Here’s a very cool tool in the neighborhood revitalization toolbox that hardly ever gets used.  A quick, focused community planning process can get a neighborhood certified as a Neighborhood Revitalization Strategy Area (NRSA) by the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development (HUD).

Once that happens, a bunch of benefits ensue.  First, the local Community Development Block Grant (CDBG) Administration (the entity that requests the designation) is afforded considerably greater flexibility in administering CDBG funds in the designated neighborhood.  Second, other funders – public and private – perk up their ears when they learn that a neighborhood has gone through a good planning process to set goals and objectives for the next five years.  Thus, investment increases. 

Third, neighborhood stakeholders including residents, businesses, nonprofit organizations, elected officials, law enforcement, and faith organizations have a chance to find out that their individual interests often coincide.  There’s excitement about this and a lot of energizing that results. All of the NRSA’s I’ve been involved with have developed new, robust community organizing strategies as a result of the planning process.

NRSA’s were developed in Milwaukee many years ago, resulting in 17 NSP areas.  These have functioned somewhat under the radar.  Newer NRSA’s developed in Waukesha, Kenosha, and Sheboygan have had more visible, spark-plugging functions in those communities.

 Many cities throughout Wisconsin could benefit from obtaining NRSA designations for disadvantaged neighborhoods.  I just did a presentation at the WISCAP Conference (November 15, 2011) hoping to interest folks in taking this step.  Here’s the PowerPoint if you’re interested.  NRSA WISCAP Presentation

Nothing irks me more than a meeting where the agenda consists of one or two people giving reports while everyone else snaps their gum and fiddles with their Blackberries. These meetings remind me of the townfolk gathering outside the telegraph office to hear Old Ben in his suspenders read a message from the next town over.  Really — is this the purpose of bringing great minds together?  To sit and listen to someone ‘read the news’ that could have easily been disseminated via email, Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn and a bunch of other new social media that I don’t even know the names of yet?

Me, personally?  I think it’s a bad use of time and talent.  Meetings without a problem-solving purpose are a waste of time. Those with such a purpose can be extraordinarily fun, collegial, and productive. 

An Alternative

A few months ago, the Milwaukee Continuum of Care established a special work group to develop a Coordinated Entry system for the homeless services system, including shelters, transitional housing, and homeless prevention services.  Recognizing that work groups can quickly devolve into three people with no better alternative than to show up, the chair (Tim Baack) and I patched together a strategy that has really worked.  Here are some of the elements:

1.  Homework.

Work group members were asked to interview people in other cities about their coordinated entry (central intake) systems.  Someone interviewed the central intake program in Dayton, someone else called Kalamazoo, and so on.  Results were shared with the group in oral and written form.  This dispersed the responsibility for information-gathering and synthesis to the whole group. 

2.  Visioning

A visioning process is really about having everyone say what’s on their mind.  We did this early to try to surface some of the misgivings and apprehensions that shelter operators and others might have about a coordinated entry process.  When their concerns were recognized as legitimate by others, they became problems to solve rather than little land mines that would blow us up later.

3.  Decision List

We came up with a list of questions that had to be answered in order to establish Coordinated Entry.  Every work group member was asked to submit his/her answers to the chair so they could be recorded on a decision spreadsheet.  At each meeting, we tackle 2 or 3 questions, not closing the discussion until there is genuine agreement on the answer.  When a question is answered, we go on to the next, with no circling back (well, so far).  Having the decision list puts the end in sight – essentially when we answer the last question we will have designed the Coordinated Entry system.

4.  Cookies

The work group chair, Tim Baack of Pathfinders, sets the tone for the meeting with his preparation and his presence.  He is there to greet people as they arrive.  He has a fresh pot of coffee and a platter of cookies.  Agendas and meeting materials are at everyone’s place.  He is glad to see everyone and they feel welcome.  He guides the discussion but doesn’t rush it.  People are heard.  That’s huge.

When Coordinated Entry gets established, it will have a lot of fingerprints on it (and a few cookie crumbs). People will look back at the hard work they did and remember it as being challenging and energizing.  They’ll still go to the big meetings and listen to Old Ben read the latest telegram but they’ll be looking around the room for a problem to solve and some fun to have.

This isn’t the first time that the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel has gone on a star search.  Remember last year’s fawning over Geoffrey Canada, the founder of the Harlem Children’s Zone?   What was the matter with Milwaukee?  How come we don’t have a Geoffrey Canada?  Why aren’t we having phenomenal success educating low-income, African American kids?  What’s wrong with us?  If the education establishment knew what it was doing, it would replicate the Harlem Children’s Zone in Milwaukee.

Now, about a year later, the new subject of adoration is Mario Drummonds, leader of the Northern Manhatten Perinatal Partnership.  Like Mr. Canada, Mr. Drummonds is a charismatic figure whose zeal, commitment and talent organized a blitzkrieg of activities on a single housing project, the 1,500 unit St. Nicholas Houses in Harlem.  (See “Milwaukee infant mortality rate still high, despite years of effort, millions spent,” in Milwaukee Journal Sentinel, 5/7/11))  http://www.jsonline.com/news/milwaukee/121449039.html

Immediately, the conclusion is drawn that if Milwaukee had its act together, our infant mortality rate would plummet.  If Milwaukee would marshal its resources and not have 112 different initiatives working throughout the city (a list which, by the way, seems to include every parenting program, research project, and child development effort in the city in addition to programs specifically addressing infant mortality), then we could beat this problem and get out from under being one of the worse places in the U.S. to be a baby.  In essence, if we could replicate Mario Drummonds’ program in Milwaukee, we’d have it made.

It doesn’t work like that, folks.

Because it’s not about Mario Drummonds’ program.  It’s about Mario Drummonds.  Just like it’s not about the Harlem Children’s Zone.  It’s about Geoffrey Canada. Each of these men is what is called a Monomaniac on a Mission (MOM), a very technical term for the one person who is willing to move heaven and earth to achieve something and can convince other people to leave their cars running in the street to come and help.

There are a million things that are different about the places where Mr. Drummonds and Mr. Canada developed their projects.  History, politics, access to wealth, receptiveness to innovation, diversity, and culture of challenge and confrontation are some of the elements to be considered.  Their programs were shaped by the environment, by opportunities that were presented, and by their own personal ability to convince others to invest substantial resources — millions of dollars — in achieving the desired results.

Rather than blaming the hundred small, shoestring agencies that are trying to help young parents do a better job, maybe we ought to look at what kind of environment Milwaukee provides for budding MOMs.  When one comes along, do we listen or tell him/her to sit down and wait their turn?  Do we get behind big dreams or resent them?  Embrace vision or write it off as tilting at windmills?  Do we recognize community anger and frustration as the growing power of change or run away from it?

Like 99% of things in the world, “it’s complicated.”  Replication of programs from other cities rarely works unless virtually all of the environmental features are the same.  The adult drug court model is an example of a very successful replication process throughout the country.  Programs that have been shaped and developed around a single personality usually fall flat.  It’s not a committee that makes those innovations work, it’s one absolutely electric person at the center.

We’ve got those live wires in Milwaukee.  We really do.  Time to let them loose and see what they can do.