. “1940’s vintage” is how HACLA’s former president described it in 2008; “like a federal penitentiary” is what the leader of the development’s tenant group said instead.
Soon, the dilapidated complex will be transformed into gleaming four-story townhouses and a retail center that will host a grocery store selling fresh produce and several shops. At the center of the development will be a 50,000-square-foot community center and gymnasium that will look out onto an 8-acre park.
[ph]
For decades, Los Angeles didn’t invest in South Central, funneling money into Hollywood, North Hollywood and downtown instead. “That is why when… HACLA presented the mayor last year with the concept of redeveloping 1950’s-era public housing into mixed-income urban villages, the idea caught the mayor’s attention,” recounts Helmi Hisserich, former deputy mayor of housing and economic development policy.
[ph]
OUT OF THE RUBBLE
Under the clotheslines that connect the yards in Jordan Downs like a tangled game of cat’s cradle, children run after each other playing tag. They swing from the bars in the playground and beat music on the tops of trash cans. But after night falls, a different type of life emerges. Dice. Fights. Shootings.
“You have to be a strong person to live there,” says one resident.
One of the oldest housing projects in L.A., Jordan Downs was built to accommodate an influx of factory laborers and war veterans during World War II. In 1955, the housing authority designated the property for low-income residents, and by the 1980s, crime and poverty became endemic. The buildings themselves were so rundown that city council members debated whether residents should have to pay rent. The Grape Street Crips managed the property as their own, operating seized units as drug dens, brothels and dog fighting arenas. Between 2001 and 2011, 78 people were slain in Watts’s housing projects.
Today, more than 2,600 people call Jordan Downs home, half of whom are 17 years of age or younger. Seven out of 10 are Latino, and the others are predominantly black. The average household income is $14,594 — the equivalent of $40 per day for a family of four.
For all its problems, residents take pride in their home and their neighborhood’s culture and resilience. “Watts up,” they tell each other — a pun that’s become something of a pact and a promise.
“Proud to be from here,” a resident says.
“Always will be home,” replies a second.
“Give these people a chance,” says Betty Day, a community leader, “because there’s such beautiful people here.”
[ph]
So far, the wealth of human services that SHIELDS provides — childcare and parenting workshops, youth groups, substance abuse treatment, GED prep, job training, healthcare screenings, and food banks, for example — seem to have made a difference. Even as Paul says he’s still trying “to gain the confidence and trust of people who have been victimized so many times,” a recent report says 34 residents earned the equivalent of a high school diploma and another 113 found jobs. And while anywhere else this wouldn’t have been cause for festivities, the complex recently celebrated three years without a homicide.
BEYOND THE WALLS
Pitfalls abound in employing the residents of Jordan Downs: limited education, criminal records, a language barrier (46 percent of families primarily speak Spanish), among others. Paul’s task is to manage all of these roadblocks, plus translate the opportunities inherent in the redevelopment into paying jobs.
Unlike most real estate deals, Paul participated in negotiations with prospective contractors and lobbied for the highest number of local hires for construction work. He’s also helping local businesses (and Watts residents that work for these companies) prepare their accounting books and other licenses so they can land the contracts for the project. Take Rebel Concrete, for example. The demolition company was on the brink of devastation after the economic downturn, but now the owners are lined up to break ground for the new development and train local, young apprentices on the job at the same time. “Now, it took a year. It’s not overnight,” Paul cautions. “But if you are committed to that process, here is a viable solution.” Not only will the construction work pay decently, but it can also serve as a bridge to future stable employment.
Among the new structures being built is a retail plaza featuring a supermarket, pharmacy, stores and restaurants. That shopping area will be more convenient for current residents and draw wealthier buyers to the market-rate units, but more importantly, it will create 219 permanent jobs.
In another aspect of the redevelopment, workers will pave a Main Street-like thoroughfare through the project. Century Blvd. — a central artery that currently stops short of Jordan Downs — will link residents to prosperous neighborhoods to the west, near the LAX airport and the coast beyond, where members of SHIELD’s nurse-training program, in particular, will benefit from the additional accessibility.
WHO STAYS?
The prospect of losing their apartment frightens many residents of Jordan Downs. It’s why several residents marched to the congressional offices in protest when they first heard that a redevelopment was in the works. They didn’t want to be temporarily relocated out to the San Fernando Valley, or worse, find themselves evicted and possibly out on the street.
That’s because, until recently, official Department of Housing and Urban Development (HUD) policy had often done just that. Beginning in the 1990s, HUD endorsed mixed-income housing as the best way to fix distressed public developments. Attracting people with a wide range of incomes broke down the walls that trapped residents in the snares of poverty and violence, but usually displaced a portion of existing tenants. Instead of protecting the most vulnerable residents, HUD often funded the razing of dysfunctional projects, staking entire communities on the hope that something better might fill the emptiness.
To ensure no one is forced out, HACLA is planning on multiple phases of development so that housing is built before demolition begins. “Los Angeles is full,” says Rudy Montiel, HACLA’s former president who initiated the project. “We have nowhere for our people to live, for our families to live if we displace them from Jordan Downs.” Because of a vacant 21-acre site next door, the project has the ability to expand without tearing down existing buildings. (Cleanup of that site’s contaminated soil is scheduled to begin this month.) Residents in good standing — meaning those who are up to date on rent, aren’t engaging in criminal activity in the unit and aren’t hosting unauthorized guests — will not be evicted during construction.
What’s more, every public unit now on the property will be replaced with a subsidized unit of new construction. Known as “one-to-one replacement,” it’s a basic idea that’s been missing from other revitalization attempts.
[ph]
WHO PAYS?
The redevelopment comes with a massive price tag: $700 million (and that’s revised down from the original $1 billion figure). HACLA has lined up roughly one-third of the funding from state tax credits, L.A.’s community development block grants and private dollars from developers.
Last year, HACLA applied for a $30 million grant under the Choice Neighborhoods Initiative, a program run through HUD. The group thought their project was a strong contender, so the denial letter came as a shock.
“I know that sometimes you feel as if you have been abandoned,” Rep. Maxine Waters told residents at a community meeting. “I know that sometimes you feel as if you are being harassed. I know that you feel that somehow the sun doesn’t shine down here at Jordan Downs but I want you to know that even though you don’t see everybody all the time, that we are fighting on public policy to make sure that the federal government understands that no matter what happens there must always be public housing units available for people in this country.”
After revising their application to include better explanations of the residents’ needs and how the project’s benefits will benefit the entire Watts community, HACLA resubmitted it to HUD last month. It expects to hear back in July.
Redevelopment has been promised at Jordan Downs for years, maybe even decades. One after another, managers at the housing authority stepped down amid scandals over law breaking or embezzlement. It’s part of the reason HACLA and SHIELDS are moving slowly and deliberately in their programs: this time, there’s no room for mistakes. But why would anyone in Watts believe that this time is going to be different?
Paul thinks it has something to do with the human spirit. “Our job is to put a mirror in front of these people so they regain a sense of value,” he says. “How do you raise eight kids or five kids in a community that is defeating everyone in their midst? Murder. Dropout rates. Teenage pregnancy. Healthcare issues. And yet you see a mother raise these kids. There’s a resilience in the hearts of these people, a pride in what they are. Our job is to help them see.”
SEE: 15 Images That Reveal the Heart and Spirit of One of L.A.’s Toughest Neighborhoods
[ph]
15 Images That Reveal the Heart and Spirit of One of L.A.’s Toughest Neighborhoods
Jordan Downs is one of Los Angeles’s most underserved communities — but that’s about to change.
The 700-unit public housing project is home to nearly 3,000 residents and for decades, it has struggled with high crime rates and crumbling infrastructure. But recently, plans have been made to transform the neighborhood into a thriving “urban village.”
The proposal, created by the Housing Authority of the City of Los Angeles (HACLA), calls for recreational parks and retail on site and would double the amount of available housing. It also includes plans for vocational training and job creation for current residents of Jordan Downs, where is the current average household income is $14,594.
Los Angeles-based photographer Isadora Kosofsky recently photographed Jordan Downs for NationSwell to capture a snapshot of this community on the brink of change.
[ph][ph][ph][ph][ph][ph][ph][ph][ph][ph][ph][ph][ph][ph][ph]
READ MORE: Inside the Revival of One of the Nation’s Most Notorious Housing Projects
[ph]
Are there 570,000 Homeless or 1.2 Million? Depends Who You Ask
On a recent evening, Denis McDonough, President Obama’s chief of staff, walked in the dark calling out, “Male, over 25; female, 18 to 24.”
Homeless people rarely have the privilege of having an audience with the president’s right-hand man — much less, one on their own turf. But that’s exactly what happened on a recent evening when McDonough and a crew consisting of Secret Service agents, White House staffers and San Francisco’s Mayor Ed Lee took part in the point-in-time count of homeless people living across America. (Within 90 minutes, the team counted 144 people in eight square blocks around San Francisco’s city hall.) The participation of a high-ranking Cabinet official drew attention to this little-known tool that provides essential direction for governments and service providers. It also brings focus to a population that’s often hidden out of sight, forgotten on vacant doorsteps, under freeway overpasses and in emergency shelters.
“What I see here, what we just walked through, this is a problem. But this is the same sort of challenge we face all over the country,” McDonough says. “The numbers tell the story. And that’s why this count is so important.”
WHAT ARE POINT-IN-TIME SURVEYS?
Here’s the formula: Sometime during the last 10 days of January (with a few exceptions), thousands of volunteers fan out across towns and cities across the U.S. to take a census of unsheltered street people. Equipped with clipboards and flashlights, they’re often assigned a small geographic area to avoid duplicates. The counts began in 1983 in 60 municipalities, as an increasingly visible population became homeless due to poverty, drug use and the closure of state-run mental institutions. Standardized methods for the counts were firmed up in 2005 and have since been refined. Along with figures from homeless shelters and transitional housing, numbers from the point-in-time count are submitted to the federal Department of Housing and Urban Development (HUD). From there, the data gives a local and national snapshot of the homeless population that guides service providers, Congress, HUD and other agencies.
HOW OFTEN ARE THEY CONDUCTED?
HUD requires shelters to submit their data every year, but point-in-time surveys only happen biennially, usually in the odd-numbered years. Many large cities, however, choose to complete the census annually to keep abreast of the latest trends. “When we get an accurate count, the numbers tell us what to do,” Mayor Lee tells the San Francisco Chronicle. “Data drives action. That’s what this night is all about.”
[ph]
IS THERE MORE TO THE SURVEYS THAN JUST COUNTING PEOPLE ON THE STREETS?
Since the federal government introduced its long-term plan to end chronic and veteran homelessness by 2015, as well as youth and family homelessness by 2020, HUD has requested detailed data on those subpopulations. Some surveys require nothing more than approximate age and gender, but others, like Los Angeles’s survey, consists of a seven-page questionnaire asking things like, “Where have you been spending most of your nights?” “Do you have ongoing health problems or medical conditions?” and “How many times have you been housed and homeless?”
In Connecticut, for the first time, volunteers will ask the homeless about their specific housing, medical and employment needs to add to a registry. “In the past, each program kept its own waitlist for housing and other important services…Under that old system, providers and public officials had no way to gain a global view of the total needs to end homelessness in their community,” Lisa Tepper Bates, executive director of the Connecticut Coalition to End Homelessness, writes in an op-ed. A “community-wide by-name registry,” she adds, allows nonprofits “to target the right kind of assistance to the right person.”
[ph]
HOW DO VOLUNTEERS FIND THE HOMELESS?
It’s not easy. Organizers target known homeless encampments, but there’s always the chance of missing some. Because of its huge area, Los Angeles has been one of the leaders in improving its methodology. To supplement a count that takes place over multiple nights — from the posh neighborhoods along the ocean (some of which had their first count this year) to deep into the San Gabriel Valley — the city also conducts a random telephone survey of the “hidden homeless,” which added an additional 18,000 to the 36,000 people already counted on the street or in shelters.
Even if volunteers are able to locate people they suspect to be homeless, answers are not always forthcoming. (“None of your goddamn business” is how someone rebuffed two women who work for the Department of Veteran Affairs in D.C. when they asked him.) Many cities equip volunteers with gift bags and resource lists, small incentives that may prod someone to answer a few questions.
WHAT DO OFFICIALS EXPECT FROM THIS YEAR’S RESULTS?
A year ago, HUD reported that 578,434 people were homeless on a given night, a 2 percent decline from 2013. Exact figures from last month’s count won’t be known until municipalities release them later this year, but so far, experts aren’t optimistic about another decrease. (Already-released figures in Seattle show an alarming 21 percent jump from last year.) Why? Gentrification is driving up rent and decreasing the number of vacant apartments up and down the West Coast, says Katy Miller, regional coordinator for the U.S. Interagency Council on Homelessness. Add to that lingering poverty and unemployment from the recession, a dearth of affordable housing and limited mental health care infrastructure, and it’s suddenly clear why so many are losing their homes.
But it’s not all bad news. Expect some bright spots in the declining numbers of homeless veterans, which has already dropped one-third from 2010 to 2014, thanks in part to First Lady Michelle Obama. Mayors across the country responded to her call to end veteran homelessness this year — a goal that’s well within reach, as New Orleans has demonstrated. The chronically homeless population should also decrease as well, continuing the 21 percent decline from 2010 to 2014. As Salt Lake City has shown, putting the homeless into housing can bring these numbers close to zero. Look for the common-sense solution of “Housing First” to once again prove its effectiveness when totals debut.
HOW ACCURATE ARE THE FINDINGS?
Many in the field believe the counts far underestimate the actual number of people experiencing homelessness. For one, the count occurs during the bitter freeze of late January, when many homeless aren’t living on the street. The calendar assumption seems to be that the homeless will be more likely to enter the shelter when it’s cold outside and thus be counted, but they could also take refuge in a vehicle or seek protection in a church basement. The head counts are “hit or miss,” says Paul Boden, director of the Western Regional Advocacy Project, a homeless rights group. “Those whom they could see, they counted,” he writes in an op-ed in the San Francisco Chronicle. “Point-in-time counts are a minimum number, always. They undercount hidden homeless populations because homeless persons are doubling up with the housed or cannot be identified by sight as homeless.” A quick look at other studies support Boden’s claim, including data released by the U.S. Department of Education, which reports that the number of homeless students has nearly doubled since the 2006-07 school year, to 1.2 million.
[ph]
WHICH GROUPS ARE OFTEN MOST EXCLUDED FROM THE CENSUS?
Point-in-time surveys do provide a snapshot taken at roughly the same time, a HUD official notes, which can “benchmark progress” with some confidence every two years — assuming that the face of homelessness is not changing. Some advocates fear that the largest new population of homeless — families who’ve lost their homes in the recession and are bouncing between couches, cheap motels and other temporary residences— are not being identified since they don’t “look homeless” to survey volunteers.
In addition to families, youth are most often among the undercounted, Boden says. Unaccompanied homeless youth are referred to as an “invisible population” because they’re particularly difficult to count. Studies attempting to estimate the total range from 22,700 to 1.7 million, a huge disparity. To improve count accuracy, HUD has partnered with a number of other agencies for a program called “Youth Count!” Since 2013, these groups have tried to attract youth homeless into shelters for the one-night counts with free meals and activities. They also approach homeless youth earlier in the day, when they’re likely easier to find at hotspots for young people like malls or recreation centers, LGBT-focused agencies and schools.
Unfortunately, while this system counts those down-and-out on the streets, it does little to track those who are grappling with housing insecurity — the very people which may be counted among this country’s homeless during the next point-in-time survey.
[ph]
The Top 5: America’s Best New Buildings
Undoubtedly, we associate cities with their iconic structures: New York City’s Empire State Building, San Francisco’s Golden Gate Bridge and the Gateway Arch in St. Louis, to name a few. But these edifices — so forward-thinking for their time that we’re still in awe of them today — are at least half a century old, making it seem like the era of erecting statement-making civic structures has passed.
Proving that designers are still as innovative as ever, however, are this year’s recipients of the prestigious Honor Award from the American Institute of Architects (AIA). The winners, which will be formally recognized at AIA’s National Convention in Atlanta this May, are diverse “in scale, expense, concept, use, in virtually every aspect,” says Waller McGuire, executive director of St. Louis Public Library and the only non-architect on AIA’s nine-member jury. “The strongest connection between the award winners is that we looked for architecture that respects and elevates the people using it: the people who will ultimately judge it for themselves.”
With that in mind, here’s a selection of five outstanding buildings, all of whose architects paid particular attention to their social responsibilities, impact and energy usage.
[ph][ph][ph][ph][ph][ph][ph][ph][ph][ph]
After This Soldier Was Shot in the Head, Comedy Became His Therapy
“A lot of people have asked me how I went from being a soldier to being a comedian,” Retired U.S. Army Staff Sergeant Thom Tran says in his Got Your 6 Storytellers talk. “Comedy is my therapy.”
On his fourth day in Iraq, Tran took a gunshot to the back of his skull in a gunfight. As Tran talks, footage of the incident from the field plays behind him. In it, he wipes blood from his neck and says, simply, “f***.”
Tran, who is now based in Los Angeles and works as a standup comedian, writer, producer, voiceover actor, and traffic reporter, has a punch line for everything.
He talks, for example, about how he holds so may jobs because he is constantly on the verge of being fired from at least one of them. He describes how memory loss — a result of his injury — allows him to hide chocolates from himself then find them with that same feeling of surprise you experience when you find money in a pair of pants. And he even manages to make the audience laugh about the way his father reacted to the video of his son being shot in the head.
“We have to be able to laugh at that,” he says, pointing to the video screen behind him as he stands before an audience that is experiencing shock, inspiration and side-splitting laughter all at once.
“Cause if I didn’t, I don’t know where I’d be today,” he continues. “Laughing, this therapeutic thing that comes from your soul, is the only thing I’ve found that can heal that.”
It’s no wonder Tran went on to found the GIs of Comedy, recruiting military veterans to travel and perform for troops and civilian supporters around the world as a way to bring laughter to them and to help them heal.
Watch his story, then share it with six of your friends.