Local Activism Shows Way to New Consensus on Reviving Inner City

It’s easy to despair over the state of the cities. Despite the dramatic national reductions in crime and unemployment, many inner-city neighborhoods remain bereft of both order and opportunity. Even in a rising tide, some of these corners seem anchored in hopelessness.

But look closer and a different picture emerges. In Boston, the Ten-Point Coalition--an alliance of black ministers--has spearheaded a remarkable reduction in youth violence. In New York, the Mid-Bronx Desperadoes Community Housing Corp. has converted streets that once symbolized decay into rows of sturdy homes for working families. And in San Antonio, a religion-based drug-treatment service known as Teen Challenge has shown real gains in treating young addicts.

These events may be insufficiently seismic to register on the national radar. But they represent tangible progress on terrain that many considered impassable. And they embody a quiet revolution in social policy that could spark a new consensus on how to revive the inner cities.

Groups such as the Ten-Point Coalition and the Mid-Bronx Desperadoes are part of a movement so loosely knit that it doesn’t even think of itself as a movement. Yet around the country, activists working with the poor are coalescing around a model of redevelopment built on decentralized, diversified responses rooted in local communities--a vision perhaps best synthesized in the phrase “local solutions.”

“Top-down solutions ultimately will be rejected,” said the Rev. Jeffrey L. Brown, pastor at the Union Baptist Church in Cambridge and a leader in the Ten-Point Coalition. “The only things that work are the things that come from the bottom up, one person at a time, one day at a time.”

That insight transcends ideological boundaries. Indeed, the local-solutions movement draws its strength from two distinct networks whose roots lie at the opposite ends of the ideological spectrum.

The left has provided the foundation for the expanding national network of community development corporations such as the Mid-Bronx Desperadoes. These are nonprofit local groups that leverage public and private funds to build affordable housing in neighborhoods that commercial developers and lenders have abandoned. About 2,000 CDCs now operate nationwide, stabilizing communities by helping working families own their own homes.

Conservatives have focused more on the growing network of faith-based charities that work in the inner city, like Teen Challenge. To conservative thinkers, these groups offer a more promising path than government’s “bureaucratic compassion” because their help is infused with a tough-love message of individual worth and personal accountability.

These groups haven’t been thought of as a single movement because they come with such divergent ideological pedigrees. And they don’t agree on everything: the CDCs tend to support a larger government safety net than the more conservative faith-based groups. But at the core they are based on common principles.

The key is that both of these networks disdain large, centralized programs--whether administered by government or major charities. Each believes that the best way to tackle the complex problems of the poor is through programs that blend opportunity and responsibility, and are grounded in the affected neighborhoods themselves.

“Their vision is not to change the entire world with one program, it’s to take a hands-on, heart-intensive approach to dealing with people’s lives,” said David Kuo, president of the American Compass, a Virginia-based philanthropic group. He was speaking specifically about the faith-based charities. But the same could be said about the CDCs.

That common ground could inspire a fresh approach to lifting the cities. Urban policy is stalemated between liberals who want to invest more and conservatives who fear that government would waste the money or spend the money without requiring responsibility. But the local-solutions movement has proven itself both efficient and demanding. The most profitable question Washington can ask now is how it can help this movement expand its reach.

Some federal initiatives already pursue that aim. CDCs find it easier to raise money from banks now that President Clinton has toughened enforcement of the community lending laws; Republicans inserted language in 1996’s welfare reform legislation encouraging states to give faith-based charities a larger role in delivering social services. But much more can be done.

One official who recognizes the opportunity is Housing and Urban Development Secretary Andrew Cuomo. He’s formed a new office to expand the agency’s partnerships with both CDCs and faith-based charities. “This is a whole infrastructure that was not there 20 years ago,” Cuomo said.

The HUD office is being run by Joseph R. Hacala, an amiable Jesuit priest who reports to work in a clerical collar and a pinstripe suit. Hacala has been traveling the country, looking for ways to better plug local groups into HUD programs. One early focus is channeling more of the agency’s efforts on homelessness through these networks. “These small groups are doing very effective work,” said Hacala. The challenge, he continues, “is to increase the resources” available to them.

Others are also enlisting in that cause. Last week, a coalition of largely left-leaning religious groups released a letter urging governors to more aggressively contract with faith-based anti-poverty programs under the welfare law. And Sen. John F. Kerry (D-Mass.) wants the federal government to make a major push on early childhood development by targeting funds to local nonprofits already operating innovative programs.

Local action can’t substitute for national commitment. But these ideas embody the insight that supporting local action can be the best means of expressing national commitment. CDCs and the faith-based charities are no panacea for faltering schools or fragmenting families. But these groups do show that progress is possible, even against those forces and even on some of the meanest streets in America if there is the will--not only in Washington but the boardrooms of banks, businesses and the mainline charities--to invest in the hard work of reclamation.

Ronald Brownstein’s column appears in this space every Monday.