Greensboro Archives - Community Engagement Learning ExchangeCommunity Engagement Learning Exchange

Housing Builds a Healthy Economy

This entry was contributed by Beth McKee-Huger, on December 21st, 2017 at 1:18 pm and is filed under Capacity Building, Community Partnerships, Housing, Innovation, Outreach Methods, Social Justice.

How can housing, health, and employment build a healthy economy?

What happens when housing declines?

How can we engage our community in re-building a healthy economy?

I’m glad to show the positive connections between safe and affordable housing and benefits to the community and individuals of a stronger local economy and healthier people. As the graphic above shows, what we sometimes think of as separate things – jobs and economic activity, or asthma and health care – actually link back to housing.

Here’s what I see in Greensboro – I’m eager to hear how other communities are working on similar kinds of engagement of residents, citizens, health care people, and university resources. Continue Reading

Do Litter, Trees and Benches affect Civic Engagement? Yes – Design can help or hurt Civic Trust

This entry was contributed by John Stephens, on July 20th, 2017 at 5:21 pm and is filed under Capacity Building, Outreach Methods, Uncategorized.

We may feel comfortable in a nice park, or a city plaza, but does this really affect our “community engagement?”

The Center for Active Design (CfAD) offers a study that says “yes.”

CfAD states that their Assembly Civic Engagement Survey is the first study to examine specific community design features that influence civic life, using large-sample survey methods and visual experiments.

Their innovative study of 5,000 people nationwide inquired about respondents’ civic perceptions and behaviors, as well as design elements and maintenance conditions within their communities. Here is what they found. Continue Reading

Housing Matters: School and Family Stability and Greensboro’s Housing Our Community Initiative

This entry was contributed by Beth McKee-Huger, on June 7th, 2017 at 5:13 pm and is filed under Civic Education, Community Partnerships, Housing, Outreach Methods, Social Justice.

Safe affordable housing is complicated.

Building new or rehabilitating deteriorating housing requires putting together complex and expensive deals. The people with the money and power to accomplish this, therefore, make the decisions about what gets built and where. This may or may not match with what works best for the people who will live there or for the community as a whole.

Most of us don’t get the opportunity to make the development decisions but we do pay for the shortage of good places to live. Many pay with the quality—or even the length—of our lives. Even if we have adequate housing ourselves, we all absorb the costs of health care, schools, public safety, and social services when people have to choose between dangerous places or moving from homes they can’t afford. Some are displaced by gentrification when whole streets are transformed from high-risk to high-cost; others live in neighborhoods that just continue to export dollars, as rent payments out (to landlords out of state or across town) exceed investment coming in.

Fellow CELE bloggers describe the complexities of raising our voices, as neighborhood residents and community advocates, about the impact of housing decisions. (See blogs tagged Affordable Housing)

BUT… However difficult it is to speak up, we must do so. Here is what is at stake for us and our communities:

Cottage Grove neighbors are educating college students

This entry was contributed by Beth McKee-Huger, on March 30th, 2017 at 10:11 am and is filed under Capacity Building, Civic Education, Community Partnerships, Diversity, Innovation.

Community residents Theresa Gregory and Sel Mpang and Community-Centered Health Coordinator Josie Williams introduce students from NC A&T State University, UNCG, Greensboro College, Elon University, and Guilford College to Cottage Grove with the absolute ground rule: the neighborhood decides. The rest of us can learn and can share but no outside organization or institution can impose what we want on the community. Community-centered health means community led. Period.

And students are using what they learn to make enormous differences.

A Good Place to Live – Vision and Action in Greensboro

This entry was contributed by Beth McKee-Huger, on June 29th, 2016 at 10:17 am and is filed under Community Partnerships, Innovation.

I have been a housing activist in Greensboro for almost 30 years, creating organizations to build homes and to advocate for policies and funding that promote safe, affordable housing.

The broad impact of good places to live:

Imagine unprecedented collaboration to assure opportunities for all in our community to have good places to live.

Count the new jobs created by the investment in building new houses and apartments and in repairing deteriorating housing.
Consider the stability of employees without the stress of possible eviction or injury from dangerous housing.
Celebrate the academic achievements of students who don’t miss class due to housing-related asthma attacks or have to move multiple times in a school year, so they can—YES—prepare for college.
Calculate the property tax dollars generated by appreciation rather than decline in property values. Welcome the family values of parents and children reunited from costly foster care because they now have good homes.
Be relieved about neighborhood safety when blighted areas become bright spots, without boarded buildings and vagrancy.
Rejoice when homeless service providers not only cooperate in connecting individuals to necessary resources but when the housing resources actually exist for them to have permanent homes.
Do a victory dance when a person’s zip code does not determine one’s life expectancy or the number of trips to the hospital or the risk of getting arrested.

OK, now that you can imagine the transformation, let’s work to become a part of it.

I’ll talk about the opportunities and challenges in Greensboro for the quantity, quality, affordability and other success factors for housing that works for everyone. I’m glad to see engagement on critical housing and social needs with many community partners. Continue Reading

Neighborhoods Vote to Spend $500K on 30 Projects in Greensboro

This entry was contributed by John Stephens, on May 19th, 2016 at 1:48 pm and is filed under Dialogue & Deliberation, Outreach Methods, Public Meetings.

From Ranata Reeder, an update on the City of Greensboro first Participatory Budgeting process. See her first post.

In April, the last step in neighborhoods choosing particular spending priorities was conducted. Before I reveal the outcome of the vote, it is important to see the whole process of local government budget outreach.

In August 2015, the City of Greensboro embarked on its first Participatory Budgeting process. Not only was this a first for Greensboro, it is the first Participatory Budgeting process in the south. Greensboro officially made it to the PB map!

Greensboro residents proposed ideas, developed proposals, and voted on how to spend $100,000 in each of Greensboro’s five city council districts, totaling $500,000. Continue Reading

Cottage Grove for LIFE! Greensboro Neighborhood Redevelopment

This entry was contributed by Beth McKee-Huger, on March 18th, 2016 at 3:00 pm and is filed under Capacity Building, Community Partnerships, Dialogue & Deliberation, Diversity, Outreach Methods.

I have the tremendous pleasure of working with the Cottage Grove Neighborhood Association and Community-Centered Health Partners as they revitalize the community, engaging outside resources to support that vision rather than to dislocate neighborhood residents. Meet some of the amazing leaders whose energy is guiding that process to transform the neighborhood.

Photo above, left to right: Laura Tew (Cooperative Extension Master Gardener), Rev. Marvin Richmond (New Hope Community Development Group), Shorlette Ammons-Stephens (NC A&T, Center for Environmental Farming Systems), and Barry Campbell (New Hope Community Development Group).

From Decline to Rebirth

Imagine reclaiming your community’s identity after decades of being defined by others. The Cottage Grove neighborhood in southeast Greensboro bustled with shops and professionals in the 1950’s and 60’s; in 1976 the main street was renamed South English and became a cut-through from East Market to Lee Street. Business closings, little investment, and many broken promises later, neighbors formed the Cottage Grove Neighborhood Association and adopted the theme “Cottage Grove for LIFE!” to proclaim the new energy for a healthy place to live. Now they are holding outside groups—and themselves—accountable to make that happen, together. Continue Reading