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Prof Kate Cooney and Students:

Matthew Archuleta, Caroline Birasa, Christina Bovey, Laura Brennan, Joanne Jan, Brandon Jones, Sherry Li, Faye Phillips, Payal Saini, Sarah Ullom-Minnich, Steven Waller, Alice Yuan

TA: Cindy Minn

IEDL Spring 2022

SOM Inclusive Economic

Development Lab:

Infrastructure & Equity

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2022 IEDL: Infrastructure & Equity

vision statement

VISION STATEMENT

The work of inclusive economic development requires bold action, mobilizing narratives, community engagement, and alliances across unlikely partners.

The Inclusive Economic Development Lab brings together academics, practitioners, students and local stakeholders to explore a different topic related to Inclusive Economic Development each Spring.

Through the IEDL, we aim to be a place where practitioners, public officials, academics, students, and engaged citizenry come together to learn about cutting-edge practices and scholarship on inclusive economic development.

The goal is to develop insight, analysis, and models for action.

Learn more: https://iedl.yale.edu/

My name is Kate Cooney, faculty at Yale SOM, founder and director of the Inclusive Economic Development Lab at the Yale SOM

Vision statement for the Lab, the work of ID requires Bold action, mobilizing narratives, engagement and unlikely partners

We aim to be a place where public officials, practitioners, academics, students, engaged citizenry come together to learn together about cutting edge practices and scholarship on IED,

To develop insight, analysis and models for action

We run the LAB as a class at Yale SOM every Spring, where we bring together academics, practitioners, students and local stakeholders to explore a different topic related to Inclusive Economic Development. You can find information on previous work we have done on our website: iedl.yale.edu and by listening to our CITYSCOPE podcast.

The work we'll be sharing with you tonight is from our 2022 lab organized under the theme of Infrastructure and Equity

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SOM Inclusive Economic Development Lab

City of New Haven stakeholders

Season 4: Infrastructure & Equity

(September 2022 publication date)!

Virginia Parks, Chair of Department of Planning, Policy & Design, UC Irvine

Roxana Tynan, ED of LAANE

Lisa Berglund, Dalhousie University

Anastasia Loukaitou-Sideris, Distinguished Professor of Urban Planning, UCLA Luskin School

Karen Chapple, Director School of Cities, University of Toronto

Jeremy Levine, University of Michigan

Elihu Rubin, Yale University

Jessica Sager, All our Kin

Joe Margulies, Cornell University

Adriana Abizadeh, ED Kensington Corridor Trust

Sara Bronin, Desegregate CT

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SOM Inclusive Economic Development Lab

City of New Haven stakeholders

Season 4: Infrastructure & Equity

(September 2022 publication date)!

Nadine Horton, Armory CAC

Melissa Mason New Haven Works

Ernest Pagen, NASRCC

City: Arlevia Samuel, Carlos Eyzaguirre,

Adriane Jefferson, Aicha Woods, Mike P

Parking Authority: Doug Hausladen, Jim Staniewicz

Dwight GDDC Team

Lizzy Donius, WVRA

Tagan Engel, CBEY resident fellow

Maurice Williams, CEDP

Alkim Salaam, CEDP

Sean Reeves, CEDP

Jaimie Myers-McPhail, New Haven

Rising

Eliza Halsey, ECM

CMT meetings: Hill, Dixwell, Newhallville, Fair Haven

Joe Evans, Kresge Foundation

Brian Murray, Shift Capital

Anne Gatling Haynes, Austin Cultural Trust

We also want to thank the New Haven stakeholders who engaged with us this semester, either as project sponsors, or as community members and city officials with aligned interests and goals.

These engagements are key activity for us, as we are cognizant that the students are only here for a semester but the work was underway before they arrived and continues after they leave.

The LAB is working to build out more scaffolding to connect in ongoing ways as different groups of students come and go. So as this group leaves, they have a set of learnings to share from their time with us, and I’ll be working this summer to help land their work in the hands of folks who can take it forward and I’ll be available to explore a next cycle of work on these projects or adjacent ones in the Fall.

GDDC: Cecile Malm, April Kilgore, Mikhila Pingili, Didi Strode,

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Projects and Methods

IEDL Spring 2022

Union Station redevelopment
Neighborhood Trust models
Armory redevelopment
CDC Greater Dwight Montessori

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Key Themes

Community Benefit Agreements, Transit Oriented Development, Role of Community in Urban Governance Networks, Neighborhood Trust Model, Adaptive Reuse of Public Infrastructure

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Community Benefit Agreements

What is a CBA?
LAANE case study
Detroit case study
UPCT program
New Haven’s Union Station and recommendations

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What is a Community Benefit Agreement?

A community benefit agreement (CBA) is legally binding contract between a private developer and local community stakeholder groups that is designed to ensure that the development positively impacts the local community
In a CBA, a developer will usually agree to a set of procedures/standards in exchange for community support from these stakeholder groups
The first community benefit agreements were negotiated in Los Angeles
While CBAs can focus on a variety of different development projects, most CBAs today focus on residential/housing development

Source: Los Angeles Alliance for a New Economy

So what is a community benefit agreement? A CBA is legally binding contract between a private developer and local community stakeholder groups that is designed to ensure that the development positively impacts the local community. These stakeholder groups include labor unions and community organizers. In a CBA, a developer will usually agree to a set of stipulations in exchange for community support from these stakeholder groups. The first community benefit agreements were negotiated in Los Angeles and soon spread across the country, and CBAs can focus on a variety of different development projects. The concept of a community benefit agreement is really interesting because it’s a tool to not only make sure that the development positively impacts the local community but it’s a way to connect the major stakeholders on a development project, as shown by the graphic on the right. CBAs connect local community groups with the developers and the city in a way that can create harmony throughout the development process. This is something that both Professor Virginia Parks and Roxana Tynan emphasized during class visits earlier in the semester. Now, I’ll pass it on to Alice to speak a bit about the organization that played an instrumental part in organizing the first CBAs.

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LAANE: A case study on research based policy building and grassroots organizing from the first CBA negotiators

What is LAANE? It is a nationally recognized, LA-based progressive advocacy organization focused on improving the lives of community members and workers in SoCal
What differentiates LAANE from other advocacy groups?

LAANE educates and trains leaders in grassroots organizing and campaigning and leads campaign initiatives that span a variety of issues and industries.
Research is a critical foundation of LAANE’s approach in organizing and policy building.
LAANE policies have established CBAs, living wage ordinances, and more in the 25+ years the organization has been operating

Campaign topics: Education, Energy/Water, Grocery & Retail, Hospitality/Tourism, Ports/Goods Movement, Wages & Economic Development, Waste & Recycling, etc.

Co-founder of Partnership for Working Families, a national alliance advocating for workers and healthy communities, spanning across 20 metro areas
1998: Hollywood and Highland complex became LA’s first CBA (traffic improvements, living wage for construction workers, first source hiring plan, and union-neutrality)
2001: Established CBA with LA Live/Staples Center redevelopment (living wage jobs, affordable housing, environmental improvements)
2001: San Fernando Valley CBA created (living wage rqmt’s, affordable housing, childcare, and a union grocery store)
2004: CBA secured environmental and job training benefits for residents impacted by LAX redev
+ established many living wage ordinance amendments, labor agreements, worker retention policies, create energy/sustainability targets, and more

Background

Key CBA Accomplishments1

Case Study #1

Sources: Feb. 7, 2022 interview with Roxana Tynan; https://laane.org/about-laane/#:~:text=LAANE's%20groundbreaking%20policy%20wins%20and,nearly%2020%20major%20metropolitan%20areas

Now that we’ve defined what Community Benefit Agreements are, let’s explore how CBAs got started. To illustrate how CBAs have evolved over time, we’ll feature 3 case studies, and we will begin at the beginning––that’s where LAANE comes in!

What is LAANE? LAANE is the Los Angeles Alliance for the New Economy, and they actually negotiated the very first CBA in Los Angeles with the LAX redevelopment in the early 2000’s. Since the LAX redevelopment CBA, LAANE has succeeded in advocating for healthy communities, living wage ordinances for workers and worker retention policies, housing affordability, sustainability targets, and more.

We had the wonderful opportunity to speak with Roxana Tynan, the current Executive Director of LAANE. And what did we learn? For Roxana, it sounds like LAANE had to figure out how to leverage both community members and the city officials to ensure that any economic development activity actually benefited the communities where the developments were taking place. We also discussed how LAANE’s model has evolved as they have built out their research capabilities and grassroots education and training to really engage people in Los Angeles and work with the City to execute industry wide campaigns.

We’ll now turn it to another city, Detroit, to see how they have build out their CBA model.

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Opportunities and Challenges of CBAs

OPPORTUNITIES

Can create more widespread community benefit when investment occurs in a region

Local workforce development and jobs are central benefits that can be negotiated, but have to be good jobs.

Organizing efforts for CBAs can build community cohesion and grassroots community planning networks

CHALLENGES

Can be confusion about who enforces the agreement–important to have the city backing up the contract

Hard to keep track of all developments occurring all over the city–move to incorporate some aspects of CBAs as city regulation (IZ, living wage ordinances, etc)

Some developers pushing back–Obama Foundation says it will not provide affordable housing itself, as part of a CBA, but will use lobbying power with city to encourage them to provide it.

Since that first CBA negotiated at Hollywood and Highland–LAANE has learned a few things over the years. In terms of opportunities, community benefit agreements can create a heightened and explicit level of benefit to a local community when organizers and developers agree to a set collection of stipulations, including but not limited to targeted hiring, affordable housing and job training programs. Expanding on the employment benefits, when community organizers are able to get the developers to agree on set workforce and job development standards that economically uplift the local community, this can have very positive effects on the local economy. Lastly, the process of a community coming together to align on a set of standards for the developer to agree to can create a great sense of cohesion and lead to stronger organizing efforts in the future.

One of the biggest challenges with CBAs is enforcement. It can be challenging after the agreement is signed and development is completed to actually enforce the agreement. It can also be confusing to align on which party should force the agreement and how they should pursue enforcement if a stipulation has not been met. Additionally, many of the standards agreed upon in earlier CBAs such as zoning and living wages have moved from CBAs into city ordinances due to the fact that it can be hard to keep track of all of the developments occurring in a area, especially in a very large city like Los Angeles. Lastly, while some community benefit agreements can be easy to negotiate, there will be times when community stakeholders face pushback from developers and receive little to no support from the city when negotiating. This can result in a CBAs failing to come to fruition and the development causing more harm than good in a local community. Some community groups will attempt to use lobbying power with the city to push the city to enforce a CBA with developers, but this is not always the case.

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Community Benefit Agreements: Detroit as a Model

Detroit was first city to develop ordinance at city-level

Shrinking city with national influence and bankruptcy crisis due to failure of a dominant industry
Viewed as a way to justify tax incentives for firms and drive more benefit to community

Community benefit agreements term can often be misappropriated

Detroit viewed community ordinance as part of a series of policies to address accountable development
Detroit’s ordinance was passed into city law via ballot

Case Study #2

In thinking about CBAs, Detroit is the first city to develop a CBA at the city-wide level and refers to it as a community benefit ordinance.

So why has Detroit chosen to do this?? as a city experiencing an crisis due to deindustrialization of dominant industry, there was a lot of organizing against the city practices of using tax dollars to woo new firms, while basic services were not being funded in the city. Community actors put on the ballot a proposal to create a CBA ordinance so that community benefit had to flow along with tax subsidies.

It is important to recognize as we go through these examples that the term “community benefits agreement” can often be misappropriated to signal the existence of community support when the community has not really been fully engaged in a development project. WIth that said, Detroit specifically looked to avoid this phenomenon by viewing the CBA as one of many policies that the city looked to adopt in pursuit of accountable development rather than a policy that would keep developers accountable on its own. The ordinance was proposed by community organizers and legal advocates before being passed into city law via ballot.

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Community Benefit Agreements: Detroit as a Model

Detroit Community Ordinance: nuts and bolts

Applies to projects that are $75+ million in value and receiving $1+ million in public subsidy
Committee of nine city residents negotiate unique CBAs with each developer as a project requirement
Agreement negotiated with committee is then incorporated into contract between city and developer

Current pitfalls

Committee workload and committee education seen as uneven power dynamic with developer during negotiation
Tensions do still exist between granting subsidies to developers and providing city residents with fundamental services

Case Study #2

Source: Berglund, Lisa. (2021). “Early Lessons From Deroit’s Community Benefits Ordinance.” Journal of the American Planning Association. pp. 254-265.

Detroit’s ordinance applies to projects that are at least $75 million in value and receive at least $1 million in public subsidy. As a project requirement, nine city residents representative of project’s area are set up as committee to negotiate unique CBAs with each developer. The level of accountability varies for each project and agreement negotiated with committee is then incorporated into contract between city and developer.

So what are some current pitfalls in this model? Committee workload and committee education are seen as uneven power dynamic with developer during negotiation due to developers having a significantly larger amount of resources and tensions do still exist between granting subsidies to developers and providing city residents with fundamental services.

And now I’ll hand it back off to steven

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Report: The Utility Pre-Craft Training Program

The Utility Pre-Craft Training (UPCT) Program is a job training program that was created to increase the minority pipeline into unionized public sector jobs in Los Angeles
Program participants begin with three months of classroom training, focusing on mathematics and electrical theory
Next, participants complete six months of job rotations sponsored by the Los Angeles Department of Water and Power; participants also complete their civil service exams during the program
While participating in the program, participants receive an hourly stipend and a subsidy for health insurance

Of the participants surveyed, 83% were hired into public sector jobs upon the completion of the program
Almost all program participants that responded to the survey saw a dramatic increase in their hourly wage following completion of the program, as well as an increase in employee benefits such as insurance and family leave
The bulk of survey respondents also stressed the increased job security that they can now enjoy, having gained access to these highly coveted public sector jobs

Background

Survey of Employment Outcomes

Case Study #3

Source: https://laane.org/wp-content/uploads/2021/04/UPCT-Report-.pdf

Our third case study emphasizes the fact that CBAs are a limited tool, and that some organizations like LAANE are moving to develop broader strategies to build job opportunities such as LAANE’s efforts to set up the Utility Pre-Craft Training Program. A report published by Professor Virginia Parks and Ian Baran in collaboration with LAANE shared the details of this program. The Utility Pre-Craft Training Program was created in collaboration with the Los Angeles Department of Water and Power to increase the minority job pipeline into unionized, higher paying public sector jobs. The program is divided into two sections: the first one is a classroom training program to educate participants on topics such as mathematics and electrical theory. The second component is a hands-on apprenticeship program that places participants in training roles with the Department of Water and Power. While in the program, participants receive a stipend and a subsidy for health insurance to ensure some financial stability during the learning process. After completion of the program, an overwhelmingly high percentage of graduates find employment in the space, and many continue to stress the importance of this newfound job security. This is but one example of how one of the aspect of CBAs, local employment, has continued to evolve into programs of its own. These kind of programs can make CBAs more effective, in that they can diversify the pipeline into union jobs so when CBAs specify union labor, these trainees from diverse set of neighborhoods are in line to benefit from those CBA negotiations.

Source: https://laane.org/wp-content/uploads/2021/04/UPCT-Report-.pdf

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How can Union Station be framed as a stepping stone for employment/contractor development in New Haven?

Build NOLA Mobilization Fund
In response to expectation of public spending on infrastructure projects, New Orleans developed $5M fund to help women and minority owned businesses to be better positioned to compete for these future contracts

Jobs to Move America/ Proterra
JMA signed CBA with Proterra, an electric bus manufacturer, and United Steelworkers Local 675 (USW 675), to develop hiring/training program to grow community of workers from underrepresented populations in manufacturing

The Kingsbridge National Ice Center CBA
Greening project to incentivize public transportation use, mitigate pollution and provide $10,000 per year to train local residents in skills required for work with alternative-energy-generation systems.

As part of our project on the Union Station redevelopment, we’ve been researching other cities’ efforts to prepare for the wave of infrastructure spending coming down the pike by investing in pipeline programs for local hiring, and contractors. In New Orleans, due to the increase in spending on public infrastructure that was passed, the city created a $5M fund to facilitate and increase the number of women and minority owned businesses that could qualify to secure these various government contracts for development. participants also received assistance/training with administration and financial management that enabled them to successfully complete their contracts.

Due to California's emissions reduction mandate, the state is planning for a shift to electric buses and has received federal funding. The Jobs to Move America organization entered into an agreement an electric vehicle technology company, Proterra, to create a training program and targeted hire initiative for local community residents, specifically in underserved neighborhoods.

In the Kingsbridge National Ice Center CBA in the Bronx, New York, community organizers were able to get the developers to commit to a technical assistance and mentoring program for local businesses, to assist in creating procurement opportunities. Additionally, the greening project was created to provide $10,000 annually to train local residents in skills necessary to secure job opportunities in the alternative-energy generation space.

Sources:

How does this connect to a CBA?

CBAs when negotiated connect back to employment

Focus on the evolution of CBAs

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Team Recommendations

Cities must leverage CBAs with connected pipeline programs tor local hiring (including contractors) so that development projects like Union Station become stepping stones for new infrastructure projects in the future.

1

Build a CBA process that includes key partners (i.e. New Haven Works) and a standard approvals process (i.e. alderpersons) to CBAs as a default. By institutionalizing this process, the resource burden placed on community committee members in negotiating CBAs as seen in the Detroit model can be mitigated.

2

Build on “wins” to develop new capacities of engagement and strengthen existing community organizing models, identify what worked well and not well (and why?), and develop a network of actors who have ties into the neighborhoods to lead the engagement process.

3

Bringing together everything we’ve just discussed, we have three key recommendations for cities across the US in terms of how they can engage with and utilize CBAs to ensure community representation in economic development and infrastructure projects.

First, cities must leverage CBAs with connected pipeline programs for local hiring - this can ensure that development projects become stepping stones for new infrastructure projects in the future.

Second, cities must build a CBA process that includes key partners, such as New Haven Works, and create a standard approvals process, such as alderpersons in New Haven, so that the community and city officials understand what the CBA process looks like and when they need to enter the process. By institutionalizing this process, the resource burden placed on community committee members in negotiating CBAs as seen in the Detroit model can be mitigated so that community members will not be working from a time or educational deficit.

Third, cities must build on wins to build new capacities of engagement and strengthen existing community efforts to develop a network of actors who have ties into neighborhoods and can lead on the engagement processes, for example, with LAANE in Los Angeles. However, cities must recognize that this network building depends on effective grassroots organizing and advocacy.

I will now turn it over to my peers to discuss Transit Oriented DEvelopment.

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Definition of transit-oriented development
Zoning policies
Role of transit-oriented development in displacement
Recommendations

Transit Oriented Development

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What is transit-oriented development?

Moderate to high-density development within walking distance to a major transit stop
“Transit villages” could include retail, offices, greenspace, and a variety of housing types too promote neighborhoods denser than suburban neighborhoods

Source: Chapple & Loukaitou-Sideris, Transit-Oriented Displacement or Community Dividends? Understanding the Effects of Smarter Growth on Communities, 2019

(Sherry) So what is transit-oriented development? TOD is this idea of concentrating development around a major transit stop, creating density in the form of a “transit village” that can include retail, offices, greenspace, housing, and more. The image here is a picture of the Fruitvale Transit Village in Oakland, California, which is a recent and popularly discussed example of TOD. Development around the rail station includes a pedestrian plaza, public library, child care facility, and other community services.

TOD has been popular both abroad and in the US. As cited in a book written by two major contributors in the urban planning field, Karen Chapple and Anastasia Loukaitou-Sideris, “Between 1988 and 1998, US cities and regions built 175 new fixed-guideway transit lines and had another $250 billion in additional planned transit investment (Belzer and Poticha 2009).”

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Hypothesized benefits of TOD in the US

Social goals

Create more/affordable housing options
Promote mixed-income communities
Increase mobility for households

Transportation goals

Increase transit ridership & revenues
Reduce traffic congestion
Reduce transportation costs

Economic goals

Promote economic development
Promote compact urban form
Revitalize inner-city neighborhoods

Environmental goals

Reduce urban sprawl
Preserve green space
Reduce emissions & air pollution

TOD

Source: Chapple & Loukaitou-Sideris, Transit-Oriented Displacement or Community Dividends? Understanding the Effects of Smarter Growth on Communities, 2019

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Challenges with realizing all TOD benefits in the US

Gentrification and increased cost of living

High acquisition costs

High development costs

Developer desire for ROI

Restrictive zoning

Placement of transit stops in low-income communities

Challenges altering zoning & building codes for development

Displacement of low-income households and small businesses

Source: Chapple & Loukaitou-Sideris, Transit-Oriented Displacement or Community Dividends? Understanding the Effects of Smarter Growth on Communities, 2019

(Sherry) While many of those goals have been advanced through TOD efforts, there are also unexpected challenges to realizing all those benefits in the US, where planning is often decentralized and subject to market forces.

First, land acquisition and development costs were often high, causing transit agencies to look for lower cost land, often through low-income communities of color. Additionally, zoning policies and building codes often need to be revised to support higher density development, posing additional challenges for private developers.

Lastly, while TOD can spur gentrification and economic activity, without proper planning and policies, rising property values and taxes ultimately can lead to displacement, the involuntary relocation of current residents or businesses.

My peers will now talk more about exclusionary zoning policies and research around the relationship between TOD and displacement.

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Single family zoning: Little Boxes All the Same

Source: Desegregate Connecticut, image from Hartford Courant

“Single family zoning drives up development costs, degrades the environment, and makes communities too homogenous”

Sara C. Bronin

(Caroline)

In the 1960s, folk singer and activist Pete Seeger had a popular song critiquing the post-war boom of cheaply built, sprawling, white suburbs- the “little boxes made of ticky-tacky, all the same” 60 years later, these types of single family housing developments–a key feature of American housing infrastructure– are still causing problems.

We’ve heard about the benefits of TOD’s from an economic, environmental, and social perspective- the flipside of this is single family housing, a product and proponent of exclusionary zoning.

Single family zoning only allows for single-family detached homes seen above in this example of a new build development in Glastonbury, Connecticut, meaning no townhouses, no duplexes, and no apartments. These developments are linked to higher pollution practices, increased the costs of housing, and limited housing supply.

Sara Bronin, quoted above, is a professor in Cornell’s department of Regional and City planning who founded of Desegregate Connecticut, an organization working to highlight the importance residential zoning reform.

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Exclusionary zoning: a tool for segregation

What is exclusionary zoning?

Exclusionary zoning uses zoning ordinances to limit certain types of development in or to specific areas
Historically, exclusionary zoning has been used to prevent multi-family housing developments by including excessive parking, lot size, and square footage minimums as requirements for construction/conversion
Limiting multi-family homes, accessory dwelling units (ADUs), and other affordable alternatives to single family homes to specifically designated areas of towns perpetuates economically and racially segregated neighborhoods
Exclusionary zoning can be viewed as a spiritual (and legal) successor to redlining

Source: Desegregate Connecticut

(Caroline)

So what is exclusionary zoning, and how is related to single family housing?

Exclusionary zoning uses stringent requirements to construct or convert residential buildings - so for example, parking, lot size, footage

It can often designate that residential housing that isn’t single-family is only allowed in certain parts of a town.

An example would be using single family zoning to prevent more affordable options like multi-family housing, or creative solutions like accessory dwelling units, (which is a small self contained apartment on the property of a single family home) from being built in that neighborhood.

In addition helping with affordability, multi-family housing also addresses housing shortages and accessibility.

Single family properties are generally far more expensive and, if being purchased and not rented, require significant capital and mortgage approval that many lower income people and particularly communities of color have not had access to.

Similarly to how redlining explicitly prevented people of color from mortgage approvals for certain neighborhoods, exclusionary zoning has perpetuated concentrations of poverty and people of color in specific neighborhoods.

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The Connecticut Zoning Atlas

Source: Desegregate Connecticut

Interactive map shows zoning laws across Connecticut
91% of all land in CT is zoned for single family housing
Visitors can navigate the map to see districts where more inclusive or TOD zoning has already been put in place

Here we have the Connecticut Zoning atlas- an interactive map, developed by DesegregateCT, which illustrates how zoning laws in Connecticut overwhelmingly favor single-family housing, while limiting opportunities for multi-family housing units.

Visitors can navigate the map to see where ADUs are allowed, what type of developments can be built near train stations, and which towns have mixed-use neighborhoods.

91% of all land in CT is zoned for single family housing, and less than 5% is zoned to allow 3 or more families
For Primary Residential Zoning, which is land dedicated to housing, 70% of this land is zoned to only allow single family homes
In most states, including CT, zoning is a local issue decided at the town/county level. This makes rules confusing and inconsistent across states, requires a lot of individualized campaigning, and is inconvenient for developers to track, making it easy to default to single-family instead of going through a rezoning process.
Transit oriented development- which you can see is an option to dig into on the map - is being identified to be a huge opportunity to start shifting the balance and creating more inclusive communities

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How can we make zoning more inclusive?

Source: Inclusive Economic Development Lab, Sara Bronin podcast recording

Many current exclusionary/limiting zoning ordinances remain in place due to lack of amendment, not necessarily ongoing community intention. What reforms are being enacted or campaigns would be most effective?

Mix of statewide and local campaigns
“Common Sense” zoning reforms
Acessory Dwelling Units (opt out)
Highlighting opportunity cost to communities of restrictions (specifically revenue loss from TOD communities)

(Caroline)

Based on our conversation with Sara, it appears that there is hope and a lot of energy around changing these laws. Many zoning ordinances are remnants from prior eras, and there are campaigns across the country to address these issues.

Since zoning is such a local issue, while smaller campaigns are often effective, but slow, they can also serve the purpose of galvanizing larger movements. According to desegregate connecticut, “one town’s decisions will impact other towns.”

The biggest changes are happening in states where there is a “champion” like a governor or state senator, pushing for reforms at the state level.

The recent ADU law in Connecticut is a good example, where Connecticut became the 8th state to legalize accessory apartments. Towns can still opt-out of the zoning change, but this is a huge step forward.

Additionally, emphasizing to how TOD can actually transform a community- providing social, economic and environmental benefits that Sherry talked about, is key.

Once a district can see how other communities have flourished, they won’t want to miss out on the opportunity of a more accessible community. Regardless of size, communities can benefit from well executed transit oriented development. However, there are certainly potential risks and downsides for vulnerable community members, and Joanne will share more about that.

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Different types of displacement

Indirect

Residents can no longer afford to live in their homes because of rent increases.

Exclusionary

Residents are not able to move into certain areas due to high rents or housing prices.

Direct

Residents are forced to move out of their homes because another party wants to use that land for another use (e.g. use eminent domain to buy right of way).

Source: Inclusive Economic Development Lab, Karen Chapple & Anastasia Loukaitou-Sideris podcast recordings

(Joanne) If Desegregate CT succeeds in recent legislation to upzone around transit throughout the state of CT to allow for more development, by right, another related concern is gentrification and displacement, which Sherry mentioned can be a negative outcome of TOD. I’ll go through three different types of displacement now.

Direct displacement is when residents are forced to move from their homes because another party wants that land. New Haven saw a lot of direct displacement in the later half of the twentieth century when the city used eminent domain to move residents. Eviction is another form of direct displacement.

Indirect displacement is when residents can no longer afford to live in their homes because the property values are rising around them. As a result, they must move to a new neighborhood. This is often happening in gentrifying areas as lower income residents become priced out.

Finally, exclusionary displacement is perhaps the least talked about type of displacement because it is never seen. This is when areas do not welcome low income residents in the first place because they are already priced out. Exclusionary zoning can contribute to exclusionary displacement if families cannot afford to purchase a single family home or rent in a certain neighborhood.

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Takeaways from gentrification & displacement research

Displacement often happens before gentrification, not after.

It is incredibly hard to predict the timing of gentrification.

Early warning indicators include: communities of color & low-income communities, new transit station, job accessibility with short commute, quality of architectural housing stock, availability of small parks.

It is displacement that enables gentrification.

It is hard to study commercial gentrification.

Businesses turnover frequently. It is hard to determine whether residential gentrification causes commercial gentrification or vice versa.

Source: Inclusive Economic Development Lab, Karen Chapple & Anastasia Loukaitou-Sideris podcast recordings

(Joanne) Sherry mentioned earlier two giants in urban planning research, Karen Chapple and Anastasia Loukaitou-Sideris. Their recently released book on TOD called, Transit-Oriented Displacement or Community Dividends? Understanding the Effects of Smarter Growth on Communities, had some interesting takeaways related to gentrification and displacement.

First, contrary to what we usually think, displacement happens before gentrification, not after. Sometimes displacement has already happened years before a neighborhood becomes gentrified. It is the displacement, the clearing out of lower-income residents, that leads to gentrification.

Second, the timing of gentrification is fickle and hard to predict. Though there are early warning indicators, the research is inconclusive about when a neighborhood might gentrify. Those early warning indicators could include: communities of color, low-income communities, the arrival of a new transit station, job accessibility with a short commute, availability of small parks, etc.

Finally, it is hard to study commercial gentrification. Businesses have such short turnover time or they have such long leases that it is hard to determine the relationship between commercial and residential gentrification: does commercial gentrification cause residential gentrification? Or vice versa?

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How to make TOD more inclusive

Protection of unsubsidized affordable housing
Preservation of public housing
Community land trusts

Do not rely on housing markets and building more units

Medium Term

Sources: Chapple & Loukaitou-Sideris, Transit-Oriented Displacement or Community Dividends? Understanding the Effects of Smarter Growth on Communities, 2019; Inclusive Economic Development Lab, Anastasia Loukaitou-Sideris lecture

Offer individual assistance

Short Term

Rent control
Tenant protections such as landlord anti-harassment protections and access to legal representation
Tenant counseling
Rental and foreclosure assistance

Focus on increasing housing supply

Inclusionary zoning
Accessory dwelling units

Long Term

(Joanne) So how can we make TOD more inclusive? We can split inclusive TOD policy into short term, medium term, and long term solutions.

In the short term, solutions can focus on offering individual assistance such as rent control, tenant protections, tenant counseling, and rental and foreclosure assistance. This can keep low income residents in their homes. Solutions can also offer rental assistance to small business owners.

In the medium term, solutions would not rely on housing markets or building more units. This could include the protection of already built unsubsidized affordable housing, preservation of public housing, and community land trusts. Community land trusts are when land is taken off the speculative market and put it in a trust so homebuyers or renters can access property at an affordable rate. The Livable City Initiative in New Haven is already doing some of short and medium term work to ensure that residents are living in adequate housing.

In the long term, solutions would focus on increasing housing supply through inclusionary zoning, which Caroline talked about, and accessory dwelling units.

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Recommendations for the City of New Haven

Build coalitions

The most successful pushes toward inclusive communities is building a broad coalition. Bringing in diverse groups helps ensure equity and advancement in zoning changes.

Enhance data with ground truthing

Groundtruthing is the interviewing of residents to supplement what quantitative data may lack to understand the full story of a neighborhood. This can help understand what types of displacement residents are facing so the right strategy can be put into place.

Protect affordability

As TOD brings about economic development, it can also bring about higher costs of living and displacement. It is important to adopt policies that protect affordable housing and commercial rents.

Source: Inclusive Economic Development Lab, Karen Chapple & Anastasia Loukaitou-Sideris podcast recordings

(Joanne) TOD brings about economic development as well as higher costs of living and potential for displacement. Our first recommendation to New Haven is to protect affordability for residents and small business owners to ensure that can benefit from TOD.

Second, groundtruthing is when residents, community based groups, and local experts are interviewed about their experiences to supplement what quantitative data may lack. For instance, census data may not show that a Chinatown neighborhood is facing gentrification and displacement pressures because census data is only collected every ten years. It is after talking with residents that researchers can better understand the dynamic process of gentrification and how it has affected that neighborhood. Groundtruthing adds more context to a neighborhood’s story and can help understand the different forces at play to deploy the right anti-displacement strategy.

(Caroline) An organic next step from of engaging with the residents is thoughtful coalition building. bringing in non-profit, environmental, commercial, and residential interests is the best way to ensure there is momentum to push for transit oriented development while ensuring that new zoning laws serve everyone well.

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The birth of the CBO
CBOs and the funding ecosystem
CBOs and community control
Problematizing “community”
Lessons
Connecting to New Haven

Jeremy R. Levine

RoLE OF COMMUNITY IN URBAN GOVERNANCE NETWORKS

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Urban Renewal and the Birth of the CBO

Urban Renewal generates widespread backlash in low-income communities

Grassroots organizations fill the vacuum left by retreating city leadership

CBOs become increasingly professionalized, and decoupled from community membership

Jeremy did a deep dive into the origins of the modern community-based organization, or CBO. So much of today’s urban governance structure is connected to our history of urban renewal in the 20th century. Entire neighborhoods were destroyed or displaced by the top-down approach of Urban Renewal in the pursuit of building highways and car-accessible infrastructure. The backlash from displaced and threatened communities was enormous. What did community groups do about it? Those that could began to organize to resist displacement and advocate for local interests.

In this way, the grassroots community development organization was born. Grassroots groups began to fill the vacuum of social services and development advocacy that had previously been ascribed to the government. As they gained legitimacy and governments began to lose faith in the ability of city actors to pursue local development, the grassroots organizations started to gain legal credentials. They now had the authority to obtain and distribute funding from the federal and/or state level.

What did the influx of money mean for these grassroots organizations?

As the amount of money distributed through these networks grew, those with high-capacity staff were more able to attract funds and complete projects. This trend led to the increasing professionalization, and a transition to leadership by paid staff with increasingly higher levels of education and credentialing, and who are often not residents of the communities whose interests their organization claims to represent. These organizations became the modern community-based organizations, or CBOs, which may include community development corporations (CDCs) or nonprofits.

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CBOs and Funding: A Complicated Ecosystem

High-level: federal actors and large private funders

Mid-level: public and private Intermediaries, conveners, and regional actors negotiate relationships with high-level and ground-level actors

Ground-level: local CBOs and city governments enact their own projects and report back to funders

Jeremy also discussed how the proliferation of CBOs has led to the development of a complex funding ecosystem for community projects.

At the top of the system, large federal, private, and philanthropic funders identify development priorities and look for appropriate investment opportunities.

They contract with a complicated and multi-tiered network of private and public intermediary and broker organizations who operate within a metaphorical web of relationships to coordinate priorities, negotiate requirements for local organizations, and eventually award funds to specific CDCs, nonprofits, or local governments.

Finally, at the ground level, CBOs compete with one another and sometimes with official city actors to complete discrete projects, usually with a specific neighborhood focus. Each CBO is then accountable back to the funder or intermediary organization for the use of the funds.

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CBOs and Implications for Community Control

CBOs are not democratically elected

What if a CBO does a bad job?

CBOs are accountable to funders

Whose interests does a CBO protect?

CBOs offer a simple story as “community representatives”

What if members of a community want different things?

Notably, Jeremy pointed out, the community does not play a direct role in the funding ecosystem. Instead, the CBO is often the final recipient of funding and the executor of local projects. What does that mean for communities?

First, it means that funds are distributed to and used by organizations that are not democratically elected. There is no mechanism by which a community can vote a CBO out of office if it feels that its interests are not being well represented.

Second, he noted that accountability is always to the funder. While a CBO’s mission may be to represent the community, it is directly accountable to the organization or group that provides the funding that allows it to continue to exist -- usually a larger regional or national actor without direct ties to the smaller neighborhood or area in which the CDC operates. The year-to-year push for funding can align incentives for CDCs to operate according to the priorities of these disconnected actors, even at the expense of local interests.

Third, CDCs simplify the otherwise complex community voice. Before the era of CDCs, disagreements or disputes between residents about what happened in a given neighborhood had to be resolved through official channels of resolution. Many of those things, like pushback about affordable housing or parking issues, might have been resolved at a regional level. Since the CDC claims to speak with the “community’s voice,” it condenses all of the existing heterogeneity into a single cohesive message about what a given community wants. This makes working with CDCs a very low-effort way for elected politicians to claim that they are listening to or partnering with “the community” in a given project, without having to wrestle with the diversity of interests and perspectives within a given community. However, it also gives CDCs the power to simply silence local perspectives they may disagree with by claiming the mantle of legitimate “community” representation.

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What is the community?

Who is “the” community?

“Community voice”
“Community vision”
“Community buy-in”

If the community is assumed to be in agreement, dissent will be seen as unrepresentative of “the community’s vision”
Requiring a community consensus for action often perpetuates the status quo

That third implication opens a whole bucket of questions around what it means to represent or engage “the community.” What even is community, and how do we measure who is a part of it?

The term “community” in development contexts is often used in a way that implies sameness and homogeneity, as in “community vision,” “community voice,” “community buy-in.”

When the underlying assumption is that “the community” will agree, then dissent or conflicting perspectives must be coming from an outlier, or someone who does not really represent “the community.”

Also, if establishing a clear community consensus is a prerequisite for starting a new project or building a new program, small vocal groups can claim to speak for “the community” and derail any progress. This arrangement perpetuates the status quo.

These issues point to an underlying problem with the idea of imagining that a unified “community perspective” or “community vision” exists. Authentically community-engaged development will need to move beyond this common over-simplification.

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How can development be community-responsive if there is no “community”?

End the community meeting

Tends to capture the voices of a privileged section of residents
Assumes consensus will be reached

Engage with diverse perspectives

Consider alternate methods of collecting ideas

examples: participatory chalk installations, everyone writes an idea on a popsicle stick

Identify when feedback and input is useful

Community input may be very accurate about what people want to feel in their neighborhood
Community input may not be the best way to identify the specific project that should fill a certain space

Return to normative judgements

Decision-makers will need to determine a “best” idea
Evaluation of different ideas should be transparent

What does it mean to have community-responsive development if we don’t think of the community as a cohesive unit?

One option is to discard the idea of the community meeting as the ideal forum by which to solicit community input. These meetings are often accessible to small vocal groups, particularly those with large amounts of economic and social privilege. The community meeting is also designed to elicit a consensus rather than collect conflicting opinions and perspectives.

Other forms of community engagement may be more effective at truly gauging the range of opinions within a given neighborhood. Options that engage with diverse perspectives may be better suited to this task. Examples could include participatory chalk installations, or asking everyone to write an idea or reaction on a popsicle stick and collecting this archive to inform an analysis of the different possible courses of action. These strategies may also be more effective at capturing perspectives of residents who can not or choose not to attend community meetings.

It is also important to be aware of when broad community feedback will be most useful. For example, the wider public is very effective at identifying what they want to feel in a given neighborhood or area, and what they don’t want to feel. Broad discussion, however, is much less effective at evaluating the concrete solution or reality that should happen. Arriving at the best outcome may take more specialized knowledge and experience in development, and an awareness of the hidden nuances and technical problems that can arise.

The implication of this is that there remains a place for decision-makers to make normative evaluations of ideas rather than relying on a majority-rules approach to community development. It is critical that this decision be made as transparently as possible, and that it not be couched in a facade of simply “doing what the community wants.” It should be acceptable for government to make some unpopular decisions that prioritize the most marginalized or vulnerable residents of a given community even when more privileged segments may dissent.

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New Haven: New Developments

Some engage CBAs at a high level

101 College Street

Some have a level of grassroots community involvement

Q-House, ConnCorp, Strong School

Some may be less obviously connected to the immediate community

NXTHVN

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Steps for authentic Community Engagement

Step 3

Value different kinds of expertise

Step 1

Recognize one size will never fit all

Step 2

Cast a wide net

Step 4

Make normative decisions transparently

How can the city of New Haven move forward with effective and transparent community engagement processes?

There are several steps that can be used to keep community engagement as authentic and equitable as possible.

“One size will never fit all” - Reorienting feedback processes away from the search for consensus will make the input process more inclusive.

“Cast a wide net” - It is important to avoid using traditional feedback avenues as a crutch to avoid doing the more difficult work of making input accessible to a the most vulnerable and marginalized residents in a community. The community meeting is likely an ineffective, or at least incomplete, method of doing this.

“Value different kinds of expertise” - It is important to recognize when resident input is critical and paramount, and when to rely on more technical expertise. Trying to crowd source the specifics of a development project from a 100-person community meeting will not be an effective use of time or result in a quality project. Still, great results can occur when resident input sets the broader bounds and scope of a project, and technical expertise is not permitted to stray from local priorities.

“Make normative decisions transparently” - when it appears that the “best” decision is not the most popular one, which it often may not be, it is important to identify this transparently and to not be hesitant to make decisions with a long-view of community well-being.

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Neighborhood Trust models

What is a Neighborhood Trust?
How does a Neighborhood Trust work?
Neighborhood Trust in Actions
How do you get information about Neighborhood Trusts?
How do you start a Neighborhood Trust in New Haven?

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What is a Neighborhood Trust?

“A trust is a legally protected way for residents to pool the money that comes into their neighborhood and use it to place land and non-profit organizations under communal ownership and control” (Joe Margulies, 2001).

Source: Joe Margulies, Thanks for Everything (Now Get Out)

(Christina)

It all started with Joe Margulies, who is a law professor at Cornell Law School. Joe Margulies wrote a book titled, Thanks for Everything (Now Get Out) and in this book he focused on Olneyville, a predominantly Latine neighborhood in Providence, RI that was once thriving. The neighborhood was full of businesses but de-industrialization, specifically in the textile industry led to unemployment. One of the things Joe noticed was that there were considerable resources flowing into the neighborhood coming from outside the area, and the people who are deciding what to do with that money often do not live in that neighborhood.

The residents want amenities and better housing stock but that often leads to gentrification and displacement as the property values and rents rise, making it unaffordable to stay for low-income residents.

All these challenges are what caused Joe Margulies to create the idea of the neighborhood trust. There are really two main elements of the neighborhood trust:

It is a legally protected way for residents to pool the money that comes into their neighborhood and
It has a governance structure that allows residents to place land and other assets under communal ownership and control

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How does Neighborhood Trust work?

Governance

Finances

Legal structure

Progressive and inclusive governance model to give residents “a sense of ownership, of leadership”

Current Approach: An “outsider expert perspective” that doesn’t empower residents
Trust Approach: Leverage the power of the community and give voices to Black and Brown residents

Legal instrument that owns assets for the benefit of individuals
The assets include: lands, buildings and businesses in the neighbourhood
The assets are overseen by a group of trustees (BoD) who manage and administer the trust
The BoD do not own the wealth, the trust owns the wealth for the group’s benefit.

Speculative investments lead to displacement as the residents can’t afford to stay in the neighborhood
The financial structure of the trust maintains allows the neighborhood to increase in value and the trust maintains affordability for residents and minimizes displacement

Source: www.purpose-us.com

(Christina)

In terms of legal structure, the neighborhood trust is a legal instrument that owns assets for the benefit of the community. The assets can include lands, buildings, and businesses in the neighborhood
Those assets are overseen by a group of trustees (BoD) who manage and administer the trust but the BoD do not own the wealth. it is the the trust that owns the wealth for the group’s benefit.
The financial structure of the neighborhood trust aims to remove rental and retail properties from the speculative market as speculative investments lead to increasing rent prices and displacement. Instead, the trust aims to maintain affordability and generate income and wealth within the community.
The trust inclusive and progressive governance model ensures that the control of the trust stays within the community, giving the residents “a sense of ownership” and voices to Black and Brown residents.

https://www.purpose-us.com/writing/purpose-interview-trust-neighborhoods

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Neighborhood Trusts in Action

Source: Adriana Abizadeh interview, Anne Gatling Haynes interview

Trust Neighborhoods

Envisions diverse, mixed-income neighborhoods that grow opportunity for everyone

Austin Cultural Trust

Supports acquisition and preservation of arts, cultural, and music spaces within Austin

Kensington Corridor Trust

Seeks to foster the equitable economic revitalization of a commercial corridor

(Brandon) Our first neighborhood trust model in action takes us to the Kensington neighborhood of Philadelphia. The Kensington Corridor Trust was founded in 2019 after some local organizations were inspired by an article written by Joe Marguiles. We spoke with Adriana Abizadeh who is the Kensington Corridor Trust’s executive director about how they pursue their objective of gaining community ownership and control in the neighborhood. By leveraging patient, flexible capital and a long-term trust vehicle, KCT intends to purchase commercial real estate assets along a 1.4 mile stretch of Kensington Avenue and transition those assets to neighborhood control, thereby ensuring long-term affordability and control over the income that flows from these properties as the neighborhood revitalizes.

Next, we have the Austin Cultural Trust in Texas. Since 2010, the Austin metro’s population has grown more than 34% and it has continued to attract major investments from Fortune 500 companies. This tremendous growth has driven up rents and taxes across the city. Among other communities, this pressure was being acutely felt by those working in the arts, music, and cultural spaces. Through sustained advocacy, the Austin Economic Development Corporation was charged by the city to oversee the Cultural Trust whose aim is to save iconic venues and preserve affordability of the spaces that artists need to rehearse, practice, and perform. AEDC accomplishes this through purchases and long-term lease agreements.

Another promising neighborhood trust effort is coming out of Kansas City. Trust Neighborhoods is scaling the model through its Mixed-Income Neighborhood Trust, MINT, which serves as an ownership vehicle for affordable housing units. Their approach is to partner with existing neighborhood organizations and assess whether the MINT is a good fit. This assessment looks for areas that have high renter populations, are ripe for gentrification, and where a sufficient number properties can be non-speculatively acquired. If these criteria are met, then they work with the neighborhood organization to establish the MINT and provide ongoing operational support of the MINT. They currently have pilot programs in Kansas City and Tulsa, with more than 50 other neighborhoods interested in exploring the model.

https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2019/04/27/upshot/diversity-housing-maps-raleigh-gentrification.html

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Neighborhood Trust - Key Takeaways

De-commodify Property

Like a Community Land Trust, remove land from the speculative market to preserve affordability
Allow residents to choose long-term investments over short-term, extractive profits

Local Ownership & Control

Power - Neighborhood trusts empower neighborhood residents to control the resources that flow into them and wean them from dependency on outsiders

“They’re not ready” - residents should be part of the solution and can source or develop skills just like anyone else

Customizable - There is no one size fits all model; neighborhoods will have to choose for themselves what governance structures serve them best

(Brandon) Crucial to the success of Joe Marguiles’s neighborhood trust vision is decommodifying property and empowering local residents with ownership and control of the assets and resources that flow into and within their community. Speculators often do not have incentives tied to the long term viability of a neighborhood and usually need to sell the property at a price that is out of reach of local residents in order to realize a suitable profit for their investors.

Community stabilization and revitalization efforts generally leave local residents dependent on outsiders. The decisions about money that will flow into the neighborhood is decided elsewhere. The decisions about how money will be used within the neighborhood is decided by “experts” and nonprofit leaders through undemocratic processes. The neighborhood trust insources this decision-making power to residents who are directly affected by said decisions.

Lastly, the neighborhood trust is not prescriptive in its governance structure. Each neighborhood has the ability to tailor the trust to their particular neighborhood’s needs and desires.

—----------------------------------------------------------------

CLT source: https://www.dudleyneighbors.org/what-is-a-clt.html

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Where can you find information about Neighborhood Trusts?

website: https://iedl.yale.edu

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So, how do you start?

Organize

Who else is organizing in your neighborhood?
What are they organizing around?

Develop

Vision for the trust
Governance model that is credible within the community and supports the vision

Identify

Vacant and abandoned lots, and who owns them
Allies who have funds or relevant expertise to support the vision

Communicate

Early and often

Source: Interviews with Adriana Abizadeh and Anne Gatling-Haynes

(Brandon)

So, how do you start?

The first steps for starting a neighborhood trust are to organize, develop, and identify. Through initial organization, you want to see who else is organizing in your neighborhood and find out what they are organizing around. The trust will only be one piece of the broader community ecosystem, so understanding how it fits in and aligns with other efforts is a great first step.

Next, you will want to develop a vision for the trust. The vision will articulate the goal of the trust and whom it aims to serve. Once the vision is established, you are positioned to devise a governance model that is aligned and consistent with the trust’s vision, which are critical to the vision’s realization.

Thirdly, start identifying opportunities. Your vision will spark interest, and to capitalize on that interest, you will need opportunities in the pipeline to help potential funders see the possibilities. Through our interviews, financing is a major challenge when starting a trust. Starting with local philanthropy, like the Community Foundation for Greater New Haven, is a good idea to spread the word and bring legitimacy to your effort.

Not one of the first steps, but communicate will be a perpetual step that also needs to be top of mind. Don’t stop until everyone can repeat exactly what you are doing, why you are doing it, and what success looks like. We’ve provided answers to some frequently asked questions on our website, so check it out and now you’re ready!

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FAQ - Frequently Asked Questions

Frequently asked questions	Answers
Where do you get the money for land trusts?	Federal housing subsidies City-owned property Private Donors Community foundations
How do you set up representative governance/control?	Land trust residents Non-trust community members Local experts and stakeholders
How do you acquire the property?	The trust acquires property through common real estate transactions. Residents acquire and sell the structure, but the trust maintains ownership of the land in perpetuity
What do you do with the income flows?	Acquire more property and support neighborhood-stabilization efforts, including community-focused commercial developments.

Source: community-wealth.org

Example of the Kensington Neighborhood Trust:
Shift capital: mission-oriented pirate developer
IF Lab: small business incubator
PIBC: The city public private partnership for economic development
Impact Services CDC

Example of the Kensington Neighborhood Trust:
30% of BoD must be small business owners, 30% must be current or former residents
The community is still developing trust and governance model

For answers to these questions and more, stay tuned for our website link - coming soon!

[see note above]

Edited speaker notes suggestion: For more information about the Neighborhood Trust mini case studies, the website will also feature FAQs, such as “Where do you get the money for neighborhood trusts? How do you set up representative governance? How do you acquire property? What do you do with the income flows? For answers to these questions and more, stay tuned for our website link–coming soon!

:

(Christina)

→ Check our website

Land trust secure fund from various sources of public and philanthropic capital. Some of these include federal housing subsidies, rights to city-owned property, private donors, and community foundations. For example, the Kensington neighborhood Trust secured funding from four different institutional partners: Shift Capital, a mission oriented private developer; IF Lab a small business incubator prioritizing Black and Brown business owners; PIBC (the city public private partnership for economic development);Impact Services CDC (KCT fiscal sponsor)

Representative governance is a challenge, but certainly worthwhile toward achieving a sustainable trust. Often times, trusts have a balanced mix of land trust residents, non-trust community members, and other local experts and stakeholders. This diversity of perspectives helps provide a holistic picture of the community’s interests. For instance, the governance of the Kensington Trust has transitioned to Kensington Residents. The board is composed of min. 30% small business owners, 30% must be current or former residents. The community is still developing the governance model.

Trusts acquire property through common real estate transactions. Residents follow a similar process, but one that acknowledges they will only own the structure while the trust will maintain ownership of the underlying land. Upon sale, the resident sells at a price agreed upon by them, the trust, and the buyer, all with the aim of maintaining permanent affordability.

The aim of the trust is to be a sustaining social enterprise, so it continues to acquire more property, shape the neighborhood’s commercial development, and invest in neighborhood-stabilization efforts.

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Public infrastructure: Focus on historic building preservation

Why Preserve Historic Buildings?
Politics of Urban Change
The Role of Narratives
New Haven’s Goffe Street Armory

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Why Preserve Historic Buildings?

Place & Meaning of Community Assets

Teach us historical, political, economic and cultural forces
Communicate history to build interest & value
Continuity

Sustainable Architecture & Adaptive Reuse

“The greenest building is the building that's already there.”
Retrofits must be sensitive to the environment, politics of urban change

Why are we focusing on preservation of historic buildings? One of our podcast interviewees and faculty advisor for our New Haven work is Professor Elihu Rubin from the Yale School of Architecture who spoke to us about the power of the built environment. It teaches us so much about the historical, political, economic and cultural forces of a place. Historic buildings have a past that we can learn from. To facilitate learning, we must communicate the history of these places in a way that builds community interest and value.

We also focus on preservation because the most meaningful places have continuity: continuity of people, memories, of environments themselves. And from a sustainability point of view, architects say “the greenest building is the building that’s already there.” Therefore when we want to retrofit a historic building, we have to do so in a way that is sensitive to the politics of urban change.

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Politics of Urban Change

Role of the “expert” in urban change?

Hubris vs humility in Urban Planning expertise

Who gets to represent the public interest?

Government, corporations, non-profit

How do we build the public’s tolerance for dissonant histories?

How to let places with difficult and complicated histories remain difficult without giving up on them as community assets?

Focus on adaptive reuse of urban infrastructure requires attention to the politics of urban change–and at this point in the history of American cities there are some central questions those of us doing this work have to grapple with:

First, what is the role of the so-called “expert” in urban change? We need to remember that scholars and urban planners possess a form of expertise, but expertise also lies within the community who inhabits a place day in and day out. Therefore, the keys to an ethical and effective practice require modesty, humility and trust-building between planning professionals and community.

The second central question is also about voice and authority. It is, “who speaks for community?” Who gets to represent the public interest? In past eras, we have seen the government play this role (particularly during the era of urban renewal), private corporations have played this role of representing the public interest (as professor Rubin explains through the history of the Prudential Center tower in Boston), and non-profits often also claim to do this, though we can question if they really represent the multiplicity of communities and perspectives within a given community.

Finally, the third central question we will mention today is about histories. The goal of historic preservation is largely to learn from the complicated histories that buildings embody. We want to show the complexities of the history rather than smooth them over to create something more palatable. The question is then, how do we build the public’s tolerance for dissonant histories? How can we let public asset’s complicated histories remain difficult without giving up on the asset?

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The Role of Narratives

Metaphors flatten the complexity to one single aspect

single aspect becomes public perception
“Ghost town” causes us to perceptually evacuate a place despite the existence of people

Marketing: “Authenticity” in real estate

Central Question: How do you build the value of a place for a new era in a way that honors the history of a place or a building in meaningful ways?

Narratives play a central role in the communication of histories, and therefore hold a lot of power in shaping public discourse about a place. Professor Rubin drew our attention to one particular literary tool, the metaphor, which acts to flatten the complexity of a place to once single aspect. Then, it’s this single aspect alone that becomes public perception. One pervasive place metaphor we discussed was the “ghost town”. By calling a place a “ghost town”, we perceive there to be no inhabitants left despite the existence of people. We think to ourselves,

“Since it’s a ghost town, if you make changes you don’t need to worry about the people who are there, so go ahead and restructure a place for a different group.”

We see other uses of narratives in the urban built environment, such as in real estate marketing the narrative of “authenticity” is used to sell converted luxury lofts. In this process, the complex history of an old factory, for example, is flattened and often santitized.

Stories about the past are often complicated, yet the public receives a sanitized narrative. This narrative informs how the public builds value in a place.

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Participatory Community Engagement:

Goffe Street Armory

Prioritizing direct community participation to understand desires, needs, memories

Photos via Elihu Rubin

A great example of an piece of public infrastructure left from an earlier era is the Goffe Street Armory in New Haven. Completed in 1930, the Armory is a beautiful large building in center of the city that originally served as the home to the Connecticut National Guard as well as a gathering place for the community. In the years following, it was home to many community events including concerts (Frank Sinatra performed there!), the “Black Expos” of the 1970s and impressive art exhibitions as recently as 2017. The grand building has aged and is in need of significant funding to keep it usable. Many in the community would love to see it repurposed with more permanent tenants that can ensure the future of this public asset.

Together with students and local community members, Professor Rubin has held multiple community envisioning events to capture residents’ memories, stories, ideas, needs, desires for this public asset, the Armory. As a method for gathering community input, these events brought the storytelling, joy, and creativity that so many other methods cannot access.

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Armory Redevelopment Project

Given New Haven’s limited resources and split priorities, the city has shown little interest in this large undertaking of redeveloping the armory. Community members are eager to see it redeveloped, but the question remains, how will we pay for it?

This is the central question of our team’s project.

We have been looking at how to pull together project financing for this unique asset. We started out by speaking to various stakeholders to understand the nature of the road blocks. From there, we have collected information on remediation funding sources, interviewed funders to understand what would appeal or not appeal to them about this project, and synthesized our findings to weigh the costs and benefits of different approaches. Our goal is to leave our stakeholders, armed with our research, specific next steps they can take to set them on the path to redevelop this beautiful building as a public asset.

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Financial Resources

Remediation:

CT Communities Challenge Grants
Brownfields Planning Grants
Historic Tax Credits

Development:

Tax Credits: new-market, LIH, historic, solar
Local philanthropist
Fundraising campaign
State or Municipal bonds
Sell or lease to developper

Ongoing

Studio space rent, low-income housing rent

We have researched a number of funding sources that, together, may be able to cover the costs of remediating and redeveloping the building. We will also present ideas for how to create a sustainable income model to keep the armory operational.

For remediation, there are a variety of state and federal planning grants and tax credits available. Tax credits can also be used for the development phase, which would be where money could be raised from state and municipal bonds, local philanthropists, a fundraising campaign or developers could in with either investment or debt financing.

As for ongoing income, rents from studio space, makers, artists, small businesses, or low-income housing would be the main sources, and we plan to put together some rough estimates of what kind of income to expect.

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Key Findings: Interview Themes

Arts Leader

tremendous gathering place (“crossroads” for city)
maintain public access
need national funder interest

Impact Real Estate Developer

Remediation costs are not extensive
creative studio space will generate enough income
stipulate drill hall as community space

Philanthropist

use comes before financing
“Set the Table” with cross-sector local actors
find local philanthropists

We unearthed these financial resources largely from interviewing relevant experts.

From the executive director of Art Space, we heard about the Armory’s unique and precious ability to gather such a huge swath of the community under one roof to learn and reflect and experience art together.

From interviewing an Impact Real Estate Developer we learned that there are developers out there who would be really inspired and eager to take on the project. If the use of the building would be studio and or office space, very little would actually need to be modified in its structure. We learned that based on the rent per square foot of studio space in the area, creative studios could be a realistic use that would provide enough income, and one could always include stipulations with the developer to keep the central drill hall community-accessible.

From the philanthropist we interviewed, we learned a clear order of operations on how to get this project funded. A clear use has to be presented first, and to do this it would make sense to hire consultants through a planning grant to do the community canvassing and find a use that is wanted and needed. From there, the right actors would need to come to the table and then funding can follow.

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Mixed Use Model

BENEFITS

Community access, honoring historic memories and uses, broader array of funders

COSTS

Politically difficult as always more need

Based on these interviews, we have synthesized the costs and benefits of uses for the armory, namely a mixed-use model vs a purely affordable housing model.

The mixed use model, with an Armory that contains a mix of studio space, arts space, community center, office space etc, has both costs and benefits. The benefits center on the ability for the community to access and govern the space. It would also allow the historic memories and uses to be honored - by keeping the drill hall public the historic uses can be memorialized in Black business expos, political speeches, art events, etc

Finally a mixed-use model could draw in a broader array of income sources as well.

As for costs, in a place like New Haven where there is so much need, it is politically difficult to justify the investment in creative studio space or other mixed use purposes at the expense of other needs. That being said, the mixed use approach would require the least amount of work to bring the building back into service.

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Low Income Housing Model

BENEFITS

High need, sensible location, steady income stream

COSTS

Lose community governance/access, higher remediation threshold, unclear use of drill hall

Turning the armory into 100% low income housing also comes with its benefits and costs.

As for pros, there is demonstrable need for affordable housing in the neighborhood where the armory is located, location lends itself well to housing, and it would provide a predictable stream of income.

On the contrary,with a low-income housing model, governance does not stay with the community, and the community may lose access to the special space. Further, the building would require a much higher cost renovation to convert the office/class spaces into housing, and residential uses need to meet a higher remediation threshold if it were to become housing vs commercial space. Lastly, while a LIH developer could get creative with the drill hall, it’s not immediately clear how to maximize the use of that space.

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Recommendations for Next Steps

Formal planning process

Apply for planning grant
Build a steering committee
Assess the redevelopment costs
Environmental phase I study
Identify community priorities and specify a use

Build a capital stack

Identify sources and uses
Find an anchor funder
Make use of tax credits/subsidies

From our research and interviews, there are two major next steps that need to be taken. First, the city should launch a formal planning process with legitimized community input. This means applying for a planning grant like the CT Communities Challenge Grants or the Brownfields that will cover the cost of consulting services who can take the lead on a variety of needs. This formal planning process also involves putting together a steering committee who will carry the work forward. The goal of the planning process is to assess the redevelopment costs, get legitimate community input, and identify a specific use.

Landing on a specific use is essential before building a capital stack to fund the renovations. From there, the committee can build out a sources and uses of funds statement and find an anchor funder who cares deeply about the city of New Haven and wants to take on this project. Finally, it will be important to take advantage of the various tax credits and subsidies associated with aspects of the building or use such as historic status, low-income housing, new-markets, and energy efficiency. We hope our ideas will push the armory redevelopment project closer to the goal of reviving this community asset for public enjoyment.

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“We don’t have a child care system, we have a non-system. We have some fragmented funding streams from the Federal Government, the state government, the local government…

Jessica Sager, All Our Kin

Public infrastructure: Focus on childcare

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We have no consistent mechanisms for supporting the development of a supply of child care that actually meets the needs of families.”

-Jessica Sager, All our Kin

We partnered with the Montessori Edgewood School as they were planning their expansion to increase capacity. We discovered they are suffering from what most child care providers are experiencing nationally.

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Defining Childcare Infrastructure

Key element: Children from infant to 12 years old

School systems

Serving pre-k through 12 years old+

School based pre-kindergarten

Serving 3 and 4 year olds

Center based pre-school

Serving 3 and 4 year olds

Community Based Centers

Serving infants to 4 year olds

Family child care programs

Serving infants to 4 years olds run out of a person’s home

Family Friend and Neighbor care

Serving all children

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Historical issues

As more and more research has illuminated the importance of the infant toddler years in children's development we've seen an increased focus in policy in thinking about infant toddler care, but there hasn't been a corresponding level of investment.

�-Child care costs are exorbitant, often requiring a parent to leave the workforce�-Childcare providers are often maxed out on capacity leaving large waitlists�-As certifications and licencing requirements expand, wages remain low as many parents are already priced out

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Some of this study’s key findings on Economic Impact:

In the years since Washington, D.C., began offering two years of universal preschool, the city’s maternal labor force participation rate has increased by about 12 percentage points, with 10 percentage points attributable to preschool expansion.
DC mothers with young children now participate in the labor force at about the same rate as District of Columbia mothers whose children are in elementary school.
Maternal labor force participation increased among both low-income and high-income families. Maternal labor force participation was unchanged for middle-income families during the study period and is examined below.
Women with young children also saw large increases in employment, with boosts to full-time work for married women and part-time work for unmarried women.

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Growing recognition that childcare is infrastructure!

RESEARCH

WDC study results suggest that two years of universal, full-day preschool is associated with a large positive effect on maternal labor supply
Comparable in magnitude to the impact found in studies of universal preschool programs in other countries.

POLICY

On a national scale, policies that support maternal labor force attachment could contribute to faster growth in gross domestic product (GDP)
Stronger financial security for young families
Fewer career sacrifices by women, who assume a disproportionate share of their families’ care responsibilities.

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The Future of Policy?

One thing you see in, for example, the build back let better legislation, which did not pass, but is a pretty good indicator of where we may be going. Is a real focus on all types of care and on quality licensure and inclusion of funding and professional learning for everywhere infants and toddlers are cared for.

- Jessica Sager

The future of Public policy: The Build Back Better Plan is a strong indicator of the focus on care. Governments are asking more of child care providers in terms of licencures and certifications, but keeping funding relatively stagnant. Governments are asking child care providers to do more, with less. Increase funding streams to support actual costs of childcare. Don’t diminish standards, support those standards to help pay providers better.

Outside the government: Nonprofits like All Our Kin are working to support child care providers. All Our Kin supports family based providers by partnering with the small business owner to facilitate strong training, bookkeeping, and planning. This effort increases the supply of providers, lowers costs, and supports wealth creation at the small business level. This is also extremely important at the State level because cost based reimbursement is a vicious cycle of low reimbursement and low wages.

Tackling the child care crisis requires policy advocates and local leaders to invest in the future of our country, our children. Next, we will discuss our key project takeaways.

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Key

takeaways

2

3

1

Energy

Interest

Resources

Organizing

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NEXT STEPS

Inclusive Economic Development Lab

2022 & Summer/Fall

Neighborhood Trust -Webinar & Website

Friday May 13th 9:30am-10:30am

Armory financials and deck will be available

Union Station project -CBA white paper

CitySCOPE podcast Season 4 September 2022 launch

Summer RA additional outreach

Planning in Fall for Spring 23

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Thank you!

Yale SOM Inclusive Economic Development Lab

To request a presentation on the work of the 2022 IEDL contact: kate.cooney@yale.edu

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Census based analysis

Urban displacement indicators-Hill South and North

Artifact: interactive map?

Best practices reviews

Anti-displacement tools

Artifact: meeting in a box?

Interviews/Focus groups

Montessori school teachers

Armory:financing sources and uses information interviews

Literature reviews

Community Benefit Agreements

Artifact: Meeting in a box? Interactive tool to consider all possibilities for building equity into a project? Deck?

Co-design and project production

City/community project meetings

Case studies

KCT Neighborhood Trust, Austin Arts Trust, Kansas NT, Atlanta?

Armory: redevelopment examples by use, financing, governance

Armory: 3 new mini-case studies? Q house, Ansonia Armory, Westville Music hall