Natural-Born Leaders of Community Revitalization
Mayor Richard Riordan’s three-year effort to revitalize 11 low-income neighborhoods seems destined to collide head-on with his directive to cut the budgets of departments like Housing and Community Development by 6%. This amount may not seem large, but such reduced funding will set back efforts to replace slum housing and smooth the rougher edges of welfare reform.
The mayor’s Targeted Neighborhoods Initiative will thus need partners that have the resources, organization and staying power to achieve change. Urban revitalization, it should be noted, takes at least 10 years of concerted effort to produce lasting results. Of the city’s many possible partners, one stands out: its churches, in particular, its African American churches. They could be--indeed, already are in some cases--the economic engines of revitalization in L.A.’s poorest communities.
Black churches, historically, have flourished under conditions of extreme adversity. They have helped strengthen the social, economic and educational fabric of the communities they serve. And what made their successes possible is a tradition of self-help combined with a strong social mission.
From their beginnings in the 18th century, black churches have reached far beyond the pew to form mutual-aid societies and fraternal organizations. Supported by member contributions, these church-sponsored affiliates have provided services ranging from nursing to education, from jobs to protection from racial harassment. As these organizations grew in size and complexity, they helped to establish the first black-owned banks and insurance companies. Community development was a natural outgrowth of this evolution of black churches’ social ministry.
In Los Angeles, some African American churches have had a similar effect on their communities. Second Baptist Church, the city’s oldest African American Baptist church, became a developer in the 1970s in order to meet the needs of congregants and residents who live just south of downtown. It built two senior-citizen apartment complexes on adjacent church properties and established temporary shelters nearby. The church later created the Canaan Housing Corp., which focuses on building permanent, affordable housing. Canaan allied with other nonprofits to renovate two skid-row hotels and build two multifamily developments in its neighborhood. Now the church is looking for ways to stimulate retail and commercial development in the area.
Other well-established African American churches are pursuing development ventures. West Angeles Church of God in Christ’s nonprofit development affiliate has broken ground on a 44-unit, multifamily townhouse complex across the street from Manual Arts High School. Intended for low-income residents, the housing will be “service enriched,” meaning that job training, day care and tutoring, for example, will come with the territory. At the same time, the church has acquired several distressed properties in the Crenshaw corridor, which will enable it to shape the character of development in the area where it plans to build a new church. West Angeles, as a strictly business venture, will also study the feasibility of exporting locally manufactured solar technology to Africa.
For smaller churches, which lack the financial or staff resources, cooperation is essential to becoming a community developer. Two years ago, a group of about 22 such churches formed the Alliance of Church-Based Community Developers. With help from World Vision, an international relief and development group, they devised infrastructure and accountability rules necessary to carry out complex development projects. World Vision provides training, technical support and access to a revolving loan, which helps pay for the alliance’s pre-development costs.
Once financing is in place, church-based developers have made it a priority to recruit minority and women-owned businesses for their development teams and to hire local residents to do the work. In this way, their inner-city projects ensure jobs for local residents and recycle dollars among locally owned businesses. Ward Economic Development Corp., a 10-year-old nonprofit developer affiliated with Ward AME Church near the University of Southern California, established the precedent in minority procurement. Its first project was a 120-unit, senior-citizen apartment complex on Adams and Hoover. The development team, assembled in 1989, was the first all-minority one in the history of the city’s redevelopment agency. Today, use of minority contractors and local hires are commonplace among nonprofit developers.
Having largely mastered affordable housing, church-based developers are increasingly turning to business ventures. Ward Economic Development Corp., after years of working with a multicultural mix of seniors, is looking to expand retail services for the 6,000 oldest residents living in the Adams/Hoover neighborhood, where most businesses cater to students attending USC. Believing that a significant market niche was being ignored, Ward EDC has begun work on a specialty retail center adjacent to its senior apartment complex. The shopping center already has a dental office and a branch of the Social Security Administration. Ward plans to add other senior-oriented retail outlets.
Such business development can take place under a nonprofit umbrella, because the church itself does not own the enterprise. But if the church wants to be an owner, it can do so by setting up a for-profit subsidiary. First AME Church (FAME), for example, established a for-profit employment agency to match job seekers with employers. In the beginning, First AME did not charge for the service. But when the church realized that it could make money from the venture and do good, it set up a subsidiary. This is a typical development for mature nonprofit housing developers and job-training organizations.
Although African American churches have made great strides with limited resources, there should be no illusion that self-help can solve the more intractable social ills. In housing alone, Los Angeles has at least 40,000 units either in serious decline or irreparable. If the city is truly committed to revitalizing its poorest neighborhoods, it will have to find additional resources to build new housing as well as rehabilitate existing stock.
Here again, black churches can play a role as advocates and shapers of policy. Their credibility as religious institutions and their access to constituents naturally position them to influence the character and direction of revitalization efforts in their neighborhoods.
Churches’ participation in revitalization efforts will be especially important as welfare reform takes root. The support system for low-income families could be strengthened by more closely integrating housing, social services and employment. Many of the newer multifamily housing developments built by churches already do this. By linking welfare reform with housing and community development, churches and their nonprofit partners could reinvigorate the state’s involvement in housing policy and identify new resources to help low-income families transition to self-sufficiency.
If there is any skepticism about the efficacy of bottom-up, grass-roots development, one need only look at New York’s South Bronx. Its transformation in the past decade has been startling, so much so that the National Civic League named the Bronx an “All-America City” this year. With a population of 1.2 million and a poverty rate of 27%, the borough long epitomized the worst of urban blight--a “bombed-out wasteland” with block after block of abandoned or burned-out buildings.
But, led by local residents and community institutions, the Bronx is recovering. In the past 10 years, 30,000 units of housing have been built. Just last year, the South Bronx Churches, a coalition of religious groups, completed a 512-unit project of condos and single-family homes in one of the borough’s most blighted neighborhoods. More than 500 new businesses, representing an investment of $460 million, have opened, thanks to state and federally financed empowerment zones. Even more striking, South Bronx is working with its wealthy neighbor, Westchester County, to develop a regional economic development plan that will have as its linchpin a joint transportation center.
If there is a vision of what Los Angeles’ poorest neighborhoods could become, the South Bronx offers a glimpse. But it will happen only if the broadest cross-section of residents, citizen groups, churches, nonprofits, government and businesses come together for change and back it up with financial support. L.A. black churches can be the catalysts of this kind of revitalization.
