Post-Riot Recovery Cannot Happen Overnight

As Los Angeles approaches the fifth anniversary of the civil unrest that shook Southern California and the nation, observers are standing back to assess the recent past.

The last half-decade has not been kind: The regional economy remained mired in recession until 1995; the main federal response, the Los Angeles Community Development Bank, is only now beginning to make loans; and the city’s economic strategies under Mayor Richard Riordan have tended to stress business development, assuming that the benefits of growth will eventually trickle down.

The relative lack of progress is not surprising: Those in the know at the time of the unrest were unfazed by the flurry of activity, symbolized by promises of corporate help and the sudden attention of local and national political figures.

Recognizing the long-term nature of the economic causes of the unrest--in the areas that experienced property damage, poverty and unemployment were twice as high and per-capita income and home ownership half as low as in the rest of the city--neighborhood groups acknowledged that there were indeed pressing problems but argued that there was also an urgent need to begin to think and act in ways that would promote long-term neighborhood development.

On the anniversary of the area’s unfortunate social explosion, we should follow suit, moving beyond the easy drama of still-empty sites to understand the more profound problems confronting the region’s poor. In doing so, we will see that there are at least two ways in which the notions of community development have changed over the last half-decade, each of which presents promise for the future of low-income communities in Los Angeles and elsewhere.

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The first involves an increasing realization that neighborhood development must be seen in a regional context. On the one hand, influential books by David Rusk, former mayor of Albuquerque, and more recently by Minnesota state legislator Myron Orfield have stressed that regions will perform poorly if they continue to have a “hollow” core wounded by high levels of poverty and low levels of opportunity.

On the other hand, community developers have realized that their own prospects improve if they are able to form strategic alliances between their organizations and regional businesses as well as to contribute to new partnerships between ailing central cities and “inner-ring” suburbs (such as Pomona, Huntington Park and Compton in L.A. County), many of which are experiencing economic problems as deep as those of the central city.

A new report, funded by the Haynes Foundation (a private foundation that sponsors research with an emphasis on public policy solutions for Southern California) and scheduled for release this Thursday, examines the regional-community link in the Los Angeles area and forcefully suggests new policies to build political and economic bridges between city and suburb.

The second profound shift in community development has been the adoption of a “community-building” approach. Neighborhood development has been traditionally divided between “place-based” and “people-based” approaches.

The place-based strategy focuses on improving neighborhood infrastructure and living conditions, often through the construction of affordable housing and new business districts.

The people-based approach concentrates on enhancing skills and connecting poorer job seekers to employment wherever it may exist; in its most extreme form, such programs actually encourage escape from areas of concentrated poverty. In Chicago, for example, the Gautreaux program has provided selected families in public housing with rent vouchers that can be used only for units in “low-poverty” neighborhoods.

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The theory is that the new neighborhood will provide better role models and job “networks”; the initial evidence is that individual outcomes for movers do improve and that the Department of Housing and Urban Development is now experimenting with a “Moving to Opportunity” program (including in Los Angeles) to see whether the positive results of such housing mobility are generalizable.

While much can be gained by mobility, community organizations worry that this will contribute to a further exodus of successful individuals from inner-city neighborhoods. An emerging community-building strategy is now seeking to creatively combine the dynamics of people and place, stressing a comprehensive approach that links individuals to the regional economy but also builds up social relationships within particular communities.

These social relationships can empower low-income residents to take advantage of regional opportunities and generate the neighborhood stability and social life that will persuade newly successful residents to stay.

Across the country, such community-building efforts are catching on. A recent report by the Rockefeller Foundation details successes and challenges in Atlanta, Oakland, Baltimore and Savannah, Ga. In Savannah, job development has been slow, but the city’s black infant mortality rate has been cut by 45% since 1992, teen pregnancy is down, and school indicators are up.

Recognizing that such improvement is a building block for economic enhancement, the Committee for Economic Development, a corporate think tank, endorses community-building as a way to revive U.S. cities. The National Community Building Network, formed in 1993, is seeking to link localized efforts and ensure that areas and organizers share the new “best practices.”

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In Southern California, the Los Angeles Urban Funders, a consortium of foundations pooling resources and talents, has adopted the community-building approach and targeted three neighborhoods for extensive efforts. Rather than simply throwing dollars at jobs or housing, they have focused on constructing and solidifying relationships in three phases: building and expanding the skills of community organizations, comprehensive planning and constructing new partnerships.

The hope is that new relationships--between foundations and community organizations, business and the poor, and within low-income communities themselves--will eventually catalyze economic development and other improvements in the quality of life.

The results will not be seen for years--but we should recall that the problems were equally long in the making. Americans’ patience is often in short supply.

Neighborhoods are reasonably frustrated by the lack of immediate improvements; meanwhile, middle-class voters exhibit “compassion fatigue” and press for tax cuts and draconian welfare reforms. But staying the course on community building and comprehensive neighborhood development can make a difference--and it is up to business, political and community leaders to argue the case and make the commitment.

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Many in L.A. now are recalling the images of chaos that marked the city five short years ago. But there is another equally striking image that should remain in memory: the post-riot moments when residents from all over Southern California poured into South-Central and other areas, armed only with brooms, dustpans and a desire to help in the cleanup.

Two days of sweeping did not do the job; five years of rebuilding also have come up short. But there is hope that community builders and their partners can move forward to overcome the legacy of the past and chart a more promising future for their neighborhoods.

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Manuel Pastor Jr. can be reached by e-mail at mpastor@cats.ucsc.edu