Dr. Edward Zigler is often referred to as the “Father of Head Start.” For the last half-century, he’s been the driving force behind the early intervention program that aims to curb the detrimental effects of growing up in poverty. Since its inception in the summer of 1965, Head Start has served more than 30 million at-risk children and their families. The comprehensive model Zigler pioneered — focusing on every aspect of a child’s early development, not just math skills or reading ability — has been replicated by the Harlem Children’s Zone and other forward-thinking nonprofits, and it’s taking hold in school districts across the country, at all grade levels, through President Obama’s Promise Neighborhoods.
Zigler’s also contributed a dense volume of research to the field. He founded a child development and social policy center at Yale University that’s now staffed by 40 faculty and 50 fellows. Zigler himself authored or edited more than 40 books and 800 scholarly publications. For his work, he was presented with the Award for Outstanding Lifetime Contribution to Psychology in 2008, the highest honor given by the American Psychological Association.
At age 85, Zigler is an emeritus professor of psychology at Yale, where he’s taught since 1959. Speaking to NationSwell from his home in New Haven, Conn., he reflected on his experience founding a mainstay of America’s education policy half a century ago.
Q: A White House panel was convened in 1964 to find a way to help low-income kids. How did Head Start develop out of it?
A: The War on Poverty was put in place by President Johnson and Sargent Shriver, and the Office of Economic Opportunity was in charge of that effort. That’s when we had something called Community Action, but it was very much disliked in this country, and it got a lot of critical press and a lot of opposition. People wanted to be aggressive about making things better for poor people, but everybody finds out, if you fight City Hall, City Hall fights back. Sargent Shriver was faced with what to do next, and he decided on Head Start. Nobody can be angry at little children that are three or four years old. As part of Community Action, he created Head Start and people did indeed love it since its inception. But it didn’t mean that they became kind to Community Action.
At that point, though, nobody knew what Head Start was, so we needed a planning committee to establish exactly what it would be. Most of its members were in their 50s and 60s and rather well-established psychiatrists, social workers, pediatricians and child psychologists. As it turned out, I was by far the youngest member of the planning committee, at the age of 34. At the age of 40, I took over Head Start in this country and become responsible for it, so I’ve been intimately involved with Head Start for its 50 years.
Q: What did the original eight-week summer pilot project look like?
A: Actually before Head Start, there were some preschool programs, like Citizen Grace in Nashville and a program in New York, but the problem was that they were only interested in one facet of a child’s development: intelligence or school performance, both of which are highly related. On the planning committee for Head Start, we decided on two things that were different and that are still in place after 50 years. The first is comprehensive services. You wouldn’t just give the child I.Q. raisers and school performances enhancers; instead, you give the kids health services, give the family social work and give them things the child would need to escape poverty.
A second pillar was parent involvement. Head Start doesn’t raise small kids; preschool programs don’t raise children. Parents raise their children. So if you want children to do better, you try to get parents to be better socializers. Head Start is pointed as much as the parents as at the child.
Q: During the Nixon Administration, you developed standards for the program as the first director of the Office of Child Development (now the Administration on Children, Youth and Families). Why was that early work important?
A: At that time, I was the federal official responsible for Head Start. The first thing I did was stop Community Action. They already had their own plan for Head Start, and they had absolutely no use for the planning committee. We were essentially a group of scholars from a lot of different fields, whereas they saw themselves as poverty warriors. They didn’t know a lot about child development, but they’d fight to get a better life for poor people, like building a playground in a poor neighborhood. Well, that’s fine — I wouldn’t be against that — but that’s not the solution to what children need. And that’s where the planning committee came in.
We didn’t have enough money to serve all the children trying to get into Head Start, so instead of teaching people how to mobilize, I stopped that aspect of the program, and all the money went to optimizing poor children’s development, which was the planning committee’s only goal. That didn’t meet the satisfaction of a lot of people — self-proclaimed “poverty warriors,” who were getting paid through the program. They wanted to meet with me to see if they could change my mind. As a public official, I was glad to meet with them. As the meeting went on, the guy who was really the leader of the group at the opposite end of this long conferences table from me, stood up and said, “Dr. Zigler, you just don’t understand us. We are willing to give up a generation of our children in order to do our work.” And I remember at the time, I stood up at my end of the table and said, “Well you might be willing to, but I’m trying to help this generation of your children and to help coming generations of children. And this meeting is over.” And that was that.
Q: In the late 1980s you criticized some centers for not living up to their promise, telling The New York Times in a front-page article that one-third of the centers should be shuttered. Why was that rigorous emphasis on results important for Head Start’s success?
A: Head Start probably started too big. Instead of getting the 35,000 kids that Shriver and Johnson wanted, we put 266,000 into Head Start that first summer. The way it was being funded, we were running a lot of very poor, mediocre programs and hadn’t close any that were poorly functioning. When I came in, I emphasized only two things that would determine the effectiveness of Head Start. One is the quality of the program — are there good teachers in the classroom teaching these children? — and second was its length. The longer the program, the more impact it’s going to have.
Another good thing happened recently. See, for years and years, you didn’t have to reapply. Every five years, you automatically got a new grant. This practice has ended. What is in place now is a monitoring system in which Head Start is evaluated, and if the program is poor, its funding is taken away and somebody else gets it. The improvement in Head Start has taken way too long, but it’s in progress in a pretty satisfactory way now.
Q: You’ve worked with nearly every administration from Johnson through Clinton. Did you have a favorite one to work with?
A: I worked with all of them. After a new administration would come in, I was asked to be a consultant for Head Start. [long pause] Let me tell you a story about President Johnson and what Head Start meant to him. When he left the White House and went back to his ranch in Texas, he discovered a Head Start center nearby. His daughters worked in Head Start, and every day he would go to the center. Now, Johnson was a great, big tall man, and he would fill his side pockets with jelly beans. All the kids got to know him. They’d reach into his pocket and get the jelly beans. After a while, all the kids in the Head Start program were calling him Mr. Jelly Beans. He was so obviously in love with education.
Q: Have there been disappointments along the way?
A: Head Start has gone from crisis to crisis. The worst one happened about one week after I got to Washington, D.C. If you know Washington, you know the Office of Management and Budget (OMB) really runs the place. So during the first week, I was called to this meeting and a guy from OMB was there and he puts a piece of white paper on the table and said, “Here’s the plan. In the first year of Head Start, you will close one-third of the Head Start centers. The second year, you will close another third of the Head Start centers, and the third year you will close the remaining ones.” I was one of the founders of Head Start, but it was going to be gone in three years.
So the same day, I went to the head of the Department of Health, Education and Welfare [now the Department of Health and Human Services], Eliot Richardson’s office, and told his secretary, “I must see the Secretary immediately.” Nobody says that unless they’re pretty damn serious, so she went in and of course he saw me immediately. He and I had hit it off. He was a great boss, a very smart guy. I told him what had just happened at this meeting run by OMB, and he looked at me in amazement. He didn’t know anything about it either — a Cabinet member in the Nixon administration and he didn’t know about it. He told me to go back to my office, do my work and forget that the meeting ever happened. He also said that he’d go to the White House and clear it up, which he did.
One of the things that always helps is that every time the reauthorization comes up, the parents with children in Head Start march in support of it. It’s been a very important factor in keeping the program alive. I don’t know of another children’s program that’s been alive for 50 years. On the adult side, we’ve got Social Security. But a program for kids? Kids don’t vote, but the parental participation helps keep it alive.
This interview has been edited and condensed.
Tag: low-income families
The Story of One Website and How It’s Changing Social Services in America
For two decades, a 46-year-old Detroit woman named Dechiel endured physical abuse at the hands of her partner — violence that became so horrific that it resulted in her daughter’s death. After that loss, Dechiel sought refuge in a domestic violence shelter, where a local nonprofit helped her find a job designing specialized jackets. With newfound confidence, Dechiel began talking about going back to school, empowering other women, starting over. She was ready to move out of the shelter and into a new apartment, but one thing stood between her and independence: a $500 security deposit.
Dechiel’s scenario is one that plagues our systems of public assistance. Too often, a person who’s fallen on hard times stands to benefit from a government initiative or a charity’s work, but some seemingly minor obstacle stands in their way. A jobs program, for example, may connect the unemployed with work, but it doesn’t guarantee the willing worker any money to fix her broken down car so she can get to work, funds for childcare while she’s on the clock or pay for the clothing needed to blend in with the workplace’s informal dress code. For too many, help falls just beyond reach, a buoy thrown short of the drowning man’s grasp.
In two decades of social work in New York and Chicago, Megan Kashner had witnessed this problem time and again. Fed up with asking her director for money and being told that her agency didn’t provide that type of aid, she dreaded seeing the look on her clients’ faces as she forced herself to say, “I’m so sorry, we can’t.” It’s why Kashner founded Benevolent, an online philanthropic platform, to bridge the gap from where traditional services end and poverty truly begins.
The site is something like a Kickstarter for the underprivileged. Only with Benevolent, instead of backing your friend’s art-house indie movie idea, you can contribute to the essentials a person needs to function in society: the heat for a mother’s car in blustery Chicago, a laptop for an asylum seeker in San Diego or beds for a Detroit family sleeping on their floor while their father’s out of work (three examples of recently funded projects). To put it another way, government gives boots to the destitute, but this platform crowdfunds the actual straps by which they can pull themselves up.
“I have seen families fall through the cracks and away from their goals because they couldn’t get what they needed to take the next step forward, the things we take for granted,” says Kashner, Benevolent’s founder and CEO, a “ticked-off social worker” turned digital entrepreneur. In her opinion, “Today’s technology and the reality of crowdfunding is a total game-changer for that… Technological advancement, individual access and information will allow us to personalize how to help people get themselves out of poverty.”
In his or her own words, the individual seeking funding presents a pitch on Benevolent’s site. (A case manager provides a short verification as well.) The first-person narrative empowers users to talk about their circumstances and their aspirations, and in return, see that someone cares enough to listen (and hopefully, provide funding). The model is so important the Benevolent employees have even transcribed information phoned in from prison inmates that didn’t have access to computers.
Because the site is individualized, Benevolent can win over potential donors with compelling narratives, but it also leads to questions of whether handing over cash to each person is the most efficient use of funds. Could money be better spent buying goods in bulk, then distributing them? Kashner’s belief: A firm no. “Charity is not the answer to everything. The fact that people in low-income circumstances have trouble accessing equipment for work, let’s say, doesn’t mean that we need to have a new nonprofit that specializes in work gear,” she answers. Benevolent works, she says, because it focuses on targeted assistance. It gives a person concrete access to the next step, not a free handout they can repeat next week.
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“If we can help the woman who wants to be a phlebotomist [a medical assistant who draws blood], get subsidized childcare, secure housing and a quality education for the 18 months in school, then she might never need those services again,” Kashner argues.
Since Kashner came up with the idea of Benevolent in February 2011, the site has raised $270,000 (from 4,600 donors) for 578 people. Four benefactors fully funded Dechiel’s apartment deposit, and an update on the Benevolent website shows Dechiel smiling, proudly displaying her new keys, as she says she’s ready to move in and “move forward.”
In Kashner’s mind, the site is accomplishing something more important than funding a small number of the down-and-out. “Benevolent also exists to highlight and to bring to light the fact that these gaps exist. For example, right now, we see a lot of people moving into permanent housing. When they get there, they have no tables or chairs, no beds, no linens. It’s almost like they’re squatting,” she says. By documenting these trends in housing, transportation and employment, Benevolent may actually convince enough elected officials to create the systemic change that would fill these cracks.
“Our dream would be that this service would be unnecessary in the future,” Kashner says.
Charitable giving has transformed from a collection plate for the nameless poor to individual donations that go towards a hyper-specific need. For the first time, the platform empowers the recipient to speak about her situation and her future, not rely on what a donor says is best for her. With Benevolent, Kashner’s redefining philanthropy for the Internet age.
(Homepage image: Joe Raedle/Getty Images)
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The Common Sense Move That Reduced California’s Teen Pregnancy Rate by 60 Percent
In 1991, within the course of a single year, close to 16 out of every 100 teenage girls in California became pregnant — a rate that ranked among the worst in the country (the national average was 6.18 births for every 100 teens) and far exceeded those of other developed countries, sometimes by double digits.
Staggering as those statistics were, there’s been an equally stunning development in the 20 years since. By 2011, the teen pregnancy rate nationwide dropped 37 percent, and by more than half in the Golden State, a decline that’s “one of the nation’s great but unheralded success stories of the past two plus decades,” says Bill Albert, chief program officer for The National Campaign to Prevent Teen and Unplanned Pregnancy.
Despite the drastic drop in teen pregnancies, the fact remains uncelebrated — perhaps because no one can pinpoint exactly how it happened. Researchers haven’t yet explained how so many states’ divergent (and sometimes contradictory) strategies could consistently result in such steep declines.
The simple explanation? A “magic combination of less sex and more contraception,” as Albert puts it. But that only begs the question, What changed about the way teens have sex?
Studies point to a number of cultural factors. Some claim that mandatory sex education in schools after the AIDS crisis increased use of contraception. Others cite welfare reform and the strong economy. One hypothesis holds that MTV’s reality shows “16 and Pregnant” and “Teen Mom” discouraged sex with their gritty looks at the challenges of childbearing at a young age. Another theory says kids saw their parents marrying and having children later in life, so they likewise didn’t experiment until they were older and perhaps more mature.
A hard look at California’s programs, however, may reveal the best practices and a model to adopt nationwide. After all, the state is leading the way in reducing all three key areas — teen pregnancy, births and abortions. It’s “the undisputed heavyweight champion of prevention,” Albert remarks.
The Golden State, as a whole, saw teen birth rates drop by 60 percent from their peak in 1991. That number reflects improvement across all races; Hispanic teens still have the highest rate (4.27 births per 100 female teens), but it’s down 42 percent in the past 10 years.
Many public health officials point to the state’s sex education as an essential element in their multi-pronged approach. State law passed in 2003 requires the education to be “comprehensive, medically accurate and age- and culturally-appropriate.” Within the context of preventing HIV/AIDS, California teaches abstinence, but otherwise says abstinence-only education is “not permitted” in public schools. (It’s the only state in the union that didn’t accept lucrative federal dollars tied to “abstinence-only-until-marriage” programs included in a 1996 welfare reform package, after the state found its own pilot ineffective compared to one that included information on contraceptives.)
From there, the state’s approach focuses on access to healthcare, pioneering an innovative funding model that allows teen patients at hospitals or community clinics to qualify as their own household, making them eligible to receive public assistance for their medical expenses.
Additionally, California takes a more personalized approach to the social issues that surround — and lead to — teen pregnancy by helping local school districts and community healthcare providers tailor their programs to specific geographic areas. There’s vast differences, for example, in urban, affluent San Francisco and the rural farmlands of the San Joaquin Valley, where teen pregnancy rates still double those of the Bay Area.
“The problem isn’t the across-the-board teen birth rate in California, it’s the inequities that are revealed when you look at the rate,” Alison Chopel, senior program manager of the California Adolescent Health Collaborative and champion of the effort, says. “Why are black girls and Latina girls having babies younger than white girls? It’s because of the opportunity landscape that’s available to them.”
For Chopel, the need to customize the programs is very personal. As a teenager, she saw herself becoming another statistic. Raised in a poor household, she struggled with schoolwork, took drugs to cope, failed her classes and barely graduated from high school. College didn’t seem to be in her future, especially not after she had a baby boy. “I didn’t mean to get pregnant,” she says, “but I meant to have him.”
With the help of a Pell Grant, she graduated from college and went on to graduate school to study public health. She came to recognize the wide scope of factors contributing to unintended pregnancies: family structure, education, poverty, access to healthcare, race and culture.
Recently, public health advocates have questioned whether a baby is really the cause of the negative life outcomes — dropping out of school, living in poverty, depending on food stamps — for teen moms or whether they would have been just as likely to end up there because of their upbringing. (Chopel points to new research showing that young mothers from impoverished backgrounds may actually perform better than their peers because they receive family support and are motivated to succeed for their child’s sake.) Poverty, in other words, isn’t a symptom of unwanted teen pregnancies. If anything, it’s the cause.
California’s “innovative” strategies and community-based partnerships worked: they’re “helping young women and men make responsible choices,” says Dr. Ron Chapman, director of the state’s public health department, so the state is focused on continuing to make prevention programs available. “In all communities,” Chapman adds emphatically.
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How Do Young Men Become Better Fathers? They Attend This Boot Camp
At 17 years of age, Kaeran Reyes-Little became a father.
Growing up in Queens, N.Y. — dad gone, mom working long shifts at the hospital — Reyes-Little found himself hanging with an older crowd, getting in trouble with the law. “I think that was God’s way of saying slow down,” he says of the birth of his son, Darius.
Even though he had just crossed into adulthood, Reyes-Little refused to perpetuate his own dad’s mistakes, to repeat the cycle. He took full custody of his son and tattooed his name across his forearm. Most mornings, Reyes-Little woke up at 4 a.m., wrestling with anxiety. “Why did I have a kid so early?” he’d ask himself. “I didn’t get to build a foundation before having to lay my son’s. What am I going to do?”
Through his older brother, Reyes-Little heard about Fatherhood Academy, a City University of New York program aiming to stop the downward spiral in broken families. Despite being apprehensive at first, he signed up. What he found there was a revelation: “Life’s not over. You’re still somebody,” he recalls hearing. “When you’re a single parent, you’re in a bubble already. It takes another parent to understand what that feels like. And this is not just parents, but fathers.”
Across New York City, 749,000 kids are raised by single parents. With the help of Fatherhood Academy — an initiative that was put on hold this spring due to uncertain funding — dozens of young dads like Reyes-Little are learning how to make a better life for their children.
As a member of the program, Reyes-Little earned his high school diploma at 19. And with some prodding, he enrolled in community college, where he’s now pulling a 3.0 GPA. Pursuing a passion for science that’s been with him since childhood, he’s specializing in marine biology.
“I’m a geek at heart,” he reveals, an admission that doesn’t sound strange through his wide grin, but on second thought, makes you pause. Did this tattooed 24-year-old with a rap sheet just say that? This guy, who was once so angry at his father, so bitter because it seemed anyone would betray him for a price, really just fess up to being a science nerd? And then, in case you didn’t hear him at first, Reyes-Little laughs and says, “My son’s the same way.”
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For generations, New York City has been the destination for those hoping for a brand new start. But for all of Sinatra’s crooning, the city rarely offers those possibilities to its own children — particularly those in impoverished neighborhoods. In the Bronx, 44 percent of kids are raised below the poverty line, and in Brooklyn, one in three won’t graduate from high school.
Unlike traditional parenting services (which are usually aimed at single mothers), Fatherhood Academy is, as its name indicates, just for dads. Through several weeks of high school equivalency (HSE) test-prep classes, workshops and mentoring, New York City’s young men learn to become better parents and start on the path towards a college degree or a stable career.
“Fathers are the mentors for their children. If they’re in a different situation economically and mentally, those improvements are so huge,” says Raheem Brooks, the program’s coordinator. “We want to stop this cycle that’s been going on in their families, because they’re training the future leaders of our city.”
With flyers posted in housing projects, Fatherhood Academy targets young men between the ages of 18 and 24. An open enrollment policy (meaning no application questions inquire about criminal history) results in a mix of dads from all over the city. Several still live with the child’s mom, some share custody and an increasing number are single dads raising newborns alone. But they all share an automatic respect for each other as fathers.
“They all want something better for their children, but they don’t know how to get it,” says David Speal, counselor and case manager for Fatherhood Academy. “They just need that understanding and guidance.”
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The program operates out of the continuing education center at LaGuardia Community College in Queens. There’s a persistent bustle in its bright, second-floor office as students drop off forms and ask the secretaries for help (even after being tsk-tsk’ed for wearing hoods inside). The door is always open, even during meetings when it stays slightly ajar.
Brooks and Speal, the two men behind the program, are an odd couple. Brooks is an imposing figure: He’s tall, African-American and sports dreadlocks that fall below his wide shoulder blades. Born in Detroit, he began his career in East Harlem as a “follow-up specialist,” which essentially meant knocking on doors to find the at-risk guys who’d missed appointments.
Beside him, Speal is white, slender and earnestly enthused, like a grown-up camp counselor. A lifelong resident of Queens, he started volunteering at Rikers Island, NYC’s main correctional facility, while enrolled at John Jay College of Criminal Justice and was later hired as a case manager there. During one counseling session, a young inmate told Speal, “I gotta go. I got special permission.” “For what?” Speal asked. “To visit my father. He’s in the dorm down the hall.” Fatherhood Academy wasn’t born that moment, but Speal says witnessing the ensnaring cycle firsthand invigorates his work today.
“They don’t want the same thing that happened to them to be true for their kids,” Speal explains.
“The conversations have already changed,” Brooks chimes in. “Our guys can say, ‘Hey, let’s go do homework.’ Suddenly, it’s ‘Daddy’s going to college,’ rather than ‘Daddy’s not around.’ It’s a different dynamic that they never had.”
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Fatherhood Academy begins with a three-week “boot camp” to test commitment and gauge the group’s educational level, then jumps right into 13 weeks of training for the HSE test. Since classes are held on a college campus, dads become accustomed to the feel of higher education. “Rather than just stop here and get my GED, they can see, ‘I’m among young people that look similar to me. I can do that,’” Brooks says.
Afternoons focus on parenting topics. Nonprofits and motivational speakers give presentations on how to cook on a budget (think: a tasty pineapple chicken recipe), balance a budget or administer CPR. In smaller groups, the dads have wide-ranging discussions that touch on everything from changing diapers to relationships with family. “Men don’t have these conversations, you know, talking about feelings towards their father, how they were raised and the values we are going to have in our children,” Brooks says.
Fathers are the mentors for their children…We want to stop this cycle that’s been going on in their families, because they’re training the future leaders of our city.”
— Raheem Brooks, Fatherhood Academy
Those conversations build a brotherhood that provides support when members face with bigger challenges: “homelessness, not enough to eat, issues with the mother, visitation and custody, drug addiction and alcohol, anger, just different things,” Brooks says. Many of these trials aren’t new, but now the men’s responses have changed. “We’re noticing that the guys are seeing a different version of themselves now,” Brooks says. “They bought into the program and into the possibilities for their own growth.”
It all concludes with a cap-and-gown ceremony, a first for many. With five cohorts now completed, the program has graduated 136 men. Fifty-nine of the dads passed the HSE test, 21 of whom are now in college. More than half — 80 fathers — were placed in jobs, and another 35 landed internships.
By all counts, the program has been successful, but for months, Fatherhood Academy hasn’t held a class. Launched by former Mayor Michael Bloomberg in 2012 as part of the Young Men’s Initiative, the initial seed grants from the Bloomberg Foundation and George Soros’s Open Society Foundation ran dry, and the program wasn’t included in the most recent budget issued by Mayor Bill DeBlasio. “Here’s a program that actually works, and now the funding has vanished like a deadbeat dad,” a reporter at the New York Daily News wrote in October, noting that the $550,000 budget is roughly the same as housing 10 inmates at Rikers for a year.
“It was tough. We know these guys individually, so it’s really personal,” Brooks states. “Guys would call you saying, ‘Hey, can I be in your next cohort?’ and you’d have to tell them, ‘We’re not going to be around, but I’ll take your name down.’”
Good news came from City Hall last month, when Brooks and Speal found out that Fatherhood Academy is set to become an official city program funded in the next budget cycle. They’re planning to start the next session this summer. Meaning that soon, 60 young dads will be receiving a call with good news: The academy is back in session.
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.
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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.
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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.”
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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.
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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
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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.
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READ MORE: Inside the Revival of One of the Nation’s Most Notorious Housing Projects
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3 Ideas That Will Give Every Citizen Access to the American Dream
During last month’s State of the Union address, President Barack Obama declared an end to the nation’s economic downturn. “The shadow of crisis has passed, and the state of the union is strong,” he said. But for many, the president’s announcement felt premature.
Currently, 45 million Americans live below the poverty line. Income inequality, stagnating wages and job market volatility make the prospects of upward mobility bleak. According to research by The Pew Charitable Trusts, Americans raised at the bottom of the income ladder are likely to remain there as adults. Two-thirds will never make it to the middle class, and 96 percent will be barred from the top bracket, where household income exceeds $81,700.
Erin Currier, director of Pew’s projects on financial security and mobility, studies the factors that limit economic opportunity. Recently named one of the most influential women in Washington under 35, she has utilized the research to establish nonpartisan agreement on the facts that guide policy decisions. (It’s already helped establish a bipartisan caucus.) “We hold this up to be the national ethos of being able to pull yourself up by your bootstraps,” she says, “but it doesn’t happen that often.”
During a conversation with NationSwell, she identified three areas lawmakers from both sides of the aisle need to address if they hope to restore every American’s chance at success.
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The Two-Pronged Approach That’s Finding Success in Breaking the Poverty Cycle
How do you end poverty? While there’s a wide array of options and theses, one solution stands out from the crowd: education. And not just kids, either. At the Dunbar Learning Complex in Atlanta, Ga., parents are students, too, thanks to its two-generation approach, which is a theory that combines high-quality, early childhood education and career help for parents to build better families and lives.
Comprised of a preschool and public elementary school, Dunbar accepts students into its pre-K program if their parents sign up with The Center for Working Families, a career development center, to improve their job skills. The pre-K is part of the Educare Network, which is a national network of full-day early education schools. The school also has an on-site art studio and infant classrooms, which accept students starting at six weeks of age, reports National Journal.
While parents can drop their kids off from 6:30 a.m. to 6:30 p.m., administrators stress that Dunbar isn’t a daycare; students are there to learn — no matter the age — and every classroom has a curriculum.
So far, Dunbar has provided results. In 2010, only six percent of students entering kindergarten were reading at or above grade level, but after Dunbar’s first year, that number increased to 55 percent. Furthermore, those student scoring below the 30th percentile on the Peabody Picture Vocab Test dropped by 33 percentage points, while those above the 50th percentile increased by 12 percent.
Beyond educating children, Dunbar provides adult services, including assistance with finding special teachers for students, choosing healthcare, inspecting homes for health risks and educating parents through monthly meetings concerning child development, literacy and health. It’s also helped 1,800 parents find jobs and access to services that provide assistance with tax refunds, credits, childcare subsidies and other benefits.
MORE: The Three Things That Innovative Thinkers Do As Children
The Common Sense Solution Keeping Dollars in the Hands of the Poor
It’s often been said that it’s expensive to be poor.
Take for example, a problem faced by social service aid recipients in Alameda County, Calif., who receive their benefits through an electronic benefits transfer (EBT) card. The piece of plastic works like a debit card, but when cardholders use it at a bank outside their own network, they’re charged a transaction fee. Given that low-income people often have trouble finding transportation to get where they need to go (an in-network bank, for instance), it’s a sad reality that EBT card users in Alameda County racked up $60,000 in ATM fees in 2012; statewide, the cost was a staggering $19 million.
So in an effort to keep benefits in the hands of low-income families, Alameda County is setting up no-fee ATMs just where EBT card users need them: in the lobbies of social service offices.
Andrea Luqetta of the California Reinvestment Coalition, a nonprofit that advocates for better financial services for low-income people, tells the Contra Costa Times, “Alameda County supervisors have shown incredible leadership with this. Other counties have taken creative steps, but this is the most creative and practical we’ve seen, and it’s the right thing to do.”
County Social Services Agency spokeswoman Sylvia Soublet agrees, “Paying a few dollars each time you use your card might not seem like a lot. But over the course of a year that can add up to a lot of money.”
Advocates of the program add that the no-fee ATMs will be a tool to help EBT cardholders gain financial literacy.
MORE: This Camouflaged Credit Union Saves Immigrants From Predatory Lenders
Far From Finished: Utah’s 5-Step Plan to Continue Helping the Homeless
Utah is entering the final stretch of its 10-year plan to end homelessness, but that doesn’t mean the state’s work is over.
The number of chronically homeless individuals has dropped from 1,932 in 2005 to 539 last year. If numbers continue to decline this year, the state will reach what’s known as a “functional zero,” meaning that Utah will have housed all the chronically homeless who will accept it and have the capacity to shelter the rest. Just like the “functional zero” economists use to calculate unemployment doesn’t include the baseline of people switching jobs, Utah won’t include in their data the minority who refuse housing, says Lloyd Pendleton, the state’s homelessness czar. “We can’t force them into housing. That’s called jail,” he notes.
Despite the Beehive State’s success, a larger population always teeters precariously on the brink. Utah’s total homeless population has grown 12.5 percent — from 11,275 to 12,685 — over the last decade. These individuals will need somewhere to stay when a landlord evicts them, when parents scream that they’re not wanted or when an abusive spouse makes them fear for their safety. So achieving functional zero doesn’t mean that Utah’s homeless shelters can close up shop tomorrow.
“We’ve demonstrated [Housing First] works. We have achieved remarkable results. Now we’ve really got to amplify and fortify our existing service delivery,” says Matt Minkevitch, executive director of The Road Home, Salt Lake City’s emergency shelter.
What steps will the state’s task force take to address the broader issues surrounding homelessness?
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READ MORE:
Part 1: Utah Set the Ambitious Goal to End Homelessness in 2015. It’s Closer Than Ever
Part 2: 13 Images of Resilient Utah Residents Who Survived Being Homeless
Part 3: The Compassionate Utah Official Who Believes in Housing First, Asking Questions Later
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