Neighbourhoods Matter - Amazon Web Services...grant launching pads repeatedly take a step or two forward, followed by two or three steps backward, while dilapidation inexorably deepens

Volume 3, Number 2 www.ideasthatmatter.com

A quarterly to stimulate public discourse

Neighbourhoods MatterInside this issue:

• Time and Change as Neighbourhood AlliesJane Jacobs

• Rebuilding CommunitiesGarland Yates, Annie E. Casey Foundation

• The Revitalization of a Neighbourhood: Regent Park

Ideas That MatterVolume 3 Number 2

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Copyright:All articles © the author, 2004Permission to reproduce should be requestedthrough the publisher.

Contributors to this issue include:Laurie Green, Jane Jacobs, John Stapleton,Garland Yates,Ann Peters, Mary W. Rowe

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Upcoming issues will include:• Dark Age Ahead: Jane Jacobs symposium

report• Mexican Diary by Deb Elliot• The Maytree Foundation’s work on

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This issue of Ideas that Matterprovides our readers with aglimpse of a remarkable com-

munity in transition. Last year Ideasthat Matter was engaged by theToronto Community HousingCorporation (one of North America’slargest public housing landlords) toconvene a broad-based city-wideforum on the ‘revitalization’ process ofone of their largest holdings, the com-munity of Regent Park.

We took this assignment on becauseof our interest in and focus on cityautonomy. Over the last few years,we’ve been making the case in ourconvening and writing that as citiesgo, so too the regions, even countriesin which they are located. We’ve beeninterested to take this down to themost basic level, to the most local, ofwhat comprises a city: its neighbour-hoods. Here is a prime example of oneabout to be set loose from the confinesof a single authority. In this case, theentity holding the power (the HousingCorporation) espouses an aspiration,at least, of wanting to loosen its con-trol and provide the framework for amore organic evolution of the neigh-bourhood.

This issue includes excerpts from apresentation by Garland Yates, asenior advisor at the Annie E. CaseyFoundation, who was the keynotespeaker at the spring forum. The

Foundation, a national philanthropicorganization, has been involved inlong-term efforts of community build-ing in deprived urban neighbourhoodsin the U.S. Then there is extensivematerial on the challenges, andopportunities, in Regent Park, and anoverview of urban revitalizationefforts in other jurisdictions. We’veincluded some additional ideas con-cerning poverty alleviation both on anational level and through neighbour-hoods.

We’ve also included in this issue aspeech given by Jane Jacobs a fewyears ago when she was awarded thefirst Vince Scully Prize inArchitecture from the NationalBuilding Museum. In it she discusseshow time can be an ally to a neigh-bourhood; we thought it was apropos,and provided a larger context for theideas here. In addition, at the end ofthis issue is an essay by JohnStapleton, a senior civil servant andpolicy expert in the provincial gov-ernment, who became a sort of “artist-in-residence” with a social serviceagency. Some of his reflections arerelayed here.

We invite your comments.

Mary W. RoweEditor

[email protected]

Volume 3 Number 2 A quarterly2

A quarterly Volume 3 Number 2 3

Contents

4 Time and Change asNeighbourhood AlliesBy Jane Jacobs

8 NeighbourhoodRevitalization: An OverviewBy Laurie Green and Ann Peters

12 RebuildingCommunities By Garland Yates

19 The Dudley StreetNeighbourhood Initiative

20 Background on theNeighbourhood of RegentPark, TorontoBy Mary W. Rowe

23 The PresentCommunity at a Glance

27 Community Resources

29 Experiments in SocialInnovation: Pathways toEducation

30 Regent Park: A BriefHistoryBy Laurie Green

35 The Toronto Context:Poverty by Postal Code

37 Asset-Building:Addressing Poverty inCanada

38 Urban DevelopmentAgreements: The VancouverAgreement - DowntownEastside

39 Connecting PublicPolicy with FrontlineExperienceBy John Stapleton

43 NeighbourhoodRevitalization Resources

The following is excerpted from anaddress made by Jane Jacobs on the occa-sion of her receiving the 2001 VincentScully prize from the National BuildingMuseum in Washington, D.C.

We take it for granted that somethings improve or areenhanced by time and the

changes it brings. Trees grow larger;hedges grow thicker; fine old buildings,put to uses not originally anticipated, asthis building has been, are increasinglyappreciated as time passes. But someother things are too seldom enhanced orimproved by the workings of time. Onthe whole city and suburban neighbour-hoods have very chancy records of deal-ing well with time and change. I’m goingto discuss briefly four common kinds offailure for city neighbourhoods and makea few suggestions.

My first suggestion concerns immi-grants. Right now, in locations extendingfrom the Virginia metropolitan fringes ofWashington and the Jersey metropolitanfringes of New York to the Los Angelesfringes of Los Angeles, striving immi-grants from Pakistan, Bangladesh, India,China, the Philippines, Latin America,the Caribbean and Africa, are settling inwoebegone city suburbs to which timehas been unkind. Right now newcomersare enlivening dull and dreary streetswith tiny grocery and clothing stores,second-hand shops, little importing andcraft enterprises, skimpy offices and mod-est but exotic restaurants.

Either of two fates can befall thesenewly minted immigrant neighbour-hoods. On the one hand, if members ofthe new populations and their childrenmelt away as they find their feet, the

sequel for the bottom of the ladder isprobably followed by yet another popula-tion. Ample experience informs us thatneighbourhoods serving only as immi-grant launching pads repeatedly take astep or two forward, followed by two orthree steps backward, while dilapidationinexorably deepens with time.

In contrast, as many a Little Italy andChinatown attest, along with less cele-brated examples, immigrant neighbour-

hoods that succeed in holding onto theirstriving populations are neighbourhoodsthat improve with time, becoming civicassets in every respect: social, physicaland economic. Progress on the part ofthe population is reflected in the neigh-bourhood. Increasing diversity ofincomes, occupations, ambitions, educa-tion, skills and connections are allreflected in the increasingly diversifiedneighbourhood. Time becomes the ally,not the enemy of such a neighbourhood.


Time and Change asNeighbourhood AlliesJane Jacobs

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Self-respecting people, no matter whattheir ethnic origins, abandon a place if itbecomes fixed in their minds that it is anundignified or insulting place to be.Here’s my suggestion: smart municipali-ties ought to contradict those percep-tions before they take firm hold – notime to lose – by making sure that newlyminted immigrant neighbourhoodsreceive really good municipal housekeep-ing, public maintenance, and communi-ty policing and justice services, alongwith some respectful amenities. Traffic-taming and street trees come to mind,and especially quick, hassle-free permis-sions for people to organize open-air mar-kets if they ask to, or run jitney services,or make whatever other life-improvingadaptations they want to provide forthemselves.

Simple, straightforward municipalinvestments of the kind just mentioned,and sensitive, flexible bureaucraticadjustments are minor in comparisonwith costs and adjustments demanded bycity megaprojects. But if those minorcosts and adjustments attach newcomersto neighbourhoods in which they canfeel pride and proprietorship as they arefinding their feet, and afterwards, theycarry a potential of huge civic pay-offs.Time and change will then have beenenlisted as allies of these neighbour-hoods.

My second suggestion has to do withcommunities’ needs for hearts or centresand with a related problem: damage doneto neighbourhoods by commercial incur-sions where they are inappropriate. Thedesirability of community hearts is wellrecognized nowadays. Much thoughtgoes into designing them for new com-munities, and inserting them into neigh-bourhoods that have lost communityhearts or never had them. The object isto nurture locales where people on footwill naturally encounter one another inthe course of shopping, doing othererrands, promoting their causes, airingtheir grievances, catching up on gossip,and perhaps enjoying a coffee or beerunder pretty coloured umbrellas.

Let’s think a minute about the naturalanatomy of community hearts. Whereverthey develop spontaneously, they arealmost invariably consequences of two ormore intersecting streets, well used bypedestrians. On the most meager scale,we have the cliché of the corner store orthe corner pub that is recognized as alocal hangout. In this cliché, “corner” isa significant adjective. Corner impliestwo streets intersecting in the shape of anX or a T. In traditional towns, the spotrecognized as the centre of things surpris-ingly often contains a triangular piece ofground. This is because it is where threemain routes con-verge in the shapeof a Y. In commu-nities where his-torically muchtraffic was water-borne, a heartoften locateditself at the inter-section of a mainwaterfront streetwith the exit from a busy dock where pas-sengers disembarked; when water traveldeclined, the heart moved elsewhere.Large cities of course have typicallydeveloped not only localized neighbour-hood or district hearts, but one or sever-al major hearts, and these also havealmost invariably located themselves atbusy pedestrian street intersections. Allbut the very smallest hearts – the cornerstore – typically provided splendid sitesfor landmark buildings, public squares, orsmall parks.

The converse logic doesn’t work.Living, beating community hearts can’tbe arbitrarily located, as if they were sub-urban shopping centres for which thesupporting anatomy is a parking lot andperhaps a transit stop. But given theanatomy of well-used pedestrian mainstreets, hearts locate themselves; in factthey can’t be prevented from locatingthemselves. Of course good design cangreatly enhance or reinforce them, as Iimplied with my remark about landmarkbuildings and public squares.

Now for the related problem of com-mercial or institutional facilities intrud-ing into inappropriate places. From timeto time I glance at plans and artists’ ren-derings for charmingly designed resi-dences with their yards, and I wonderwhere future overflow of commerce canbe pleasantly accommodated. Perhapsthis consideration doesn’t matter in a vil-lage which is destined to remain a vil-lage. But it matters very much in a cityneighbourhood or in a town or villagewhich becomes engulfed by a city. Incities, successful hearts attract users fromoutside the neighbourhood, and they

also attract entrepreneurs who want tobe where the action is. These things hap-pen. In fact, if these things didn’t happencities would be little more advantageouseconomically and socially than villages;they wouldn’t generate urban surprise,pizzazz and diversity.

So with time and change, originallyunforeseen commercial and institutionaloverflows can occur in city neighbour-hoods. Where do they go? They mayhave to find and convert makeshift quar-ters. Occasionally the makeshifts aredelightful, but most commonly they reg-ister as ugly, jarring, intrusive smears intoresidential streets where they were nevermeant to intrude. Watching this happen,people think, “the neighbourhood isgoing to the dogs.” So it is visually – andsoon, as a sequel, perhaps socially; in theend, perhaps economically as well. Somuch is this form of deterioration dis-liked and feared, that one of the chiefpurposes of zoning regulations is to pre-vent it. Even if the regulations succeed atholding time and change at bay, as ene-mies, any success they have comes at the

Jane Jacobs Time and Change as Neighbourhood Allies

The object is to nurture locales where people onfoot will naturally encounter one another in thecourse of shopping, doing other errands, pro-moting their causes, airing their grievances,catching up on gossip, and perhaps enjoying acoffee or beer under pretty coloured umbrellas.


cost of squelching city potentialities,meaning convenience and innovations.

Here is where the anatomy of naturalneighbourhood hearts can come to therescue. One important adaptive advan-tage of open-ended main pedestrianstreets forming intersections is that thesestreets are logical places to locate con-vertible buildings before there is a needto convert them. They can be a designedform of neighbourhood insurance, so tospeak. For example, row houses can bedesigned to convert easily and pleasantlyto shops, small offices, studios, restau-rants, all kinds of things. Several joinedtogether even convert well to smallschools and other institutions. And ofcourse many buildings originally put upfor work, especially loft buildings, con-vert pleasantly to apartments or living-and-working combinations. In sum, I amsuggesting that urban designers andmunicipalities should not think aboutthe street anatomy without also provid-ing or encouraging easily convertiblebuildings on those streets as opportunityto do that arises. This is a practical strat-egy for dealing with time and change asallies, not enemies.

My third suggestion concerns gentri-fication of low-cost neighbourhoods towhich time has not been kind but whichhave valuable assets. Typically, the firstoutsiders to notice those assets are artistsand artisans. They are joined by youngprofessionals or other middle-class peo-ple whose eyes have been opened by theartists’ discoveries. For a time, gentrifica-tion brings heartening renovations andother physical improvements into aneighbourhood that needs improve-ments, along with new people whoseconnections, life-skills and spendingmoney can be socially useful to theneighbourhood’s existing inhabitants,and often are. As long as gentrificationproceeds gently, with moderation, ittends to continue to be beneficial, anddiversifying.

But nowadays especially, a neighbour-hood’s period of what might be called itsgolden age of gentrification can be sur-prisingly short. Suddenly, so many, many

new people want in on a place now gen-erally perceived as interesting and fash-ionable that gentrification turns sociallyand economically vicious. It explodesinto a feeding frenzy of real-estate specu-lation and evictions. Former inhabitantsare evicted wholesale, priced out by whatChester Hartman, urban planner andauthor, aptly calls “the financial bulldoz-er.” Even the artists, who began theprocess, are priced out.

The eventual ironic result is that eventhe rich, the people being priced in, arecheated by this turn of events. They wereattracted by what they perceived as alively, interesting, diverse and urbanecity neighbourhood – in short, by theresults of gentle and moderate gentrifica-tion. This kind of urbanity is killed as theplace becomes an exclusive preserve forhigh-income people.

Time is not kind to high-income pre-serves in cities, unless they are small andcheek-by-jowl with livelier and morediverse neighbourhoods. One need onlynotice that many a poor and dilapidatedneighbourhood contains once-beautiful,proud and ambitious dwellings, to seeevidence that exclusive preserves of therich do not necessarily hold up well incities. The rich it seems, grow bored withundiverse, dull city neighbourhoods, ortheir children or heirs do. This is not sur-prising because such places are boring.

When gentrification turns vicious andexcessive, it tells us, first, that demandfor moderately gentrified neighbour-hoods has outrun supply. By now, experi-ence has revealed the basic attributes ofsuch places – attributes artists discover:the streets have human scale, buildingsare various and interesting, streets are

safe for pedestrian use and many ordinaryconveniences are within pedestrianreach and neighbours are tolerant of dif-fering life-styles. It is pitiful that so manycity neighbourhoods with these excellentbasic attributes have been destroyed forhighway construction, slum clearance,urban renewal and housing projects.Nevertheless, some currently bypassedcivic treasures do remain, and where theydo, moderate gentrification – I empha-size moderate – could be deliberatelyencouraged to help take the heat offother places being excessively gentrified.Another way of adding to supply couldbe by encouraging judicious infilling ofhousing in neighbourhoods with humanscale but not excessive compactness ordensity.

However, more than increased supplyof desirable city neighbourhoods is need-

ed to combatsocially viciousevictions of exist-ing inhabitants.Artscape, aToronto organiza-tion concernedspecifically withprotecting andpromoting theinterests of artists,

has come to the conclusion that the onlysure way of preventing artists from beingpriced out of their quarters is ownership– in this case, ownership by nonprofitorganizations. The same is probably truefor many other existing inhabitants –ownership by cooperatives, communitydevelopment corporations, land trusts,nonprofit organizations – whatever inge-nuities can be directed to the aim ofretaining neighbourhood diversity ofpopulation.

My final suggestion concerns the haz-ards of a somewhat different form of pop-ularity. As I mentioned earlier, somecommunity hearts and their associatedstreet anatomies attract many outsidersand are widely enjoyed. This is not a badthing; on the contrary. The hazard is this:as leases for commercial or institutionalspaces expire, tenants are apt to be facedwith shockingly increased rents. Property

Urban designers and municipalities should notthink about the street anatomy without alsoproviding or encouraging easily convertiblebuildings on those streets, as opportunity to dothat arises. This is a practical strategy for deal-ing with time and change as allies, not enemies.

Time and Change as Neighbourhood Allies Jane Jacobs


Jane Jacobs Time and Change as Neighbourhood Allies

taxes on the popular premises can soartoo, instigating even further increases. Ifzoning prevents commercial overflow, somuch the worse. The upshot is that manyfacilities are priced out of the mix. Thehardware store goes, the bookstore clos-es, the place that repairs small appliancesmoves away, the butcher shops and bak-eries disappear.

As diversity diminishes,into its place comes a kindof monoculture: incrediblerepetitions of whatever hap-pens to be most profitableon that street at that time.Of course these optimistsdon’t all succeed. Six of theseventeen new restaurants,say, die off rather rapidly,and five of the seven giftshops don’t make it throughthe next Christmas. Intotheir places come otheroptimists who hope some-thing will be left in the tillafter the debt costs on reno-vations and the incrediblerents are paid. But startinggradually while times aregood, and rapidly when theyaren’t, the street becomes dotted withvacancies. The old conveniences don’treturn to fill them. They can’t afford to.All this is not owing to competition frommalls or big boxes - but because successhas priced out diversity.

A popular main pedestrian street run-ning through my own neighbourhood isnow afflicted by this dynamic. However,fortunately the hardware store remains,so does the book store, one butcher shopwith its associated European grocery, anda large general bargain and outlet store.Not only do these remain, they flourish;one – the hardware – has doubled itsspace. The secret of their stability is thatthey own the buildings where they dobusiness, so were not vulnerable to beingpriced out by soaring rents. The banksalso remain; they own their buildings.

This has caused me to think abouthome ownership. When it became publicpolicy in the United States to encouragehome ownership, financial devices such a

long-term mortgages, small down pay-ments, and mortgage acceptance agen-cies, primarily the Federal HousingAdministration (FHA), proved success-ful at promoting the policy. Tract hous-ing sold to homeowners under thesearrangements was sprawling and other-wise ill-conceived for fostering much

sense of community, but that is anothermatter. At least, fostering ownershipworked. Today some 65% of Americanhouseholds own their own houses orapartments, the highest percentage inthe world.

This has made me wonder whethersimilar techniques would enable orencourage small businesses – especiallythose whose success depends heavily onlocation – to own their own premises. Ofcourse not all would want to, and amongthose that did, all would not be able to;but that is also true of households. Whyshouldn’t it become public policy to fos-ter business stability, and stability of citystreets and neighbourhoods, by enablingenterprises to protect themselves,through ownership, against abruptly ris-ing rents? In other words, I’ve arrived atmuch the same conclusion as Artscape:that ownership is the surest protectionagainst being priced out of a place ofwork.

These four suggestions may seem triv-ial compared with other municipal con-cerns such as racism, poor schools, traffic,unemployment, illegal drugs, inadequatetax revenues, crime, persistent poverty,what to do with garbage, how to luretourists, whether to build another stadi-um or a convention centre, and so on.

Nevertheless, neighbour-hoods that decline are pret-

ty serious too. Two stepsforward, followed bythree steps back, is noway for a city to progress,and it doesn’t help solveother municipal prob-lems either; the patternmakes them moreintractable.

The pattern isn’t new.It has practical causesand unless these forms ofcivic ineptitude arefaced and overcome,North American city

neighbourhoods are asunlikely to deal well with

time and change in the futureas they have been in the past. The sug-gestions I’ve made may not be politicallypossible. There may be better, or at anyrate different, means of accomplishingsimilar aims. My purpose is to help stir upsome creative thinking, now lacking,about effects of time and change on cityneighbourhoods; above all to stir upthinking about how to enlist time andchange as practical allies – not enemiesthat must be regulated out and fended offon the one hand, or messily surrenderedto on the other. We might as well learnhow to make constructive alliances withthe workings of time because time isgoing to continue happening; that’s forsure.

For more information on the VinceScully Prize and the National BuildingMuseum, see www.nbm.org. Jane Jacob’smost recent book is Dark Age Ahead.

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The Annex Neighbourhood, Toronto


W hat does it mean?‘Neighbourhood revitaliza-tion’ is a term increasingly

heard in relation to projects aimed atreinvigorating urban communities thathave experienced concentrated povertyand marginalization. It also reflects a shiftaway from what have been traditionallytop-down, issue-specific approaches, tolocally-based, comprehensive, communi-ty-building strategies to achieve sustainedeconomic and social neighbourhoodtransformation.

In North America, these efforts, alsoknown in the field as ‘comprehensivecommunity initiatives’ (CCIs) representa new methodology in which funders,policy-makers and program designersexplore a range of approaches to revitaliz-ing distressed neighbourhoods by address-ing a number of inter-related issues suchas housing, health and unemployment.One of the common threads runningthrough efforts in various jurisdictions isthe recognition that community condi-tions, also called ‘neighbourhood effects’,play a significant role in either perpetuat-ing or reducing poverty. In other words,‘place matters’. Factors such as educa-tional attainment, income level, andaccess to social services and resourcesintersect within given geographic bound-aries in ways that circumscribe the abilityof residents to prosper.

The terms ‘community’ and ‘neigh-bourhood’ are often used interchangeablyin the literature of revitalization strate-gies. ‘Community’ may be delineated by alocal geographic boundary, territory rele-vant to regional government as in thecase of amalgamated cities, or a commu-nity of specific interest such as a visibleminority population or persons with dis-abilities. However, in the context ofurban revitalization, and particularly theU.S. comprehensive community initia-

tives, ‘community’ is usually defined atthe neighbourhood level. Literature per-taining to both North American andEuropean efforts has suggested that thereis no single definition; what is needed isthe flexibility to allow a community to beidentified by the needs being addressed,and the people experiencing those needs.

The Caledon Institute of Social Policyhas identified a number of ‘key features’which characterize comprehensive com-munity initiatives:

• They are comprehensive, address-ing local quality of life issues, build-ing new social and economic infra-structure and addressing the broad-er social and economic policy con-text;

• They are holistic, engaging diversesectors to break down artificialboundaries of bureaucratic com-partmentalization, and to identifylinks among various issues;

• They are multisectoral, encourag-ing partnering and collaborativework and funding arrangements;

• They are long-term;

• They are developmental, address-ing the need to build communitycapacity;

• They are inclusive;

• They are concerned with processand outcome.

Experience in other countries Neighbourhood or community revital-

ization efforts have developed at differentrates in Canada, the United States, theUnited Kingdom and in NorthernEuropean countries such as Germany andFrance among others. Responses to theneed for urban regeneration have varieddue to the diversity of national gover-nance structures, funding and local cir-cumstances.

The United StatesIn the United States neighbourhood-

based, comprehensive revitalizationstrategies have been taking place sincethe early 1990s. Launched in 1992 and1993 respectively, the HOPE VI andEmpowerment Zone/Enterprise Com-munity programs are initiatives of theU.S. federal government that marked sig-nificant shifts in policy. HOPE VI, fund-ed by the federal Department of Housingand Urban Development, combinedgrants for physical revitalization of older,‘severely distressed’ public housing devel-opments with funding for managementimprovements and supportive services, topromote the self-sufficiency of residents.The program addresses both the tradi-tional ‘bricks and mortar’ concerns aswell as more complex needs of low-income neighbourhoods to improve over-all conditions. One of the chief objectivesof HOPE VI programs is to decrease oravoid the concentration of very low-income families in one area in a bid toend stigmatization, and to increase thesustainability of the neighbourhood.Evaluations of HOPE VI initiatives aretaking place in an attempt to questionssuch as the extent to which HOPE VI hasachieved its intended benefits, theimpact these programs have had on origi-nal public housing residents, and thelessons HOPE VI has for other publichousing projects and policy in general.As this program has evolved in legisla-tion, regulation, implementation andpractice over the last decade, answeringthese questions is difficult. Some objec-tives have been met, for example, sub-stantially improved physical structures,good urban design promoting safety, thede-concentration of poverty through amix of income levels, the leveraging ofadditional funds for community infra-structure, and experimentation with arange of management techniques.However, there is some evidence indicat-

Neighbourhood RevitalizationAn OverviewLaurie Green and Ann Peters


ing that the original residents of HOPEVI neighbourhoods have not always ben-efited from redevelopment. This hasbeen partly attributed to a lack of mean-ingful resident participation in planning,insufficient focus on relocation strategiesand revised screening criteria whichhave made it difficult for ‘hard to house’households to qualify for the new devel-opments.

The program is currently operatingwith substantially reduced federal fund-ing, after the Bush administration hadproposed eliminating funding altogether.Meanwhile, housing advocates, cities,and housing authorities continue to sup-port the program; significantly, HOPE VIis currently the only major source ofredevelopment funding available in theU.S. Empowerment Zones/EnterpriseCom-munities (EZs/ECs) is a 10-yearfederal community development pro-gram, begun in 1994, with legislationproviding an array of performance grantsand tax credits to designated distressedurban neighbourhoods and rural commu-nities to create job opportunities andexpand business opportunities. Theinclusion of rural communities makesthis program unique among other revital-ization initiatives mentioned here. All ofthe communities are eligible for tax-exempt bond financing that offers lowerrates than conventional financing tofinance business development opportuni-ties. There was considerable flexibilitygiven by the federal government to pro-gram requirements and distinct differ-ences among the designated sites due tovarying strategic plans developed at thelocal level.

While the concept of ‘enterprisezones’ was initially conceived as a vehi-cle for comprehensive community devel-opment, it is now associated primarilywith economic development. TheNational Community DevelopmentInitiative, a separate program in placesince 1992, as a joint effort between largephilanthropic foundations, major finan-cial institutions and the federal govern-ment had focused attention on notionsof local determination, civic participa-

tion, through the creation of nonprofitcommunity development organizations.Subsequently, EZ/EC initiatives havebrought the issue of neighbourhood-based development to the policy arena,supported locally through partnershipsamong municipal and county or stategovernments, local corporations, localnonprofits, and residents from the com-munities involved. The initiatives shareseveral elements in their approaches torevitalization: identification of a geo-graphically delineated community; afocus on comprehensive developmentthat links economic, physical, andhuman development activities; supportfor a process of strategic planning basedon community assets and availableresources/needs; and resident participa-tion in the governance structure forplanning and implementing activities atthe local level.

The Rebuilding CommunitiesInitiative (RCI), launched in 1994 bythe Annie E. Casey Foundation, contin-ues the evolution of urban revitalizationstrategies in the U.S. and is an exampleof several major long-term philanthropicinitiatives currently underway in theU.S. RCI was a seven-year initiativesupported by partnerships with commu-nity-based organizations in five urbancommunities to re-build ‘deeply dis-tressed’ neighbourhoods. The develop-ment of RCI signaled a departure fromearlier strategies in three significantways: a neighbourhood versus city focus,a comprehensive initiative not definedby a single, specific issue (i.e. affordablehousing), and the acknowledgement andinclusion of local participation by com-munity residents. Local self-determina-tion was regarded as an essential compo-nent of RCI. These features producedstrategies that were less ‘top-down’ innature and by putting more emphasis onbuilding community capacity, combinedthe concepts of individual and communi-ty ‘empowerment’ with neighbourhoodrevitalization. A second ten-year initia-tive, Making Connections, began in1999 in ten communities across the U.S.building on lessons learned from RCI.

United KingdomBritish cities were among the first in

Europe to experience a wave of econom-ic restructuring and social change, partlyas a result of poor industrial competitive-ness, outworn infrastructure and socialtensions in inner cities. In the 1980s theUK was the first Western European toinitiate a dedicated program to deal withinner city issues. This program wasstrongly influenced by policy dissemina-tion from the US, and growing recogni-tion of economic competitivenessbetween cities as part of the creation of asingle European economy and generaleconomic globalization.

In 1998, the Urban Task Force chairedby Lord Rogers of Riverside, examinedthe causes of urban decline in Englandand made recommendations to deliver an‘urban renaissance’ through the creationof a co-ordinated cross-government pro-gram under the Office of the DeputyPrime Minister (ODPM) and throughlocal strategic partnerships. The Neigh-bourhood Renewal Fund enables fundingto the country’s most deprived neighbour-hoods, eighty-eight of which have beentargeted through an index of social andeconomic indicators. The local strategycan include better outcomes in a broadrange of areas including employment andeconomic performance, crime, educa-tional attainment, health and housing.

Some of these principles are in evi-dence in Scotland’s South LanarkshireCommunity Planning Partnership(SLCPP). Membership of the SLCPPwas widened to include direct serviceproviders following the preparation of acommunity plan in an effort to achievebroader and more representative commu-nity planning partnerships. A basket ofissues reflecting the social determinantsof health, e.g. community safety, socialinclusion and health, is being addressedthrough seven theme-based partnershipgroups, each of which deals with a specif-ic issue affecting overall communitywell-being. Various mechanisms havebeen used to cultivate increased commu-nity capacity, including the use of a peer

Neighbourhood Revitalization

education program for youth to deal withhealth and substance abuse issues, andthe integration of opportunities for train-ing and employment by two companiesin the neighbourhoods involved. Initialfeedback suggests that there are a num-ber of ongoing challenges such as theadministrative workload with respect tomeeting performance indicators and cre-ating a culture of openness and trans-parency across organizations operating inthe joint partnerships.

FranceThe experience of neighbourhood

revitalization in France has differed fromthat of the UK and the US in some sig-nificant respects. For example, perhapsthe clearest model of large-scale stateintervention is its area-based socialregeneration program, as demonstratedby former president Francois Mitterand’s,“Developpement Social des Quartiers”which deals with peripheral social hous-ing and older neighbourhoods in need ofrevitalization. Both France and the UKhave leaned more strongly toward target-ed compensation for cities in declinethan other democratized nations; grow-ing urban protest movements, particular-ly in France and the UK, have been veryinfluential in this regard.

The concept of regeneration in Francehas evolved from one of ‘renovation’with a physical or economic bias, to‘renouvellement’, with a much widerscope. The process has also moved frombeing one that is publicly-led and man-aged, to being a more varied and cooper-ative process, fostering partnerships withprivate and communal agencies andplacing an increasing emphasis on socialand cultural aspects and on the encour-agement of innovation and participa-tion. One regeneration project in Lille,the Roubaix project, is an example ofrenouvellement, comprising an assort-ment of ventures that have required flex-ible collaboration between actors, andextensive consultation and negotiation.

The mayors of French cities involvedin regeneration projects have been able

to develop strategies for areas in need,backed up by an agency geared to deliv-ery, with the skills to negotiate, coordi-nate and assure the finances required tomake things possible. It has not beennecessary for municipalities to wait foran initiative to come from somewhereelse. In some cases a need to broaden thebase for collaboration has generated thecreation of management organizationscalled SEMs (societe d’economie mixte).These bring in a range of other financialagencies such as private banks, chambersof commerce and local agencies to anintegrated team.

Funding for French urban regenera-tion projects comes primarily from theCaisse des Depots et Consignations, par-ticularly its Urban Regeneration Fundand its system of low-interest loans formajor urban projects. Founded in 1816 asa state institution, this public sector bankhas the ability to plan and invest in long-term strategies linked into nationalfinance plans.

The Loi de Solidrite etRenouvellement urbain (SRU) estab-lished in 2001 is the latest legislativeprogram aimed at regenerating Frenchcities. SRU pulls together various initia-tives of the 1990s, steering them towardmore comprehensive ways of grapplingwith social exclusion, a primary objectiveof the new renouvellement urbain. Strongmechanisms have developed to ensurethe integration of policy between thevarious government departments.

GermanyBecause of damage suffered during the

Second World War and subsequentrebuilding, German towns do not exhib-it the physical decay evident in the citiesof other industrialized countries.However a combination of the decline ofthe industrial base, and the need toimprove housing standards in the proper-ties built in the immediate post-war erahas resulted in urban regeneration inGermany having a more economic andsocial dimension than in other countries.

The main actors in urban regenerationhere are the municipalities, which havebeen given special powers under theFederal Building Code to extend theiractivity beyond its original remit for slumclearance and war damage repair tobroader goals of regeneration. In order toaccomplish this special redevelopment,agencies are often created, known asStadtebauliche sanierungsmafnohnohmen.These agencies, for example the STEGagency in Hamburg, are granted widepowers that allow them to acquire landin order to implement projects. The goalsof regeneration in Germany are multi-faceted: to improve or replace housingstock, to provide new amenities, to pro-vide public infrastructure, and toimprove transport systems. One elementthat may set Germany apart from otherjurisdictions, is the degree to which itsregeneration initiatives are democratic;at all stages from plan formulation tofinal implementation, efforts are made toinvolve every potentially affected personor group in consultations. Any relocationexpenses or other social effects of pro-grams are dealt with by a strongSozialplan, to which the program islinked. Other levels of government con-tribute to the financing of plans, but arenot intimately involved in the process.

The Canadian contextIn Canada, neighbourhood revitaliza-

tion, particularly in an urban context,has been recent and limited in scope.Accordingly, Canadian initiatives havehad the advantage of gleaning lessonsfrom revitalization projects in other juris-dictions. The Regent Park PlanningTeam, for example, has been able to drawfrom the experiences of neighbourhoodrevitalization projects in the U.S., partic-ularly the HOPE VI program whichshares some significant similarities in itsfocus on the large-scale re-building ofpublic housing.

Other Canadian neighbourhood revi-talization initiatives include projects inboth Winnipeg and in Vancouver’sDowntown Eastside (using the joint fed-eral/provincial/municipal approach of an




Urban Development Agreement) andthe Vibrant Communities project. As inthe case of most revitalization strategies,the Vancouver Agreement is focused onstrategic initiatives that are comprehen-sive in scope, striving for increased com-munity capacity and expanded collabora-tions and partnerships among stakehold-ers. It is also marked by the developmentof ‘horizontal’ teams across the partner-ship organizations, and a structure thatencourages the strategic targeting ofresources.

The Vibrant Communities project, aninitiative of the Tamarack Institute, theCaledon Institute of Social Policy andthe J.W. McConnell Family Foundation,is focused on poverty reduction throughcommunity-driven initiatives. Like

many revitalization efforts, it highlightsthe importance of building partnerships.An important component of VibrantCommunities is its linkage of up to 15communities across Canada to facilitatethe sharing of experiences from differentprojects, thereby creating opportunitiesfor different communities to learn fromeach other. Four key approaches con-tained in Vibrant Communities projectsare: comprehensiveness and locally-based initiatives, cross-sectoral grassrootscollaboration, identifying and develop-ing community assets, and a commit-ment to learning and evaluation. All ofthese contribute to the goals of compre-hensiveness and enhanced communitycapacity.

Canada differs in some significantrespects from other jurisdictions

involved in revitalization efforts. Canadadoes not currently have a federal pro-gram that allocates funding specificallyfor urban regeneration projects, as doesFrance; it also lacks a federal housingprogram to assist with the revitalizationof social housing, unlike the AmericanHOPE VI program. Instead, a greaterreliance on creative partnering withmunicipalities, the private sector, foun-dations, and nonprofit organizations willbe necessary to undertake revitalizationprojects. Significantly, Canada’s munici-palities are also lacking the degree ofautonomy possessed by those in otherplaces, such as Germany. Though talk of‘a new deal for cities’ to find new sourcesof revenue and powers for municipalitieshas been taking place at both federal andprovincial levels, concrete actions haveyet to be taken to provide local govern-ments with greater independence indeveloping their own strategies toaddress urban issues.

Since neighbourhood revitalization isa newer phenomenon in Canada than inthe U.S. and Europe, there are still manyquestions yet to be formulated andanswered regarding policies and practicesbeing used. Canadian initiatives willpotentially benefit from best practicestaken from these other jurisdictions, aswell as knowledge gained from withinthe Canadian context. Common toCanadian, American, British andGerman contexts is recognition of theimportance of comprehensive approach-es, multi-sectoral involvement, creativepartnering, and community/resident par-ticipation in community-based projects.The extent to which these neighbour-hood- or ‘place-based’ strategies can besuccessfully combined within a broadercontext of national and provincial socialand economic policies and programs toachieve significant impact will be testedin Canadian neighbourhood revitaliza-tion efforts.

For more information:

For background documents, see Neighbour-hood Revitalization Resources, p. 43


Build the kind of communities you want.Find out how! Join us atwww.tamarackcommunity.ca

The promiseof community

engagement

The powerof community

Volume 3 Number 2 A quarterly

�Edited from a presentation by GarlandYates of the Annie E. Casey Foundation tothe “Creating a Community ofOpportunity” conference convened byIdeas That Matter and held in Toronto onMarch 26th, 2004.

Istarted working at the Annie E. CaseyFoundation nine years ago managinginitiatives which were committed to

building capacity within their communi-ties to be the driving force behind theirown change and revitalization. We’re notreally talking about building a communi-ty in the physical sense but about engag-ing in a process as partners and inalliances with people in a transformativeway. What we try to illustrate is thatwhen, as a foundation, we enter intopartnership with a community, in orderto be an effective partner, we have to payparticular attention to shifting the powerdynamics that are inherent in coming tothe table with a lot of money and tryingto work with people who have a lot ofneed. It isn’t so much writing a chequeany more, the state can dothat. It’s failing togeth-er, it’s succeedingtogether, it’s learning,it’s fighting whenwe’re disagreeing, it’sstruggling aroundnotions of equity and

justice and injustice. So you can envisionthat when you’re through this process,you’re really not the same any more. Weare not the same foundation. We thinkabout our mission and our work and ourrelationships with families quite differ-ently. I want to emphasize that point; itisn’t just about how we sit down and cre-ate a partnership to get something donebut how we embark upon a journeytogether that will end up changing howwe see the world.

The Casey Foundation was founded in1948 by a man named Joe Casey, whowas the primary founder of the UnitedParcel Services (UPS). When he turnedhis attention to being a philanthropist,he wanted to really focus on helpingchildren who were disadvantaged, chil-dren who were vulnerable, children whowere at risk. He named the foundationafter his mother, in part because he want-ed it to reflect what had happened intheir family as they were growing up andthe knowledge and the passion that theyfelt for their mother and their siblings.

The foundation now has about $3 bil-lion in assets and we make about$200 million a year in grants. Thatnumber probably puts us near the topof the list in terms of domestic foun-dations in the US that focus exclu-

sively on children,which is our real

concern.

Our work in this area started with theRebuilding Community Initiative in1994 which worked with five communi-ties across the country: Boston, Detroit,Philadelphia, Denver and Washington,D.C. The idea was to focus on helpingeach community build its capacity tolead the change process within theircommunity. After investing about $25 to$30 million in this process, our evolutionas a foundation brought us to the frame-work of Making Connections, our secondten-year initiative. An organized com-munity can do a lot of things better: itcan build self-esteem, for example, but itcan’t do the task alone. How do we keepcreating an environment for this orga-nized, capable and, hopefully powerfulcommunity to be able to build alliancesand relationships with other partners andstakeholders in a way that actuallyreflects a local movement? Not a localorganization or a local strategy, but alocal movement that is committed toimproving the welfare of children andfamilies by improving the environmentin which they live.

The Underlying Framework andPrinciplesThe Making Connections theory of

change is based on the fact that the envi-ronment in which children live matters alot to their growth and their positivedevelopment. Families also mattertremendously. When you listen to the‘clanging’ of the media and the noisescoming out of scholars and research, as afamily you can feel under siege. We don’thave very much positive, at least in ourcountry, to say about low-income fami-lies; they are dysfunctional, they’re drugaddicts, they’re uneducated, they don’tcare, they’re unsophisticated. Well, inas-much as a child is going to rely on thisfamily unit for basic survival, these mes-

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Rebuilding CommunitiesGarland Yates

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A quarterly Volume 3 Number 2

sages are very difficult to navigate and tofind some kind of positive involvementin the relationship. So we’ve concludedthat there isn’t any way for us to con-cede, after a lot of years of experiencewith child welfare, that children are less

than the family unit that is strongenough to help them. The state cannotraise kids. In our country we have a lot ofevidence that suggests that inexperi-enced or unenlightened social workerscan’t go in and decide in a very complexsituation – whether it be cultures anddiversity or thought and ideas - what isreally right in the long run for children.So the idea is that for the immediatesafety of children, community infrastruc-ture is absolutely critical. And in thatcontext, families are essential.

Our notions are, let’s focus on revital-izing the neighbourhood that childrenhave to grow up in and then let’s providethe kind of strengthening support to fam-ilies as they engage in raising children.That’s the place we’ve come to as aframework of the theory: children do bet-ter when families do better and familiesdo better when neighbourhoods arestrong. This framework is also based onthe premise, from our own research andthe research of others, that families wholive in these very vulnerable neighbour-hoods are basically isolated and discon-nected. They are disconnected from theeconomic opportunities that they needto build wealth and assets and to gener-ate income. They are disconnected fromeach other because of culture, because oflanguage, because of all kinds of orienta-tion. They live in the same spot but theydon’t relate to each other often beyond avery small circle. They are disconnectedfrom the kind of services and supports orinstitutions that provide them their well-being. So our commitment ought to be to

help those communities and their fami-lies make those connections to theircommunities, to the kind of family sup-ports they need and to each otherthrough social networks and organiza-tions that will help them become

stronger.

Our long-termoutcome is that iffamilies werestronger and ableto provide eco-nomic, social and

physical safety, children will be healthierand prepared to learn when they go toschool, and neighbourhoods will be safe,nurturing places in which to live. Toachieve this we are committed to a strat-egy that says, “Empowering and mobiliz-ing local movements that are dedicatedto these notions.”

A very important overriding principleis that residents and other representa-tives of those affected most by communi-ty conditions should be primary actors inefforts that are designed to change theseconditions. Now why would we concludethat? One, families really have the mostto lose. They also have many strengthsand assets. I don’t think it’s too difficultto plan what to do when you haveenough resources to do it. My respectis for people who have to do thingsthat they don’t have resources for.They have three kids that needshoes and they can only buy one.The light bill, the telephone billand the rent need to be paidbut they can only pay one.They need to buy groceriesfor a whole week but theycan only buy for a fewdays. How could you facethose challengesday in, day out?You grow to respecttheir playing skills,their strength toface thingsthat they can’tget done. Thepower that it

takes to be able to look your children inthe face and say, “I’m going to have to getthis one a pair of shoes this week andmaybe next week, I’ll get somebody elsea pair.” To me, there’s power, there’s acapacity and the assets are there.

What we’ve witnessed too often in ourcountry is that we go in and expend a lotof resources and money to rebuild a com-munity only to see it 10 years later backin the same position. So sustainability iscritical and then there isn’t any way toavoid the fact that residents must play aprimary role. We learned that from work-ing with Rebuilding Communities butwe’ve also learned that from the last 30or 40 years of trying to do serious urbandevelopment. We always ask ourselves,“Why didn’t we give more?” or “Why dothese things seem to never change?”We’re saying probably the missing part ofthe equation is that the capacity of thecommunity is not [developed] so theydidn’t get to be a player. And I’m lookingat the distinction between being a playerand being a participant. When we haveprocesses that invite people to give theirinput, we need to help them build thecapacity to be a player in the implemen-tation (the planning and design) and the

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Garland Yates Rebuilding Communities

A very important overriding principle is that resi-dents and other representatives of those affectedmost by community conditions should be primaryactors in efforts that are designed to change theseconditions.

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evaluation (an overall way of judgingwhich lessons will be gleaned and whatsuccesses are ultimately achieved).Many of the community change initia-tives in our country have not been com-munity-driven or have not been done inpartnership with the community. For themost part, they’ve been either funder-dri-ven, which means they’ve been founda-tions, government or other powerfulexternal organizations to the communityor they’re professionally-driven, led pri-

marily by planners or other professionalsrelying on professional skills and capaci-ties, purchased or funded, external to thecommunity.

So we have these principles about thevalue of community, we’ve got theseprinciples that relate to us being trans-formed in this process and at the core, weare about taking action and mobilizingfor results. In our country the trend that’semerging is a focus on outcomes andresults. The irony for me is that our insti-tutions have now reached this conclu-sion and so now results and outcomes areimportant. But they weren’t when I start-ed working in community; it was thefamilies that wanted outcomes andresults. In my very first job, in the early‘70s working with communities, peoplewanted me to produce. They wantedhousing. And I don’t mean they wantedme to produce it alone, but they wantedme to take some responsibility and beaccountable for better housing and forimproved education.

So we want to make results and actionthe key cornerstone. This requires a newknowledge about issues and the skills toenact the changes that are needed. Itrequires a strong, capable organization,not necessarily an entity but organizationto provide clarity of roles and responsi-

bilities and the kind of relationships weneed and to establish a mechanism thatcan help ensure mutual accountability ofall the players. It also means creatingopportunity through practice and cele-brating the kinds of individual transfor-mation, community transformation andinstitutional transformation that will beneeded. Also, we’ve got to be committedto learning as a part of the success beforeyou begin. And again, we’ve got to main-tain a strong commitment to results.

As a way ofbringing into playthese notions,you’ve got tohave a strong setof guiding princi-ples. Often guid-

ing principles emerge from an exercise ofjust talking about it. But we try to makeguiding principles serve as a covenant; anagreement between the participants andthe players, not about what we’re goingto do outside the room, but how we’regoing to interact with each other. Are wegoing to be transparent in a power analy-sis and in the inequities that exist in theinitiative itself?

We try to use use principles and valuesto answer three fundamental questions.How do key players interact with oneanother in the process of creating thischange? What is the responsibility thatwe have to each other in terms of sup-porting and owning the decisions that wemake collectively? How does the initia-tive model become democratic, that is,values that we espouse around equality,fairness and justice? By emphasizingthese things, we attempt to lift the guid-ing principle from a conversationalprocess to a level of understanding thatwe refer to as the covenant.

Lessons LearnedOne of the most important lessons, if

you couldn’t tell already, is about thecentrality of residents to change in theircommunity. It is formed by our experi-ences and a variety of initiatives thathave undertaken this work, all of which

we would refer to as ‘comprehensivecommunity change initiatives’. In realitythese initiatives are quite diverse andexist across a wide spectrum of possibili-ties. We, along with most other peoplein our country, started out trying to figureout what is the magic bullet for poverty.We came up with things like,’if theneighbourhood is safe’ -so we'll concen-trate on neighbourhood safety. Or, ‘if theeducation system is functioning well’ - sowe’ll concentrate on education. And Ithink we have reached a point of accept-ing that there isn’t any one magic bullet.The idea is relationships and alliancesand accountability and respect and work-ing together to achieve a common set ofoutcomes.

Community-change initiatives aredynamic initiatives. They are in a con-stant state of flux. The sheer number ofparticipants, activities and projects inand of themselves result in constantchange. If it is always changing, it is veryhard to predict what's going to happen.So the notion that you can start out say-ing, “We will do A and that will lead toB and that will lead to C and that willlead D,” has been dispelled by our expe-rience. What happens more is that thereare these spheres of activities andprocesses that happen and they happenwhen they need to happen, not in a lin-ear way. So something that you thinkshould happen after B, may not happen‘til later in the process, or vice versa. Sowhat we've learned is to relax ournotions about a linear process.

Community-change initiatives areunpredictable. Change happens at everypoint in time but not along predictablepaths. Movement comes in bursts orsometimes not at all. The moment inwhich something just clicks or someonejust gets it, or an idea catches on, cannotbe claimed. I think in looking at some ofthe activities around Regent Park, I sensesome of that reality. Somebody started 13or 10 years ago, and they wanted some-thing to happen. They might thinkbecause it didn't happen in the next cou-ple of years, that they were a failure. Yet

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Rebuilding Communities Garland Yates

We try to make guiding principles serve as acovenant; an agreement between the participantsand the players... Are we going to be transparent ina power analysis and the inequities that exist with-in the initiative itself?


I think continuous movement has gottenthe initiative to where it is. So eventhough it may not have followed a plot-ted course, it's happening. And so wehave to be open to that.

The elements of community changeinitiatives – people, groups, programsand organizations – are interrelated andentwined. This often leads to a compli-cated web of relationship behaviour andinfluences. The structure does not limititself to linear or hierarchical patternsbut actually forms spheres of influencethat have cause and effect. Community-chaired initiatives are transforming andtheir interactions result in irreversiblechange: new leaders are developed, skillsare built, knowledge is gained.Participants can never go back to wherethey started. We’ve seen it happen whenpeople are in a setting or in an initiativetogether and they start seeing each otherat a different place. In one of the com-

munities I work in, the Vietnamese start-ed seeing the Somalian group [different-ly]. The Somalians started seeing otherAsian populations differently. Wealthypeople started then seeing people whoare not as wealthy differently. Thosethings are irreversible. These perceptionswill change as the relationships change,

they don't go back. And so when the citygovernment and the community inter-acts, for example, in a way to createchange and feel good about it, relation-ships are changed forever. They don't goback to being what they were. So beingprepared for that is part of the communi-ty-change process. And in fact, lookingforward to it can be a motivating factor.

Control and order in communitychange initiatives are emergent. It's verydifficult for them to be predetermined.Community change initiatives self-orga-nize allowing new patterns and structuresto establish, replacing older ones thatbecome obsolete. These structuralchanges cannot be designed necessarilyfrom the outside. In other words, a com-mon saying that we use is, ‘trust theprocess’. Now that's very difficult foreverybody for obvious reasons. But for us,acting together, thinking together, work-ing together, playing together is for work.

Trust the process. And try not to orches-trate it or fabricate it too much.

We've got to be serious and seek verycreative and innovative ways to creden-tial resident wisdom. Resident wisdom isthe intentional process of validating peo-ple's experience and credentialing them

prudentially as valuable, credible infor-mation for planning, and as evidence ofthe achievement of results. Traditionalpractice would rely solely on communityindicator data. However this is typicallyin relation to numbers, and resident wis-dom tends to add depth to understandingwhat numbers alone cannot achieve.And as I said earlier, residents should beamong the primary actors in the processof imagining and realizing their ownfuture. So what we have to do is toremove this elite wall as a way of decid-ing who has something to contribute ornot by figuring out how to quickly cre-dential residents’ knowledge and wisdomand to help them benefit economicallyfrom that credentialing. There is a depthof understanding that numbers alonecan’t achieve.

I'm going to list a few examples thatillustrate this. We’ve got to see commu-nities and residents as leaders, but thenwe have to work with them to help themgrow and become leaders and not bethreatened. We’ve got to provide oppor-tunities – and this is an interesting onethat we’ve come to embrace and under-stand a little bit more –for residents tochallenge our knowledge, to challengethe tools that we think work, and tochallenge the solutions that we thinkought to be in play, and at the same timecreate their own. We've got to activelyengage residents in issues of power andwithin that, the role of place, bias, cul-ture and gender as a part of structurallychanging the community. We're goingto be constantly focusing on the achieve-ment of meaningful and lasting results,recognized and celebrated in the commu-nity. So at the foundation, we may thinkthat it’s a substantive issue, but if resi-dents don't share that belief, then we'vegot a caution, and we've got to questionour definitions of success.

Addressing Structural BarriersI want to mention some structural bar-

riers that I think if left unattended, willsystematically undo the progress that wemight achieve. Individual transforma-tion is needed which means that people

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Carolyn Acker, Executive Director of the Regent Park Community Health Centre asks a question

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do need to think about what change theyneed to be making within themselves.But that’s not the complete answer. Ifyou learn how to act better on a resume,if you become a better parent, all of thatis part of the equation, but it won’t makeracism go away. It will not make theinequities that we experience in terms ofproviding public services to these com-munities go away. So we've got to thinkabout these structural issues and thenpart of the movement that is mobilizedto carry out the change initiative has tograpple with these kinds of structuralimpediments to real change.

[Support for] community develop-ment and anti-poverty issues, for themost part in our country, is categorical -which often results in resources andopportunities flown into the communityin fractional and unconnected ways. Soyou think about that. What we'velearned in building community initia-tives, is that because these little pots ofmoney and resources flow into the com-munity around categorical ideas, theycreate sub-constituencies or mini-con-stituencies in the community that haveto compete with each other to survive.So in effect, what we've done with ourresources from the outside source is we'vedisorganized the community, contribut-ing to its dysfunction and downfall.Before we can really take a serious steptowards reversing it or changing thecommunity on a permanent basis, we'vegot to look at our own behaviour [as afunding organization] in that regard.We've got to reduce the number of insti-tutions with outside resources, to reducethe categorization of our support andencourage a collaborative effort at thecommunity level that rallies around anagenda, a framework for accountability,and an elected authentic leadership basethat is empowered to partner with otherinstitutions. Otherwise, we never knowwho we're working with. Everybody saysthey’re in the community, and in largepart this dynamic is fuelled by our behav-iour, not the community’s. The commu-nity is distracted; they’re trying to orga-nize themselves to get our resources but

in the end, they become unorganized andit becomes a lot harder for them to makestrategic use of our resources.

In terms of the patterns of institution-al disinventment in the community, canit be reversed? In our country, if the localgovernment is not delivering high quali-ty public services, not much can happen.If banks or lending institutions are leav-ing the community, we're going to havetrouble building new houses and creatingenterprise. So we can't ignore thesethings as we think about long-term com-munity change. Another separate struc-tural issue, and I know you hear a lotcoming from south of the border on thisquestion, is that racial discriminationresults in a powerlessness that perpetu-ates poverty. So [if we are] talking aboutrebuilding, strengthening and change,and we are not willing to address thesethings, we are limiting our conversation.

Another struc-tural impedimentis the economicexploitation thathappens in ourc o m m u n i t i e swhich preventsfamilies buildingwealth and assets.We've devised akind of capital market into these kinds oftiers. The tier that operates in our com-munity is what we call a ‘sub-prime’ mar-ket. I have this image when I think aboutsub-prime market: the badlands in theWest where anything goes. The justifica-tion for a place to become a sub-primemarket comes because you don’t haveany credit and economic ability, and ifservices do flow into your communityand everybody's willing to go along andbuy on these terms, so be it. Otherwisethese communities wouldn’t haveresources. Well, in a very subtle perhapsbut profound way, market activities andbehaviours like that end up strippingwealth and assets from the families thathave been able to accumulate them. Soif you built up some equity in the hopethat you're going to use it to invest in

other business and that equity is strippedaway because someone made a predatoryloan, then we are building wealth on thefront end and watching it be taken awayon the back end. To me this is a little bitlike putting water in a bucket with a holein it.

So if we're talking about homeowner-ship, about micro-enterprises, aboutentrepreneurial activities, we’re going totalk about the protections that we needto be putting in place so that people cankeep more of their wealth. In the end, apowerful community with leadership,skills and capacity is simply crucial to acommunity being able to sustainprogress.

So in closing I guess our notion is thatthis whole business of community build-ing and community transformation isreally about the transformation of heart.

It's really about us transforming ourselvesas individuals, of our families transform-ing themselves, helping people to trans-form their communities and transform-ing the institutions that we work with sothat we can become a more useful part-ner. And in the aggregate, if we canmobilize institutions and partners whobelieve and share these notions abouthow you build a community and sustainit over time, and where the conditionsfor children and family can happen, thenwe’ll have mobilized this local move-ment to make change happen and makeit permanent.

The following questions and answers havebeen selected from an extensive interactive ses-sion which followed Garland Yate’s presentation.

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Another structural impediment is the economicexploitation that happens in our communitieswhich prevents families building wealth and assets.So if you built up some equity...and that equity isstripped away because someone made a predatoryloan, then we are building wealth on the front endand watching it be taken away on the back end.


QHow can communities educate fun-ders? Funders have their own ideas

about what they want their money to doand maybe you luck out if the communi-ty is in line with that. But what if thecommunity has a different understandingof what its goals are? How can we edu-cate each other so that the prioritiesactually are the local organic ones.

AOne, I think that it is importantto build alliances from the commu-

nity standpoint, with funders who mayalready get it. And then get those fundersto help convene forums and eventswhere there's interaction between com-munity and funders. I think as webecome more conservative politicallyand as we need to start talking about thereturn on our investments as founda-tions, the environment is self-created.

Now in another context, educationmight be more of a verb than a noun.One of the most successful communitiesin our initiative is the Dudley StreetNeighbourhood Initiative in Boston.What happened there was a funder cameto the community and decided that itwas going to invest a lot of money in anonprofit organization that was deliver-ing services. They had a public meetingto announce this and the communitytook that meeting over and began toillustrate to the funder why it was impor-tant to think about more than programsand equipment and capacity-building fornonprofits because the neighbourhoodconditions were not categorical and theywere interrelated. Their message wasforceful and uninvited at the time, but ithad such an impact on the funder thatthey started thinking about how theycould use a relatively small amount ofmoney to leverage a much larger commu-nity rebuilding process. That's how theDudley Street Neighbourhood Initiativewas born. So on the one hand, we shouldlook for allies that are in a friendly com-munity share our values. But on theother hand sometimes we just have toagitate and reorganize and take ourresponsibility to educate by pushing peo-ple through change.

QSo do you think there might be atime when a community would say

no to money?

AI think communities always say,“Don't lead with money.” In our

initiative, people always say, “Don't startthe conversation by putting money onthe table because you set off a madscramble between organizations and resi-dents who are trying to survive. Leadwith resources to help us get organizedaround our own agenda and let that cre-ate the framework for how investment isdone.”

QSince you've had experience withlots of cases in the past that worked,

maybe you could give us one example ofa funding model that’s worked with foun-dations and various levels of governmentcontributing to a successful communityinitiative.

AI'm not so sure I am aware of anythat have completely worked, but

we've tried to take bits and pieces ofthings that have worked. What we aretrying to construct in Denver [one of theMaking Connections sites] is a consor-tium of funders, including federal gov-ernment, state government, local gov-ernment and foundations who will notnecessarily put their money into one pot,because that's very difficult to do to startoff with –but they're willing to take theprograms that they're responsible fordelivering in these neighbourhoods andallow those programs to be tailored sothat they can be held accountable to thecommunity’s set of outcomes. So thepoint is to create an opportunity to blendthese resources by letting them go toactivities and projects that will be framedto achieve the outcomes that the com-munities identified. Now when I say bitsand pieces, in several places local agen-cies have received permission from localgovernment, who in turn have gottenpermission from state and federal govern-ments to create blended pots of moneythat can be used at a local level to gotowards initiatives like these. At onethere was a very popular notion that you

could create these de-categorized pots ofmoney to let that happen. I have notseen or read much information that sug-gests that they are so successful at whatwe're trying to do. We're really trying toreverse the notion and not just end upwith the blended pot of money butdecrease the amount of influence thatoutside institutions exert on that pot ofmoney. And so we're trying to creep at itone bit at a time, so we're saying, “Okay,first, blend your program objectives withours.” The idea is to have this moneythat really is designed to respond totallyto neighbourhood priorities.

QThere’s an issue that has not yetcome up today with respect to

building assets. One of the most impor-tant points is that of financial literacy.Banking institutions are not prevalent inthis field. However, on the other hand,there are a number of large banks whoare interested in a financial assistanceprogram for affordable homeownershipbecause they see economic benefits. It'snot just a social benefit, it's the econom-ic benefit. In terms of the asset-buildinginitiatives that your foundation isinvolved in, can you comment on theimportance of these two things?

AWe do promote asset-buildingthrough things like individual

training accounts in partnership withbanks and credit unions. However, oneof the things that the data is suggestingto us is that residents are not using theseservices as much as we would have antic-ipated. During a consultation last sum-mer, a couple of things emerged that thatwe're challenged to work on. One is thatour notions about financial literacy arevery middle-class oriented. They arebased on an assumption that peoplemake bad decisions because they don'tknow better. When we got into this con-sultation, we found out quite different.People make bad choices because theydon't have an alternative. The immedi-ate challenge financially for families inour neighbourhoods is they need accessright away to small amounts of money.They don't need $5,000. They need to be

17



able to find $500, $200, $300, and if wereally want to help them, we've got tofigure out how to deal with that.Financial literacy campaigns are reallyabout helping people get to a point ofeither opening a savings account or abank account. They don’t help peopleunderstand the basic economic factorsoperating in their neighbourhood. Sothey're not any wiser financially exceptthey may know how to balance theirchequebook better. How we can push theboundaries of how we've been approach-ing financial education to accommodatemore of a popular economic curriculum?

On the asset-building side, especiallyhomeownership which we're trying tograpple with as well, one of the chal-lenges we find is that overwhelminglythe housing need in our neighbourhood

is for rental housing. We're encouragingfamilies to think about homeownershipas an asset-building base - which is right,we don't have any problem with that –but we've got to extend that because itisn't very popular in our neighbourhoodsfor obvious reasons. So we've got toextend it and not let homeownership

inadvertently become a tool for displac-ing people. We've got to explore variousforms of ownership that are both individ-ual and collective, like co-ops and landtrusts and mutual housing associations.We just can't be so narrow and tradition-al about homeownership.

EpilogueThe last thing I would say is, why

neighbourhoods? When we looked at thedata, it was so obvious that poverty is notspread all over the place. It is concen-trated. And it is concentrated geographi-cally, and we know that from just lookingat a couple of things. When we look atpeople who are in prison and who arebeing released, it's startling to do thiskind of pin map and see where these folksare going. In our cases, they are always

going back to our neighbourhoods, andthey are coming back with bad healthissues and so forth. When we looked atwhere the poor performing schools are,when we look at poor housing condi-tions, when we look at people who areeconomically disenfranchised, all ofthose pins go into these concentrated

spots. So for us, if we want to deal withpoverty, if we want to break it up and tryto dispense it or get rid of it, we've got tobe serious about neighbourhood. Thechallenge is that the universe that we'replaying in in our country increasingly is aregional universe. Poverty is spreadingout a little bit. It's not totally just con-centrated in inner city neighbourhoods,but it's now being concentrated in whatwe call inner-ring suburbs as well. Sothere has to at some point be a connec-tion between the neighbourhood work ina policy context and the regional work.And the policies are interrelated for sev-eral reasons, one of which is, if we wantto move from just getting programs tosystemic change as a way of achievinglarger scale change, then we've got tothink in a context beyond the neigh-bourhood. So that's the dilemma that wehave to face.

Garland Yates is Senior Associate of theAnnie E. Casey Foundation, a privatefoundation based in Baltimore,Maryland. Garland is responsible formanaging the Rebuilding CommunitiesInitiative (RCI) program activities, i.e.,planning and coordinating the delivery ofneeded technical assistance, planningconferences and other initiative meetings,making grants that help expand theknowledge of comprehensive initiatives,and grants that help strengthen the capac-ity of the community building field ingeneral. Prior to joining the Foundationin January 1995, Garland worked with anumber of national organizations pro-viding organizational development andmanagement assistance to nonprofitorganizations in local communities.Garland has served on the boards ofmany organizations, including theNational Low Income Housing Coalition,the Management Assistance Group, theDiscount Foundation and on an advisorycommittee to the Fund for Neighbour-hood Initiatives of the John D. AndCatherine T. MacArthur Foundation.


Annie E. Casey Foundation, www.aecf.org

18


Garland Yates, Annie E. Casey Fdn, Hon. John Godfrey, Minister of State(Infrastructure and Communities), Diane MacLean, Regent Park Resident

Council, Derek Ballantyne, Toronto Community Housing Corporation

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D u d l e y S t r e e t N e i g h b o u r h o o d I n i t i a t i v e

T he Dudley Street Neighbour-hood Initiative (DSNI) is acommunity-based organization

in the Roxbury/North Dorchesterneighbourhoods in Boston and was oneof the five communities across the U.S.funded by the Annie E. CaseyFoundation’s Rebuilding CommunitiesInitiative in 1993. With a population of26,000 people, the neighbourhood hasbeen one of the poorest in Boston withover a third of residents living below thepoverty line. The neighbourhood is eth-nically diverse with 37 percent AfricanAmerican, 29 percent Latino, 25 per-cent Cape Verdean, and 7 percentwhite.

“Looking at the Dudley Street neigh-bourhood in the early 1980s, what yousaw was low income, high crime, poorschools, burned-out buildings, acres ofvacant lots used as dumping grounds,abandoned cars, and the night lit byfires. The smell of smoke hung in the air,mixed with the stench of rotting trash”

1.

In 1984, residents and agency leaders, inconjunction with a local funder, cametogether to reverse this decline and formDSNI. The organization’s mission is:“To empower Dudley residents to orga-nize, plan for, create and control avibrant, diverse and high quality neigh-

bourhood in collaboration with commu-nity partners”.

At the outset the DSNI established agovernance structure to ensure partici-pation from a wide array of stakeholders.Its board of directors is comprised of 16residents from the area (4 from eachmajor ethnic group), 5 nonprofit agen-cies representing the health and socialservices field, 2 community develop-ment corporations, 2 small businesses, 2religious organizations, 3 youths, and 2other nonprofit organizations. In 1987through a community visioning process,the DSNI developed an overall commu-nity plan which identified key themesfor a revitalized community: a thrivinglocal economy, environmental health,resident leadership and adequate ser-vices for children, youth and families.

As a result of work over the past 20years, the neighbourhood has undergonea transformation: to date, 300 of 1300vacant lots have been transformed intoaffordable housing, community gardensand public spaces have been construct-ed; a community land trust was createdand through state designation acquired“power of eminent domain’ to take overprivately owned vacant and abandonedland within the area; local commercial

initiatives and youth programs such asthe Nubian Roots, and a summer youthjob program have been created; the areanow has a neighbourhood communitycentre, a neighbourhood elementaryschool, and an annual multicultural fes-tival. DSNI runs a ResidentDevelopment Institute, which providesmembers of the community with skillsand knowledge necessary to lead therevitalization.

As of 2003, the DSNI has a member-ship of 3700 residents with a board ofdirectors elected every two years. In1999, John Barros, who had been one ofthe first youth representatives in theearly organization, became the newexecutive director of DNSI. “Even moresignificantly, the neighbourhood haschanged most in intangible ways since1984. Where once there was isolationand fragmentation, there is strongneighbourhood identity. Where therewas once powerlessness, there is commu-nity control. Where there was once that‘perception of a future already looted’,there is a vision and plan of action.There is Dudley pride.”

2

Endnotes:1 Putnam and Feldstein, p. 772 quoted from Streets of Hope: The Fall and Rise of an Urban Neighbourhood by Peter Medoff and Holly Sklar, South End Press: 1994;

see www.dsni.org/Community%20Information/demographics.htm


Dudley Street Neighbourhood Initiative, www.dsni.orgAnnie E. Casey Foundation, www.aecf.orgBetter Together: Restoring the American Community, Robert D. Putnam and Lewis M. Feldstein, Simon & Schuster, 2003 (see Chapter 4: Grass Roots in the City)



I n 2001, the Toronto CommunityHousing Corporation (TCHC)began a planning process to revital-

ize Regent Park, one of its largest andoldest housing projects. Built in the1940s as an enclave of publicly supportedrental housing, Regent Park has evolvedinto one of the most well known (attimes even ‘infamous’) low incomeneighbourhoods in Canada. Dominatedalmost exclusively by rental units ownedby a single landlord, and planned in sucha way to discourage integration with theareas adjacent to it (i.e. the closing off ofthe original through streets) commercialactivity and other forms of diverse landuse has not developed, and the commu-nity has remained predominantly poor,with a mean income less than half of thatof the city as a whole. What has devel-oped, though, is an elaborate social struc-ture of cultural groupings and social ser-vice agencies, and for many (includingsome who have lived and/or workedthere for over 20 years), a strong attach-ment to their dwelling and surroundings,as home. The age of the buildings hasnecessitated they be re-built. The TCHChas undertaken to do that and at thesame time remediate the structural mis-takes that, in light of present under-standings of city planning, has preventedRegent Park from developing into a morediversified community that would offerresidents the ranges of choice and oppor-tunity more prosperous urban neighbour-hoods do.

The absence of through streets hasmeant that most Torontonians have notseen inside Regent Park, their percep-tions principally shaped by its less attrac-tive fringes where public transit and cartraffic is routed. Municipal services likefire protection, garbage and snowremoval, even policing, have been man-aged by the housing authority, (which

also manages 350 high-rise and low-riseapartment buildings, as well as about 800houses and duplexes throughout thecity), rather than the same civic servicesthe rest of the city receives. There are nomail boxes in Regent Park. There are nocafes. All of this has contributed to asense, by those who live ‘within’ it, ofisolation, and disenfranchisement. Themedia’s coverage of various negativeevents taking place in the Park has oftenmasked from the city-at-large the manypositive attributes of the community.

The physical layout of Regent Park hashampered the kinds of movement andinterchange, of vibrancy and intercon-nection, that a neighbourhood betterintegrated with its host city thrives on.The sharing works both ways: the adja-cent neighbourhoods and the city as awhole have much to offer the Park, andits residents have much to offer them.Hampered by the absence of naturalinterplay (shared arterial roads for vehic-ular and pedestrian traffic, corner cafes),these kinds of lateral connections havenot always been smooth and productive.Neighbouring areas have grown weary ofnegotiating with an absentee landlord.Some continue to be fearful of a concen-tration of lower-income people, believ-ing that it makes their adjacent neigh-bourhoods less safe and devalues theworth of their homes.

Following an extensive communityengagement process, in 2003 TCHCapproved a redevelopment plan (seewww.regentparkplan.ca). The plan pro-poses to replace the current 2100 rent-geared-to-income (RGI) units, and add2700 home ownership units, of whichapproximately 500 will be affordable tohouseholds with lower incomes. Theentire 69-acre site will be developed insix phases over a 12-year period, with

construction of the first phase beginningin 2006. One of the most compellingcomments heard from residents of theexisting community, was their wish thatthe new development look much likethat of other downtown neighbourhoods.Therefore, the plan is to encourage thegreatest diversity of built forms, typical toan urban neighbourhood, with mid-riseand mixed-use buildings along mainstreets and lower-rise residential unitswithin the smaller, internal streets. Inaddition to housing, the mixed-use build-ings will provide space for a variety ofpotential uses, including retail and com-mercial, which up until this time havenot been present in the Park. Neededcommunity and institutional space willbe located primarily in buildings thatprovide level access on main streets, andsome in buildings surrounding a large,centrally located, public park.

TCHC, and its landowner the City ofToronto, recognize that the redevelop-ment of the public housing stock alsopresents an opportunity for the creationof a healthier community overall. By re-introducing streets and public parks, re-integrating Regent Park into the sur-rounding city, and making the area morediverse and attractive to small businessesand other commercial activity, advocatesof the redevelopment are hopeful therewill be more economic opportunities forthe predominantly low-income residents,and a dramatically improved quality oflife.

Over the years, various social serviceagencies have emerged to serve the needsof the residents. Agencies located withinthe neighbourhood offer a wide variety ofprograms including English as a SecondLanguage and other settlement services,youth recreation programs, employmentand training programs, and support for

20

Backgroundon the Neighbourhood of Regent Park, TorontoMary W. Rowe


Mary W. Rowe Background on the Neighbourhood of Regent Park, Toronto

single parents. Over 50 social serviceagencies operate daily in the Park.Serving the neighbourhood for manyyears is one of the country’s most innov-ative community-based health centres,the Regent Park Community HealthCentre (with over 400 people on itswaiting list). Faith communities, initiallyChristian now Muslim and Hindu andothers, have found worship and fellow-ship space. There are two elementaryschools, but no secondary school (thepopulation numbers don’t seem to war-rant it) hence teenagers must leave theirneighbourhood and finance their owntravel to continue at school. For this rea-son, and other discouragements, over theyears the number of teens quitting highschool climbed. The communityresponded by creating an innovative pro-gram of mentoring to encourage highschool students to complete their sec-ondary studies and continue. (See page29 of this issue for more informationabout this program, Pathways toEducation).

As the composition of the residents ofthe Park has changed (waves of immigra-tion and other social trends) the pro-grams and services offered by the socialservice community has also changed.The average age of an agency in RegentPark is 28 years. On the one hand, thisspeaks to the resilience and stability of anelaborate network of community sup-ports. But it also points to other chal-lenges, posed by entrenchment, and theinherent ambivalence any organizationmight have towards proposed changes tothe composition of a neighbourhood thatmight disadvantage their clients. Fordecades these agencies have been theprincipal advocates for the residents ofthe community; as the conditions for res-idents to self-organize were not present.Many agencies complain of being chron-ically under-funded, and resent scarcepublic resources being consumed by theredevelopment while their existing pro-grams, to serve the present population,need greater support.

The redevelopment of Regent Park is

requiring agencies operating within it tore-examine their own mandates, pro-grams and services, in light of the long-term demographic changes projected forthe area. Collectively, they are workingwith TCHC and City planners to deter-mine what the future social service needsof the community will be, as the new-comers who chose to settle in it may notrequire the same range of services cur-rently offered (e.g. ESL classes), butinstead have an expectation of othercommunity amenities (e.g. access to icetime).

As the area has fallen into disrepair,tenants, many of whom are newcomersto Canada and Toronto and hence lacklocal experience of community involve-ment or the informal networks that facil-itate ‘getting things done’, have foundthemselves petitioning to a slow-to-respond, under-resourced landlord. Thecorporate culture of the housing authori-ty was not collaborative or perceived tobe operating in the best interests of itstenants, resulting in higher levels of dis-trust and disappointment. Over the lastfew years, though, following a forcedamalgamation which merged the munic-ipal and provincial housing authoritiesinto one consolidated entity, thedemeanour of the new housing company(now TCHC) has gradually come to beperceived as more innovative and recep-tive to including residents’ views in itsdecision-making. This redevelopmentposes a real test to building increased lev-els of trust between TCHC, its residents,adjacent neighbourhoods, and the cityitself.

Phased development is intended tominimize relocation disruption for resi-dents; create large enough blocks to cre-ate a mix of housing types and tenures;provide sufficient time to install publicinfrastructure (including state-of-the-artenvironmental measures such as a steam-heating system); and create appropriatecommunity facilities and commercial/retail space.

Community response to the proposed

physical redevelopment has been pre-dominantly favourable. Current resi-dents express concerns about being dis-placed first by the demolition and recon-struction process, and subsequently bythe introduction of market-priced unitsand the impact of that on the existingneighbourhood. Other neighbourhoodwatchers (including housing activists)are concerned about the ‘mix’ of housingin the redevelopment. Some feel the pro-portion of rent-geared-to income (RGI)units should be higher, while othersadvocate a larger proportion of unitsshould be available for purchase by lowerincome households. Still others want tosee a further intensification of the areawith more total units and a larger num-ber of residents. TCHC has maintainedits position that no matter what, theredevelopment will at minimum replacethe existing number of RGI units (eitheron the Regent Park site or nearby), andthat the creation of other housing typesdepends on what private developers arewilling to build (and think they can sell).The current plan sets out as a goal that500 affordable home ownership units becreated, and various financing ideas, inthe absence of government programs toeither underwrite or stimulate it, arebeing explored. The debate is anticipatedto continue as the construction phases ofthe project roll out.

In addition to changing the physicalattributes of the community, it is antici-pated that the social fabric will be trans-formed. Mixed-income neighbourhoodsare able to attract additional economicand social resources that ultimately leadto healthier communities. In anticipa-tion of this, TCHC convened a processto determine what aspirations the cur-rent residents had for their evolvingneighbourhood. (see shaded box p. 22)

Developing strategies to realize each ofthese has been the focus of the RegentPark Resident Council (RPRC), a groupformed in 2002 with a grant from theMaytree Foundation, to help organizethe community’s collective capacity toparticipate in the redevelopment

21


process. The RPRC formed committeesto develop workplans in each of theseareas, plus a fifth, to look at the particu-lar needs of youth. Local communityagencies have representatives on each ofthese committees.

In the fall of 2003, Ideas that Matterwas retained to convene a process toengage funders and all sectors of thebroader Toronto community in the cre-ation of a Community Plan that wouldassist the RPRC and member agencies inimplementing these strategies. A city-wide forum was held earlier this yearwith residents, agencies, funders, andrepresentatives from the city’s broadereconomic, social, government and non-profit sectors gathered at the downtownYMCA to learn about the project andbegin to identify how they might becomeinvolved in the process. Extracts fromthe lead presentation, given by GarlandYates of the Annie Casey Foundation,are included in this issue of ITM.

Following that meeting, the RPRC hasbegun to expand its membership, fundingbase, mandate and capacity to representnot only the needs of the current resi-dents, but also to anticipate the futureneeds of the community as it takes innew businesses, tenants, and homeown-ers. Various offers of expertise and fund-ing support have emerged to assist theRegent Park Community Planningprocess, including the offer of extensivelegal services free of charge. TheUniversity of Toronto has expanded aneducational program offering residentsaccess to a specialized curriculum. Newpartnerships with various city institu-tions continue to be cultivated.

Many interesting questions have arisenwith these conversations. Who can speakfor such a culturally diverse neighbour-hood? (One voice? Many voices?) Canthe current resident-based organizationtransform itself into a broader-basedcommunity organization that will repre-sent the needs of future members of thecommunity? How can the planningprocess ensure that the interests of the

current residents continue to be heard,and not be drowned out by the enthusi-asm (and often self-interest) of new, bet-ter resourced, players suddenly keen toget involved? How can a culture of col-laboration and partnership be encour-aged in a limited funding environment,where trust may be lacking?

There are enormous challenges workingin such a complex environment.Although terrifically diverse in terms ofrace and ethnicity, the neighbourhoodhas been socio-economically monocul-tural, dominated by one all-powerfulplayer: the landlord. Making the transi-tion to a more varied, less controlled andless predictable environment is challeng-ing enough. This is made all the moredifficult by the complexity of decision-making required by the City’s planningand approvals process, and by other ini-tiatives taking place in parallel whichinvolve many of the same communityplayers (i.e. the exploration of tri-levelgovernment agreements to renew neigh-bourhoods, see the United Way ofGreater Toronto’s Strong Neighbour-hoods Task Force, page 35)

Without dramatic shifts in Canadianpublic policy with respect to income sup-port, a high needs, low-income popula-tion will always require the RGI unitslocated in Regent Park. (In 2004 therewere 65,000 households waiting for sub-sidized housing spots in the City of

Toronto) Will those residents in thelarger, redeveloped Regent Park haveaccess to adequate services, when weknow that the current services are scarceand under-funded? Will agencies havegreater difficulty making their case forfunding, when the new neighbourhood,with the addition of higher-income resi-dents, is no longer deemed an area of‘highest poverty’?

Although fifty years old, and despiteyears and years of promises and anticipa-tion, it’s early days for Regent Park. ITMwill continue to work in a facilitatingcapacity with the RPRC and othergroups with an interest in the redevelop-ment. We are engaged in this workbecause of our ongoing interest in howcommunities self-organize. Despite someresearch to suggest that other factorshave as significant an impact on theelimination of poverty, we instinctivelyknow that where we live has a directimpact on our capacity to thrive.1

Neighbourhoods do matter. Updates onthese discussions will be reported on infuture issues of ITM.

Endnotes:1 For a discussion of this research see the

report of the Strong Neighbourhoods TaskForce: www.strongneighbourhoods.ca

Mary W. Rowe is the editor of Ideas ThatMatter.

22

Background on the Neighbourhood of Regent Park, Toronto Mary W. Rowe

Elements of a Community Plan for Regent Park

Regent Park as a Learning Community, where learning opportunities includeschool retention programs, programs to bridge the growing technology divide in thecommunity, the development of language skills, literacy, adult learning and prepa-ration for advanced learning.

Regent Park as a Working Community, with programs targeted to enablinggreater economic participation including skills development, certification pro-grams, and small enterprise incubation.

Regent Park as a Healthy Community, with initiatives including nutrition andfood programs, illness prevention and health education.

Regent Park as a Settlement Community, with initiatives aimed at addressing thebarriers to social inclusion and economic participation by new Canadians.


The Regent Park neighbourhood isa 69-acre area in east downtownToronto bounded by Gerrard,

River, Shuter and Parliament Streets.With the exception of a block at thesoutheastern corner of Dundas andParliament Streets, all of the housingwithin the area is owned and operated bythe Toronto Community HousingCorporation (TCHC) as rent-geared-to-income units.

Dundas Street, the neighbourhood’sonly through street, bisects Regent ParkNorth from Regent Park South. NorthRegent Park contains a mixture of threeto six-storey walkup apartment housesand townhouses while South RegentPark has several high-rise apartmentbuildings in addition to townhouses.TCHC supplies services normally associ-ated with traditional residential neigh-bourhoods, such as policing and garbageservices. However, Regent Park lackssuch amenities as pay phones, mailboxesand banking services.

There is a single small privately ownedcommercial building south of DundasStreet housing a small grocery store,diner and launderette. Other commer-cial activities lie outside the area, pri-marily on Parliament Street with a fewsmall convenience stores on River,Gerrard and Shuter Streets.

To the north of Regent Park is theCabbagetown neighbourhood, an up-scale, gentrified Victorian neighbour-hood containing primarily single familydwellings, which have been extensivelyrenovated.

Along the eastern boundary betweenRiver Street and the Don River is a mix-ture of privately owned high-rise apart-ment buildings and the Oak StreetHousing Co-operative. Several smallpockets of vacant or under-utilized landparcels in the area have recently beenredeveloped with private townhousedevelopments.

South of Regent Park is the historicTrefann Court neighbourhood, whichwas slated for urban renewal in the 1960sbut after intense public pressure, was pre-served with a combination of renovatedhousing and small infill developments.Moss Park, another large high-rise public

housing project, is situated south-west ofRegent Park. Commercial and industrialbuildings south of Queen Street, in anarea known as Corktown, are currentlybeing converted to residential lofts foryoung professionals. The WestDonlands, part of the larger TorontoWaterfront Revitalization Plan, lies fur-ther to the south and is targeted for sig-nificant investment and development.

The South Cabbagetown neighbour-hood lies to the west of Regent Parkbetween Parliament and SherbourneStreets. It is a mixed residential area ofgentrified single family dwellings, room-ing houses and apartment buildings.

23

The Present CommunityAt A Glance

Area Characteristics

Sour

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unity

Hou

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Corp

orat

ion

According to recent census data1,

the neighbourhood bounded byParliament, Gerrard, River and

Queen Streets contains approximately11,300 people. However, many agen-cies note that the actual population islikely higher, due to a transient home-less population and significant under-reporting of household size. Overall theneighbourhood has significantly morechildren and larger household sizes thanadjacent neighbourhoods and the rest ofthe city. 44% of residents are under theage of 24 years old. In the last ten years,the proportion of children in RegentPark has risen slightly and the numberof seniors has fallen significantly.Regent Park has substantially more sin-gle-parent families and substantially lesscouples with children than the generalpopulation. The relatively large size ofhouseholds in Regent Park is deter-mined more by regulatory requirementsfor rent-geared-to-income householdsthan general urban demographic shifts.

In comparison, the population in thecity of Toronto is aging. In addition, twotrends are apparent in looking at newhouseholds moving into neighbour-hoods adjacent to Regent Park: newcondo units are being occupied by youngadults with few or no children, and new

houses are being occupied by older,wealthy couples with no children. Ifthese trends continue, the revitalizationof Regent Park will involve significantdemographic shifts with the introductionof approximately 2,800 units of markethousing and an estimated additional4,500 adults and 500 children.

Regent Park is an immigrant settle-ment area: 65% of residents have arrivedin the last ten years compared to 43% inthe City of Toronto. More than half ofthe newest immigrants have arrived from

mainland China and Bangladesh.Vietnamese, Somali, Jamaican and Tamilresidents make up the majority of theremaining residents. Continued strongimmigration has led to an ongoing rise inthe number of people who do not useEnglish as their home language. Arecent survey of TCHC residents2 foundthat 47 languages are currently spoken inthe area; no single agency in the area isable to provide service in the sevenmajor languages.


Regent Park: The Present Community

Lone-parentfamilies

46%

Lone-parentfamilies

20%

Couples withchildren

48%

Couples withchildren

48%

Couples without children 6%

Couples without children 32%

Regent Park Toronto

source: Statistics Canada

Regent Park TorontoSenior

4% Senior14%

Adult52%

Adult57%

Youth15%

Youth12%

Children29%

Children17%

Age Distribution 2001


Families by Type, 2001

Neighbourhood Demographics



Regent Park Toronto

Regent Park Toronto6 or morepersons10%

4-5persons

36%

3 persons

36%

2 persons

19%

1 person16%

6 or morepersons5%

4-5persons22%

3 persons

17%

2 persons

28%

1 person

28%

Average number ofpersons in privatehouseholds:Regent Park: 3.3Toronto: 2.6

Size of Household, 2001

Visible Minority Population as % of Population, 2001

Language Spoken at Home, 20013

Regent Park Toronto


source: City of Toronto

source: City of Toronto

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Use

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issio

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Basic Needs

Astudy of Toronto neighbourhoods published in 2004 bythe United Way of Greater Toronto and the CanadianCouncil on Social Development, Poverty by Postal

Code (see page 35 in this issue) identified North and SouthRegent Park as the two communities with the highest povertylevel in the City of Toronto. The median family income is sub-stantially below that of the City of Toronto, $22, 901 versus$54, 399, and the poverty rate is 66% in Regent Park versus19% for the City of Toronto.

In most areas of the east downtown, sharp income increaseshave been occurring in the highest income groups as new hous-ing accommodates wealthier individuals and couples. So, infact, income disparity between income groups has been grow-ing both in the downtown area and across the City of Torontoas a whole.

An increasing proportion of Regent Park residents receivesincome from employment. An average employment income of$20, 793 per household is received by 43% of households, howev-er only 31% of Regent Park children live in these households.

Only 26% of RegentPark families re-ceive income fromwelfare with anaverage income of$11,770. However,44% of childrenlive in familieswhose primary in-come is from thissource.

In terms of edu-cational attain-ment, there are sig-nificant disparities

between Regent Park residents and the City of Toronto. Halfof the adult population in Regent Park has no post-secondaryeducation compared to slightly more than a third of the city’sadult population (see chart below). Pathways to Education, aninitiative developed through the Regent Park CommunityHealth Centre, has zeroed in on this disparity and supports stu-dents and their families through the crucial high school yearsand provides financial incentives for post-secondary education(see page 18). Interestingly there are a significant number ofadults in Regent Park who are highly educated with at least oneuniversity degree. Many of these residents are immigrants whohave difficulty translating these educational credentials intoCanadian qualifications and relevant work experience.

Endnotes:1 In this article, 2001 Census data is used and refers to Census

tract areas 30 and 31, which include a slightly larger areathan Regent Park with the following boundaries: ParliamentStreet, Gerrard Street South, Don River and Queen StreetEast.

2 Survey by Community Engagement Team, January 2004.3 Home language refers to the language spoken most often or

on a regular basis at home. “Multiple” refers to more thanone language as a response.



Median Income, 2001

Education Level Achieved, 2001

Regent Park Toronto

Regent Park Toronto




Regent Park Toronto

$10,000

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The Regent Park communityhas a diverse number of com-munity agencies serving resi-

dents. According to a survey donein 2003, the primary funder inRegent Park is the City of Torontofollowed by the provincial govern-ment. Charitable foundations arethe third major source of fundingwith the federal government playinga small role principally in settlementagencies.

The Regent Park ResidentCouncil (RPRC) which has playeda strong advocacy role in RegentPark over the years, was reconstitut-ed in 2002 and through funding sup-port has been able to hire a staff co-ordinator. The mandate of theRPRC is to advocate and protect theinterests and assets of residents. Sixcommittees address communityissues: Revitalization, Health andSafety, Employment and EconomicDevelopment, Education, Diversity/

Settlement and Youth. TheRevitalization Committee of theCouncil has taken an active role inthe early consultative processaround the revitalization plan. The

Council is now expanding its man-date and taking a lead role in thedevelopment of strategies towards acommunity social and economicdevelopment plan. This communityplan will link into a number of otherplanning processes which are cur-rently underway with the anticipa-tion that together they will form anoverall social development strategyfor the revitalized community.

At the southeast corner of Dundasand Parliament Streets is the RegentPark Community Health Centrewhich provides primary health anddental services to area residents. Inaddition, the Health Centre sup-ports two broader health initiatives– Parents for Better Beginnings, anearly years parenting program, andPathways to Education, an innova-tive program providing mentoringand tutoring support for youth andtheir families during the high schoolyears (see page 29).

Dixon Hall , am u l t i - s e r v i c en e i g h b o u r h o o dagency locatedsouth of the Park,provides a range ofeducational andemployment ser-vices to RegentPark residents,including theRegent ParkLearning Centreproviding literacy

and computer skillsfor adults and LabourLink, anemployment agency for homelessand marginally housed individuals.They also serve the area’s youththrough a range of recreation and

education programs.

The SEAS Centre, established in1986 to provide settlement servicesprimarily to Regent Park’s SoutheastAsian community, expanded itsmandate in 2002 to provide lan-guage and employment programs tonewcomers in the broader Chinese-speaking community. They remainthe primary agency for settlementservices in Regent Park.

Historically the TorontoChristian Resource Centre hasplayed an advocacy and leadershiprole in social issues in the communi-ty. The Centre, located at 40 OakStreet, serves the homeless and mar-ginally housed as well as providingarts programming for children andyouth.

The Yonge Street Mission is amulti-service agency which operatesa variety of educational and recre-

27

Community Resources

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ational services at a community cen-tre immediately west of ParliamentStreet and a computer literacy train-ing program and used clothing storeon the northern edge of RegentPark.

Regent Park Focus is an innova-tive arts organization which usesmedia arts skills (radio, video andnewspaper production) as a tool toengage and employ young people.The facility, located in Regent ParkSouth, produces a radio series, aprint and online newspaper andvideo features as well as sponsoringthe annual Regent Park FilmFestival.

The Umar Bin Khattab Mosqueprovides education, recreation,social and settlement services as wellas religious services to the Muslimcommunity in the Regent Park area.The mosque has a limited budgetprimarily raised through donations.Their clients speak over 11 differentlanguages and many of the agency’sservices, including interpretation,are provided by volunteers.

Adult educational services areprovided at Toronto East EndLiteracy , an agency located atGerrard and Parliament Streets.The centre provides services in ninelanguages and serves both RegentPark residents and the homeless.

The Salvation Army, located onRiver Street, has been operating inRegent Park since 1904. More thanhalf of their clients live in theRegent Park neighbourhood andreceive service and pastoral coun-selling as well as adult education ser-vices. With an annual budget ofapproximately $150,000, theSalvation Army is one of the smalleragencies operating in the park.

Other community agencies servingthe area include Central Neigh-bourhood House, NeighbourhoodInformation Post, Toronto KiwanisBoys and Girls Club, theCabbagetown Youth Centre andCouncil Fire Native CulturalCentre, all of which are locatedphysically outside of, but adjacent toRegent Park.

The majority of the communityand institutional space available inRegent Park is provided throughToronto Community Housing, whichover the years has converted housingunits into day care space and officespace. For example, the City oper-ates several facilities on TCHCowned land including the RegentPark Recreation Centre on the southside of Dundas Street. The Centreprovides indoor and outdoor recre-ational programming for adults andyouth with a gymnasium, multi-pur-pose rooms and office space. Theonly swimming facility for 8,000 res-idents is an outdoor pool in NorthRegent Park. The majority of otheractive recreational space are schoolplaygrounds at Nelson Mandela ParkPublic School, Duke of York/RegentPark Public School and LordDufferin Junior and Senior PublicSchool.

While the area has numerousagencies serving Regent Park resi-dents, the community services andfacilities survey conducted in early2004 concluded that in general,facilities and programs are limitedgiven the size and diversity of thepopulation. Furthermore, agenciesoperating out of free or borrowedspace from either TCHC or the Cityof Toronto will be obviously impact-ed during the redevelopmentprocess. Due to limited space, addingadditional services to respond to

changing settlement demographicsover the years has not been possibleand Regent Park now lacks, forexample, culturally appropriaterecreational programming for thelarge Muslim youth population thatcurrently lives in the area. In addi-tion, with the rapid increase in theMuslim community, there is also astrong demand for a place of wor-ship. While residents identified pro-grams for children as a strengththere is considerable frustrationaround the lack of access to youthprogramming and adult and seniorprograms due to language and/or cul-tural barriers.

Each of the community agenciesoperating in Regent Park has to re-examine their own mandates, pro-grams and services in light of thelong-term demographic changeswhich are projected for the area. Acommunity services plan will exam-ine how community services andfacilities in Regent Park will bereplaced, rebuilt or expanded as partof the redevelopment and howfuture needs can be met. The plan isbeing developed through a consulta-tive process with the communityagencies, the Toronto CommunityHousing Corporation and the Cityof Toronto and is due to be complet-ed by the fall of 2005.

Regent Park: Community Resources

Endnotes:1 Mary Neumann, Sean Meaghar and Tony

Boston. Regent Park Community Servicesand Facilities Study (March 2004), p. 43.

28 Volume 3 Number 2 A quarterly

The Pathways to EducationProgram (P2E) is a unique ini-tiative of the Regent Park

Community Health Centre. Its broadmission is to end the cycle of povertyand unemployment that has marginal-ized the Regent Park community byaddressing education and income, twofundamental social determinants ofhealth. The program, which began inSeptember, 2001 helps students bettermeet academic challenges by creating a‘culture of achievement and high expec-tations’ in which students are enabled tomore fully realize their potential.Specifically, P2E focuses on the transi-tion of Regent Park’s youth from thearea’s grade schools to various highschools by providing an integrated set ofacademic, financial, and personal sup-ports.

Significant challenges have histori-cally impeded the success of many chil-dren living in Regent Park. An ongoingproblem for Regent Park’s young peoplehas been the travel distance to area highschools; the only high school in closeproximity to Regent Park, JarvisCollegiate, has a strictly academic pro-gram, which has not been appropriatefor all Regent Park students. Familypoverty, unemployment and the lack offinancial stability experienced by manyfamilies often makes it impossible to buya TTC metropass that would providetheir children with regular transporta-tion to school and to other events withpeers. It has also made purchasingschool supplies, lunches and fieldtripsdifficult at best.

A lack of fluency in English for manyRegent Park families also presents obsta-cles. Language barriers make it difficultfor these families to help their childrenwith homework, and to advocate for

their children at school. The preponder-ance of single-parent households inRegent Park also takes a toll on families.The need to work long hours, often atmore than one job, means that theseparents are not able to be at home whenchildren arrive home from school. Thesemultiple challenges require a multi-faceted approach to give children andyouth the support that will best enhancetheir educational outcomes.

The P2E program has been designedto meet these challenges in several ways.Academic support is provided throughtwice-weekly tutoring in core subjects(English, French, Math, Science andGeography); social support through agroup mentoring approach with relatedsocial activities and fieldtrips; financialsupport through the provision of TTCtickets earned through attendance atschool and a $1,000 per student per yearbursary for post-secondary educationheld in trust until graduation; and advo-cacy support through student/parentsupport workers who provide criticallinkages to school guidance staff, atten-dance counsellors and social workers.

Program results to date have beenremarkable. Currently 97% of RegentPark’s eligible youth are participating inthe program. Absenteeism among stu-dents in grades 9 and 10, for example,has dropped significantly during the firsttwo years of P2E, with absentee rates ingrade 10 (the program’s second year)dropping to less than half what theywere prior to the program’s implementa-tion. High school credit accumulationhas greatly increased; Regent Park’sgrade 10 students surpassed grade 10 stu-dents from three main downtownToronto high schools in overall creditaccumulation. Initial program resultsseem to indicate that the program hashad a particularly strong impact on

those students most at risk (achieving 5or less credits): the proportion of thesestudents was substantially reduced from38.6% to 18.7%.

Looking at the social return on thistype of program investment, the poten-tial benefits are enormous: the incarcer-ation rate for high school dropouts is 15times what it is for those with some post-secondary education; social assistanceand unemployment payments todropouts are estimated at twice that ofhigh school graduates; dropouts aretwice as likely to be unemployed as highschool graduates and three times as like-ly to be unemployed as university gradu-ates. A federal government study esti-mated the private market rate of returnfor completing high school at more than40 percent for Canadian graduates rela-tive to those who dropped out in Grade10.

The P2E program is now in its fourthyear with the first cohort scheduled tocomplete high school in June, 2005. Itis hoped that the program ultimatelysupports the original community visionarticulated by the Regent ParkCommunity Health Centre: “The chil-dren of the community will become the doc-tors, nurses, social workers, communityhealth workers and administrators of theHealth Centre. ”


Pathways to Education, www.p2e.ca

Regent Park Community Health Centre,www.regentparkchc.org


Regent Park: Community Resources

E x p e r i m e n t s i n S o c i a l I n n o v a t i o n : P a t h w a y s To E d u c a t i o n


T he impetus for the initial devel-opment of Regent Park camelargely from an address given in

March 1934 by then Lieutenant-Governor of Ontario Dr. H.A. Bruce,who spoke at Toronto’s centennial cele-brations. He warned that Toronto hadacquired “inevitable slum districts”which “exert unhappy environmentalinfluence upon many of our citizens”.1

Bruce bemoaned the development ofslum areas in Canada’s largest cities, andemphasized their detraction fromToronto’s ability to reach its greatestpotential; upon this basis he urged thataction be taken to eradicate such areas.His remarks that day made sufficientenough impression on Mayor RobertSaunders and Toronto’s Board of Controlthat an Advisory Committee was subse-quently formed to inquire into housingconditions in several areas of the city,with Bruce appointed honorary chair.The committee would focus specificallyon 1) the quality of the accommodation;2) rentals paid by tenants; and 3) envi-ronmental conditions. What ensued wasthe most comprehensive investigation ofurban housing conditions in Canada,culminating in the influential BruceReport in 1944, which detailed the livingconditions within Toronto’s slum areas.

An intensive special study was con-ducted of two of the most seriouslyblighted areas; the area then known asMoss Park whose boundaries encompassed present-day Regent Park, and theWard, an area closer to central down-

town. Moss Park was deemed as present-ing the greatest challenges as it was moreseriously overcrowded. The study of over3,000 dwelling units classified nearlythree quarters of these units as substan-dard. Conditions in the homes studied bythe committee were bleak; most werewithout adequate indoor plumbing facil-ities or central heating and were invari-ably overcrowded, thereby posing signifi-cant health risks to residents. Many ofthe houses in the area, row housing forexample on Sumach Street, were rough-cast construction – plaster over woodlathing. Photographs of these housesexhibit serious deterioration such as

missing plaster on exterior walls reveal-ing bare lathing and broken windows.Interior photographs reveal evidence ofovercrowding, a lack of sanitation, andcracked walls and ceilings. There werevirtually no recreational facilities for thearea’s children; the only play area formany were the streets and tiny, oftencluttered backyards.

The Bruce Report gave the generalpublic greater insight into the deplorableliving conditions of Toronto’s poorestcitizens, and provided significantmomentum to civic groups who soughtthe redevelopment of sub-standard resi-

30

Regent Park: A Brief HistoryLaurie Green

“Any citizen who has any interest at all in the betterment of his City andhis less-fortunate fellow man should go all out for public housing.”

Robert H. Saunders, Toronto Mayor (1945-1948)

Row houses on Gerrard Street East, circa 1940

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dential areas. At the time of the BruceReport, federal and provincial govern-ments had shown little interest in publichousing as a social or economic publicpolicy tool. Federal housing legislationwas virtually non-existent, and planningdepartments did not yet exist in Ontario.The Bruce report proved pivotal in 1943as the efforts of civic groups were reward-ed when the City Planning Board pro-posed redevelopment of the area present-ly known as Regent Park North, bound-ed by Dundas St. East, Gerrard St. East,Parliament St., and River St. Buildingsin this area were 60 to 70 years of age, inpoor physical condition, and 48 percentof the homes had only stoves for heat.There were 628 houses and 35 commer-cial and dwelling units, however 822families were living in these small homes,along with many roomers and boarders,and likely others of whom researcherswere not informed. In addition therewere 18 industrial and commercial build-ings and 33 parcels of vacant land ofvarying sizes that had contained housingpreviously torn down due to its dilapidat-ed condition.

The following year the TorontoCitizens’ Forum created the Citizens’Housing Association, later known as theCitizens’ Housing and PlanningAssociation. In their constitution, theAssociation highlighted the fundamentalimportance of decent housing to “soundfamily and community life”. The resolu-tion illustrated the concerns from whichcivic action for the construction ofRegent Park North arose. It stated:

The Association grows out of theincreasing concern of the citizens ofToronto for the conditions underwhich the families of servicemen andlow-income groups have to live…Itbelieves these conditions to be…aserious danger to the health, morale,and efficiency of the families and ofthe community, and a shameful com-mentary on the community’s neglectof the larger welfare of its citizens.2

The Association liaised with differentlevels of government, members of the

federal and provincial legislatures, andCity Council, in a renewed effort toengender action to address the City’sneed for low-rental housing. Thedemand for public funds to meet this pur-pose gained strength. The Associationbelieved that overcrowding that was tak-ing place following the war left the gov-ernment of Canada with a responsibilityboth to servicemen and their families,and to municipalities. They also pointedout that the federal government had thefinancial means to deliver housing fund-ing.

The challenge at the time for munici-pal housing redevelopment was that theprovincial government had formalresponsibility for housing, but not thefunding, while the federal governmenthad no formal responsibility, yet had

funds. To address this situation, theAssociation put pressure on the federalgovernment to provide legislative andfinancial resources, pressed the provinceto provide similar resources throughplanning and housing legislation, andpushed City Council to proceed withslum clearance and the housing project.

Finally, the Association also made an

appeal to the public for support. At aNovember 1944 housing conference,keynote speaker Nathan Straus, the firstadministrator of the U.S. Public HousingAuthority, addressed the audience. Heemphasized the success of programs pro-viding subsidies to house low-income cit-izens in the United States. Straus’ posi-tion was used to support claims that thegrowing blight of sub-standard housingin Toronto was causing the decline ofproperty values, loss of tax revenues; andincreased costs to tax payers. TheAssociation advocated that slum clear-ance was the answer to these problems,and was a necessary step to safeguard thecity’s present and future progress. TheToronto Board of Control responded tothe mounting pressure for action byputting the question of the Regent Parkproject before the electorate. In the

January 1947 municipal election anintense publicity campaign ensued thatincluded letters to all municipal candi-dates, the distribution of thousands ofhand bills, interviews on local radio sta-tions, and letters to the press.

The wider sharing of information withthe general public about the city’s worsthousing conditions enabled voters to

31

Laurie Green Regent Park: A Brief History

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engage in the matter in a way that theyhadn’t before. This dynamic, along withthe strong support of Mayor RobertSaunders, helped to secure a “yes” votefor the slum clearance and constructionof Regent Park North. The desire of civicgroups to improve the current health ofthe city, provide opportunities for it’s lessfortunate citizens, and to maximize thefuture potential of Toronto, was com-bined with an assurance of financialresponsibility assumed by the newly cre-ated Toronto Housing Authority. In aJuly 1955 article in the Board of TradeJournal entitled Toronto Can Be Proud ofRegent Park, Frank E. Dearlove,Administrator of the Regent ParkHousing Project extolled the virtues ofthe project, claiming that the project wasan economic asset to the city, due in partto an increase in the level of tax revenuesgenerated by the area. The level of opti-mism for the future of the project and itsbenefits was very high.

To make way for the development ofRegent Park, the City expropriated exist-ing homes. The first acquisitions of landfor Regent Park were approved inSeptember, 1947. The authority toacquire the land was bestowed upon thenewly created Housing Authority by city

by-Law, and passed by Council onSeptember 29, 1947. Once the land wassecured, the physical designing of thespace commenced.

Regent Park’s design was based on LeCorbusier’s concept of “City in the Park”,and was in effect a test case for emergingpostwar planning theories and modernist

architecture. The design was based onthe notion of building vertical cities inthe park, leaving large common areas ofgreen, street-free space throughout thecommunity. At the time, this layout wasviewed as an ideal solution for providingthe area’s children with safe space inwhich to play, and for community recre-ational use. With idealistic enthusiasm,proponents of this new approachbelieved it would eradicate Toronto’sslums, and perhaps poverty itself. FrankDearlove concluded:

“Reports from district schoolsindicate that because of improvedliving conditions the children arecleaner, healthier and happier andthat they are getting better gradessince moving into the Regent ParkProject. Reports from Police andFire Departments, and Departmentsof Public Health and PublicWelfare, indicate that municipalcosts in this area have notablydecreased. Even more important isthe fact that the incidence of crime,juvenile delinquency and familyproblems has materially declined...indications are that it’s citizens willbe better off morally, physically andmentally as a result of living in this

32

Regent Park: A Brief History Laurie Green

Houses on Oak Street, circa 1940

Mayor Saunders inspects a pile of debris in Regent Park - July 24, 1947

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model housing development.”3

By the time Regent Park North wascompleted, it had become home for5,211 residents and marked the start ofan urban renewal program, consideredboth beneficial and necessary by plan-ners and city officials. Hailed a success,all of the original inhabitants of the pre-existing housing were re-housed, andmany experienced indoor plumbing, andhot and cold running water for the firsttime. By comparison to the housing ithad replaced, Regent Park’s units wereclean, large, bright, well-heated, andwere provided at very affordable rent-geared-to-income costs. Looking back,one can appreciate the enthusiasm withwhich many citizens and civic leadersembraced the beginnings of Regent Park.

The second phase of the project,Regent Park South was developedbetween 1957 and 1959, financed pri-marily with federal housing funds underthe National Housing Act, which hadbeen enacted in 1954. All of the landssouth of Dundas Street West weredemolished to make way for a series offive high-rise towers interspersed withground-related townhouses. While thefocus of Regent Park North had been theresettlement of the area’s ‘working poor’,the selection of tenants for Regent ParkSouth focused more on affordability andincome levels, partly due to the involve-ment of the federal government. As aresult, the area quickly became home toonly the most disadvantaged householdsin the city, a situation which has contin-ued to the present day.

In the intervening fifty years, thephysical design of Regent Park as well asthe social policies which helped shapethe current community, have been calledinto question. The coupling of LeCorbusier’s design concepts with a dis-proportionately poor, visible minoritypopulation encountering multiple barri-ers to full participation in society hascontributed to Regent Park’s present dif-ficulties. The termination of smallerstreets once part of the street grid, for

example, has resulted in a lack of accessfor policing and a general lack of “eyes onthe street”, as the interior of the commu-nity is not visible to main pedestrian andmotor traffic moving at the area’s periph-ery. Rather than providing “safe space”for the community as intended, this con-figuration has resulted in physical dis-connection from the surrounding neigh-

bourhoods, an absence of commercialand retail activity, and the creation ofpublic spaces, blocked from view of thestreet and ideal for illegal activities. Inaddition, the housing stock itself is phys-ically outdated and requires significantupgrading and modernizing of appli-ances, layout, plumbing, heating and ele-vators.

Beginning in the 1980s, several re-design initiatives have been discussed toimprove neighbourhood conditions. Inthe mid-1990s, the City of Toronto andthe Ontario Housing Corporation dis-cussed a significant redevelopment of thearea and proposed a pilot project for thenortheast quadrant however the effortwas unsuccessful. With the recent trans-fer of housing responsibility from the

province to the city and amalgamation ofthe city’s nonprofit and public housingportfolios, there is now a more positiveclimate in which to consider a majorrevitalization of the area.

Endnotes:1 Albert Rose, Regent Park: A Study in Slum

Clearance. (Toronto: University ofToronto Press: 1958).

2 Frank E. Dearlove, “Toronto Can Be Proudof Regent Park”, Board of Trade Journal(July 1955).

3 Ibid.

Laurie Green is a fourth-year student inthe Urban Studies program at theUniversity of Toronto and was an internat Ideas That Matter during the 2003-2004 academic year.

33

Laurie Green Regent Park: A Brief History

The Bluett family in the kitchen of their old house, prior to re-locating to the first re-developed unit in Regent Park, 1949

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Dearlove, Frank E. “Toronto Can BeProud of Regent Park.” Board of TradeJournal, July, 1955.

Gillespie, Kerry (July 23, 2003).“Thumbs up on Regent Park the newface of social housing: Canada’s oldestgets set for a transformation”. TheToronto Star.

Hall, Joseph (December 20, 2002). “Anoble experiment that went awry:Regent Park was paved with good inten-tions”. The Toronto Star.

Hume, Christopher (May 19, 2003).“Regent Park’s flawed dream”. TheToronto Star.

The Housing Authority of Toronto(1964). The Housing Authority of TorontoOpens the Door to Better Living: A Reviewof Progress 1947-1964.

Regent Park Collaborative Team(December, 2002). Regent ParkRevitalization Study. Toronto.

Rose, Albert (1958). Regent Park: AStudy in Slum Clearance. Toronto:University of Toronto Press.

Sewell, John (1993). The Shape of theCity: Toronto struggles with modern plan-ning. Toronto: University of TorontoPress.

Veronis, Luisa (1999). Exploring theMargin: The borders between Regent Parkand Cabbagetown. Master’s Thesis.Toronto: University of Toronto.

34

Regent Park: A Brief History Laurie Green

References

Regent Park Construction, 1948

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Regent Park Parade, undated

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Regent Park Revitalization - The Social and Economic Plan

N e i g h b o u r h o o d s M a t t e r : P o v e r t y b y P o s t a l C o d e

P overty by Postal Code (PPC), pub-lished in April 2004 by theUnited Way of Greater Toronto

profiles the ‘geography of neighbour-hood poverty’ in Toronto over the last20 years. The report presents a startlingportrait of how poverty in Toronto isbecoming increasingly localized, ‘racial-ized’ and ‘feminized’ and lays thegroundwork for developing place-basedstrategies to deal with neighbourhoodpoverty issues.

Changes to the spatial concentration ofpoverty in Toronto were examined by:

• Determining the percentage ofthe city’s ‘poor’ families thatwere living in higher povertyneighbourhoods in 1981, 1991,and 2001;

• Identifying the number of high-er poverty neighbourhoods thatexisted at each of these threepoints in time; and

• Plotting the changes in neigh-bourhood poverty over time.

The study illustrates the dramaticincrease in the rate of poverty amongToronto’s families over the last 20 years,rising from 13.3% of all family house-holds in 1981, to 16.3% in 1991, and19.4% in 2001 (the comparable nation-al figure in 2001 was 12.8%, a slightdecline from 1981). Average familyhousehold income in the lower incomecensus tracts actually declined over thetwenty-year period (from $41,611 to$39, 298 in constant 2000 dollars),while in the top income census tractsincome levels rose dramatically (from$135,801 to $215,344 in constant 2000dollars).

Over the study period ‘very highpoverty’ neighbourhoods (‘very highpoverty’ defined as 40% or more familyhouseholds in poverty)in the cityincreased from just 4 in 1981, to a totalof 23 neighbourhoods in 2001. Further,in 1981 more than 80% of poor familieslived in mixed-income neighbourhoodsbut that figure has now declined to 47%,a dramatic change in the concentrationof poverty. In 1981 poor neighbour-hoods were those primarily located incensus tracts dominated by public hous-ing, in other words, ‘poverty by design’;neighbourhoods such as Jane/Finch,Alexander Park, Regent Park and MossPark and a few scattered neighbour-hoods in Scarborough formed a distinc-tive U-shape across the City of Toronto.By 2001 the map of poor neighbour-hoods shows a very different picture: theU-shape has been replaced by an O-shaped ‘donut’ around central affluentneighbourhoods in the former cities of

Toronto and Etobicoke (see map onpage 36). Toronto’s map of poor neigh-bourhoods now largely reflects thesearch for affordable housing; with fami-lies moving out to the ‘inner suburbs’,(the former municipalities ofScarborough, North York, Etobicoke,York and East York). Many of these sub-urbs were expanded during the 1960sand 1970s with substantial blocks ofhigh-rise rental apartment buildings.These developments were built withoutsufficient consideration to communityinfrastructure such as youth recreationalservices, adequate transit and access tosocial services. The growth and concen-tration of poor neighbourhoods haveconsequences that have been well-docu-mented in the United States and GreatBritain. The out-migration of localbusinesses and middle-income house-holds leads to a breakdown of socialcohesion and the marginalization of res-idents.

35

Number of Higher Poverty Neighbourhoods, Toronto

Source: Statistics Canada, Census 1981, 1991 & 2001

High Poverty

Very High Poverty

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In addition to the spatial concentra-tion, the profile of these ‘higher poverty’neighbourhoods reveals that increasingnumbers of the most vulnerable mem-bers of society reside within these neigh-bourhoods. Between 1991 and 2001, thenumber of children raised in theseneighbourhoods increased by 100%, ris-ing from 80,590 in 1991 to 160,590 in2001. There was also a 60% increase inthe number of youth and over time, thisfigure will naturally increase. Lone par-ents raising children in high povertyneighbourhoods increased by a stagger-ing 91.7% between 1991 and 2001 (88%are female-led). However, while theabsolute number of these familiesincreased, the proportion of lone-parentfamilies of all families in poor neigh-bourhoods has remained relatively sta-

ble. Sixty-five percent of poor immi-grant families now live in these neigh-bourhoods, as do three-quarters ofToronto’s poor visible minority families.To further compound the issue, 87% ofthe employable population in ‘very high’poverty neighbourhoods in 2001 wasemployed. It is not that these familiesare not working, but that they are work-ing in low-paying or part-time jobswhich provide an inadequate familyincome. The study confirms that recentimmigrant families are experiencingincreasing difficulty in integrating eco-nomically into Canada likely due inlarge part to the high price of housingcombined with the barriers in labourmarket integration for internationallytrained professionals.

The trends documented in Poverty byPostal Code clearly demonstrate thecomplexity of issues of economic dispar-ity, such as income supports, affordablehousing, and economic integrationstrategies for newcomers. The UnitedWay has identified newcomers andyoung people as high priority recipientsof increased resources to build strongerneighbourhoods, to help offset theprocesses of decline that are underway.The report also emphasize the need forcooperative action to be taken by gov-ernment, business, labour, communityorganizations, and local residents. Thisstudy confirmed what many communityleaders knew: urban poverty is increas-ingly based on place.

What’s Next?The United Way of Greater Toronto,

in partnership with the City of Toronto,has formed the Strong NeighbourhoodsTask Force, composed of members fromgovernment, community, labour andcorporate sectors. The task force isstudying the challenges of distressedneighbourhoods, and will articulate avision for healthy neighbourhoods andset benchmarks for their revitalization.An interim report is due in the spring of2005.


United Way of Greater Toronto,www.unitedwaytoronto.com

Strong Neighbourhoods Task Force,http://www.strongneighbourhoods.ca/index.html

36

City of Toronto 2001 - Economic Family Poverty Rates

The 2001 map of the city of Toronto is divided into census tracts, with each tract coloured according to the level offamily poverty in the tract, relative to the average national LICO (low-income cut off). ‘Higher’ poverty neighbour-hoods are those where 26% or more of the families in the neighbourhood have incomes below LICO. They includeneighbourhoods that have been defined in the study as ‘high’ poverty (where the range of poverty rates is between26% - 39.9%), and ‘very high’ poverty (where the level of family poverty is 40% or more).

Regent Park Revitalization - The Social and Economic Plan

Source: Poverty by Postal Code, p. 21


A s s e t - B u i l d i n g : A d d r e s s i n g P o v e r t y i n C a n a d a

Many studies have shown that in thelast decade the gap between rich andpoor, particularly in urban areas, is grow-ing. When the data also includes pat-terns of savings and asset ownership, thegap becomes even larger. In Canada,most asset accumulation programs havetraditionally been directed through thetax system (e.g. RRSP, RESP), whichlow-income Canadians, through lack ofsufficient income, have not benefitedfrom. In addition, many low-incomeCanadians are in fact faced with asset-saving disincentives such as means test-ing to verify eligibility which discour-ages and/or penalizes savings.

Asset-building has emerged as oneapproach for addressing poverty basedon the work of U.S. researcher MichaelSherraden. In his book Assets and thePoor, published in 1991, Sherradenpointed out that people living in pover-ty tend to be more short-term focused intheir thinking and behaviour, not somuch because of their values as becausethey are compelled by the environmentwithin which they must make decisions.This can result in patterns of decision-making that may ultimately presentstructural barriers to escaping povertyboth presently and throughout life formembers of the household”.2 Post-sec-ondary education would be one exampleof this: families with no capacity to gen-erate savings believe that higher educa-tion is unaffordable and therefore con-sistently make decisions based on theassumption that their child will not

attend post-secondary institutions.

Asset-building programs use a toolknown as Individual DevelopmentAccounts (IDAs) to provide a struc-tured and incentive-based method forsavings. Essentially dedicated savingsaccounts, typically deposits by partici-pants are matched at varying rates bygovernments and/or other sources. Thepersonal savings remain the property ofthe participant but the matched accu-mulated savings can be dispersed forauthorized uses for home ownership,training programs and adult educationor micro-enterprise development. Inaddition participants normally partici-pate in financial literacy programs andother supportive services.

In Canada asset–building programsand policies are in the infancy stage.Social and Enterprise DevelopmentInnovations (SEDI), established in1997, is one national organizationattempting to address problems ofpoverty through several demonstrationprojects targeted particularly to immi-grants, visible minorities and aboriginalCanadians.

SEDI is currently involved in twodemonstration projects. Learn$ave,begun in 2001, with funding fromHuman Resource Development Canada(HRDC), encourages eligible low-income individuals set up IDAs. Each$1 of an individual’s contribution ismatched with $3 from funding sources

for savings towards adult education,training or micro-enterprise start-up.Delivery of the program is through com-munity-based organizations who areresponsible for recruiting, screening,financial literacy training and case man-agement support. The program permitslow-income individuals to save up to$1500, and matched funds can be accu-mulated and disbursed to an approved“vendor”. Initial findings indicate thatthe program leads to improved long-term self-sufficiency.

A second project, Home$ave, buildson the Learn$ave experience by allow-ing eligible low-income individuals toopen an IDA and utilize savings andmatched contributions towards a down-payment on a first home, home repair, orfirst and last month’s rent. The projectis currently in the design phase and it isexpected to be implemented in late2004 in a number of urban and ruralcommunities. The Regent Park redevel-opment is one of the communities beingconsidered for the pilot project.

Endnotes:1 The Case for an Asset-based Approach toSocial Policy in Canada, Institute for PublicPolicy Research (IPPR), 2001, pg 3. avail-able at: www.sedi.org

2 Ibid, p.4


SEDI, www.sedi.org;

37


“The dynamics of escaping poverty on a more permanent basis are funda-mentally linked to the access to assets, shaped by savings and investment deci-sions. This requires asset-based supports in addition to income transfers if gov-ernments are to fulfill their role in ensuring a more equal opportunity and sharedwell-being for all Canadians”1


U r b a n D e v e l o p m e n t A g r e e m e n t s : T h e Va n c o u v e r A g r e e m e n t -D o w n t o w n E a s t s i d e

The Vancouver Agreement is a five-year urban development agreementbetween the federal government(through the Western EconomicDiversification Fund), the province ofBritish Columbia and the City ofVancouver. Signed March 9, 2000, theagreement commits these levels of gov-ernment to develop and implement acoordinated strategy to promote andsupport sustainable economic, social andcommunity development within localcommunities in Vancouver. The firstfocus of the Agreement has beenVancouver’s Downtown Eastside(DTES), an historical area with distinctdrug and related crime issues.

While the agreement itself does notprovide for funding for specific projects,it does agree on three basic strategic ini-tiatives: community health and safetyincluding primary health care and harmreduction strategy, economic and socialdevelopment including affordable hous-ing, and community capacity-building.According to Isobel Donovan, theExecutive Coordinator of theVancouver Agreement, the advantagesof the agreement are that it providesstructures for collaboration and expand-ed opportunities for partnership, encour-ages innovative approaches to programs,encourages strategic targeting ofresources and establishes horizontalteams across governments at each level(policy, management, implementationand communication).

The initial projects undertaken in theDTES were funded through a five-yearCommunity Crime Prevention programby the National Crime PreventionCentre. Community capacity-buildingwas undertaken through an initiativecalled Community Directions whichprovided outreach to marginalized resi-

dents through the support of communi-ty-based working groups. A secondmajor initiative has been the revitaliza-tion of the Chinatown business area,including leadership development, com-munity crime prevention and marketingand promotion.

A 2002 Strategic Plan refined thethree broad goals of the VancouverAgreement into an integrated set of spe-cific objectives which included the rede-velopment of the Woodwards depart-ment store site, urban design initiatives,the dismantling of the open drug scenethrough a combination of preventionand enforcement strategies, expansionof the Neighbours First program (streetcleaning and street patrols), andimprovement of living conditions in sin-gle-room occupancy hotels. A March2004 Economic Revitalization Plan nowproposes to lever additional economicdevelopment opportunities from severalkey linkages: the 2006 UN World UrbanForum, the 2010 Olympic WinterGames, and the federal government’sUrban Aboriginal Strategy. A majorobjective is to ensure that residents ofthe Downtown Eastside benefit fromthese major events and programs.

“A fundamental challenge is toimprove economic and living conditionswithout displacing low income popula-tion”, says Nathan Edelson, SeniorPlanner, City of Vancouver. A commit-ment to develop social and communityeconomic development initiatives hasbeen essential and one innovativeapproach includes the Social PurchasingPortal, an initiative of Fast Track toEmployment (FTE), and BCTechnology Social Venture Partnerswhich links private business purchasersand suppliers with community econom-ic development activity. While not

directly funded by the VancouverAgreement, proponents of urban devel-opment agreements point to these typesof spinoffs as one of the significantadvantages of a ‘platform’ of coordinatedcollaboration.

On the other hand, urban develop-ment agreements are not always apanacea to inner city revitalization forseveral reasons. An agreement is not asubstitute for large cities having ade-quate and sufficient powers for makinglong-term, sustainable investment intheir communities. While the agree-ment can provide a ‘multi-sectoral table’for coordinating programs and invest-ment, accountability still resides insenior levels of government, there is noguarantee of funding and significantlocal community engagement is difficultto achieve.


Vancouver Agreement, www.vancouveragreement.ca

Downtown Eastside,www.city.vancouver.bc.ca/commsvcs/planning/dtes/index.htm

Four Pillars Coalition,www.city.vancouver.bc.ca/fourpillars/coalition.htm

Social Purchasing Portal,www.sppvancouver.org/

Winnipeg Tripartite Agreement,www.gov.mb.ca/ia/tripartite/

38



Connecting Public Policywith Frontline Experience

John Stapleton

Agencies that deliver social services have been increasing-ly frustrated with worsening social conditions. Workers andvolunteers at the frontline repeatedly find government poli-cies and income support programs that hinder or even wors-en the financial situation of individuals: - often unintention-ally. Concerned about the gap between frontline experienceand policy design, St. Christopher House, a multi-servicecommunity agency located in west central Toronto, beganthe Community Undertaking Social Policy (CUSP) projectin 2000 with funding from the Atkinson Foundation andsupport from Massey College.

CUSP is based on the model of an “artist in residence”. Apolicy expert temporarily joins the St. Christopher Housecommunity of program participants, volunteers, frontlinestaff, management, Board of Directors and partner agenciesto share and analyze stories of their lived experience. The

goal is to ground current social policy work in our communi-ty: creating an informed dialogue between policy-makers andaffected community members in order to improve the quali-ty of social policy. Policy-makers gain greater sensitivity tothe nuanced issues facing diverse low-income people whilelow-income people and frontline agencies improve their abil-ity to contribute to improved social policy.

In addition to the CUSP policy ‘fellows’, St. ChristopherHouse works with volunteer technical experts from thefinancial services and business community to deliberate onsolutions to some of the income policy problems identifiedduring these projects. St. Christopher House and its net-works are building more awareness about these income poli-cy problems with lower-income people and with the broaderpublic. As a result, some government policy-makers are lis-tening more attentively to frontline community issues.

Observations by John Stapleton, CUSPFellow, excerpted from “Learning from thePublic and the Lived Experience of St.Christopher House Participants”, August2003.

In my interviews [with St. ChristopherHouse participants and staff duringmy fellowship program], I started by

asking participants on social assistancehow they saw themselves. Interestingly,they saw themselves first and foremost interms of what they do for a living even ifthey are temporarily not doing it. Theythen saw themselves, as mothers orfathers, as friends, as volunteers, as com-munity members, as citizens, as immi-grants, as voters, as taxpayers, and asadvocates.

I now believe that what often gets mis-taken for apathy or lack of interest in

their situation as social assistance recipi-ents is really a detachment from politicaland social debates over issues in whichthey do not see themselves as having areal interest. Like society at large, par-ticipants see themselves as individualsstruggling for self-sufficiency. Like any-one else, they think that they would dobetter if they had more money from thesystem and they don’t like stigma, butthey see themselves as solving this dilem-ma by individual effort or perhaps withpersonal assistance to help them individ-ually out of poverty.

Part of this viewpoint may beexplained by the times we live in. Paidwork, mostly outside of the home, is val-ued highly in our society by both menand women. Like governments that seework as an alternative to welfare, theylargely share this value and vision for

themselves, even when they are raisingyoung children alone.

Insofar as St. Christopher House helpsthem to achieve their own goals tobecome self-sufficient, they are verymuch advocates of the work of St.Christopher House and other agencies.However, few had strong feelings infavour of a social policy agenda to makechanges in society and social policy ingeneral.

In social policy terms, government,agencies and advocacy groups from bothleft and right, argue the pros and cons ofwelfare reform, some believing in furthercuts while others call for increases tostrengthen the safety net. But from theperspective of welfare recipients, perhapsagencies like St Christopher House couldachieve more success by promoting the

The St. Christopher House Community Undertaking Social Policy (CUSP) Project


quality and equality of opportunity in theworkplace itself, rather than trying toimprove welfare. In this way, the “decon-struction of welfare” as a policy alterna-tive could be of interest to advocacyagencies. This approach is not new. Itwas originally championed in Ontariowith the publication of the Transitionsdocument in 1988. It is often referred toas the SARC report or (Report of theSocial Assistance Review Committee).

For the last ten years, government pol-icymakers have paid much attention to atype of welfare reform that has resulted inlower rates and tighter rules. Thesechanges are designed to get people to goto work. This approach needs to change.More emphasis should be placed on thequality and adequacy of paid work itself.

People become trapped on social assis-tance because the workplace simply doesnot offer them an economically viableset of opportunities to achieve self-suffi-ciency. Minimum wages, tenuous hours,and equally tenuous work-place experi-ences we have do not support indepen-dence from programs. Moreover, benefitstructures for welfare programs weredesigned to support non-work. What isneeded is work-friendly policies such asimproved childcare, financial literacy,and income supplementation, privateand public job security, and advance-ment regimens.

A particular work-unfriendly policiesare the tax advantaged savings vehiclesavailable to the middle class and well-to-do but not the poor. The RegisteredDevelopment Savings Plan (RDSP) con-cept that I [developed] as one of the writ-ten products of this fellowship is a vehi-cle that policymakers could use to pro-mote opportunity in new and creativeways.

One other reason people becometrapped on social assistance is that theysimply cannot afford to save. They arealso prohibited by welfare rules from tak-ing on the arduous process of returningor entering the workplace.

In the US, polling results suggest thata majority of people favour welfare sav-ings going into providing greater oppor-tunity for the recipients from whom thesavings have been realized. Making acase to the public that some of the sav-ings should be spent on recipients them-selves will fall on receptive ears.

Participants at St. Christopher Houseseem to be simply asking governments,their agencies and the public to helpthem get ahead and to refrain from poli-cy efforts that stop them from doing so.They are asking for no special favours –they are just asking for policies that levelthe playing field to give them the sameopportunities that others with higherincome and wealth already have.

By pigeonholing people into the veryunpopular label of social assistance recip-ients, advocates see participants as peo-ple who are outside the labour force whohave needs, yet the wider society seesthem as people who don’t work. Thereality is neither. Most working poor willeither go on welfare or alter their life pat-terns as a result of a fear of ending up onwelfare. Most welfare poor experience aconstant cycling between welfare, EI,and work. They take their identity fromthe less stigmatizing role of “worker tem-porarily not working”.

By focusing on social assistance, agen-cies, governments, and the public divertthemselves into a debate over entitle-ment vs. forced work when the realdebate is over the availability vs. thenon-availability of opportunity to enterthe mainstream. We need to focus onthat mainstream, improving both its real-ity while breaking down the barriers toaccess to it.

Access to income security programs isstill a problem for low income people

Richard Shillington, the first recipientof the CUSP fellowship at St.Christopher House discovered that gov-ernments do not actively notify people ofeligibility for government income securi-

ty programs even when they are aware(through large computer systems) thatpeople are eligible for them. He was ableto elicit real changes to policies at thefederal level to use these computer sys-tems notify people of their eligibility forbasic income security.

The fact that people are unaware ofthe programs for which they are eligiblereveals that social inequality in Canadaresults in part from the availability andquality of basic information. The goodnews is that there are a number of areaswhere progress can be made.

For example, the federal governmentcould do a better job to notify low-income families with children in Ontarioof their potential eligibility for theNational Child Benefit and other tax-based benefits. St. Christopher Househas taken an active interest in this areaand has written to Canada Customs andRevenue Agency in order to makeprogress on this matter. A positiveresponse to begin a dialogue on theseissues has been received.

I was struck by the low quality andlack of availability of information onbasic income security program eligibilityexperienced by St. Christopher Houseparticipants. Program complexity, diffi-culty in access, language and culturalbarriers all conspire to keep neededinformation and assistance on eligibilityand application processes away fromneedy low-income people.

Repeatedly, I interviewed people eligi-ble for social assistance who did notreceive it and did not know how to goabout receiving it. The same was true forprocesses to lower public housing rents,to apply for Canada Pension Plan (CPP),disability benefits, and the GuaranteedIncome Supplement (GIS)

People living sometimes chaotic anddisorganized lives, often living withoutthe help of others, have particular prob-lems in accessing information, processesand services. Information requirements

40

Connecting Public Policy John Stapleton


involving photocopying, faxing, fillingout forms and access to third party verifi-cation are often onerous enough to pre-vent people from receiving benefits forwhich they are eligible.

Governments and the public alikeoften believe that potential recipients ofbenefits are expert in the rules surround-ing access and eligibility. However truethis may be for a small minority of peo-ple, it is not the case for a large cadre ofpeople who come to the attention ofsocial service agencies with a host ofissues that find their root cause in lack ofaccess to basic income.

As we move in to a period of greaterautomation of access for government ser-vices, these same governments shouldprovide needed assistance to those whohave difficulty with these innovations.Many simply do not possess the set ofskills required to understand and accessbasic income security.

Living on low income accentuates theimportant role of minor windfalls

In all of the discussions about helpinglow-income people to build assets to savetowards an income for later life, much ofthe discussion in the literature tends tocentre on savings (e.g. IndividualDevelopment Accounts or IDA’s).

Although important, the whole idea ofsaving money while on welfare is notonly rare and difficult, it also invokesserious debate over the adequacy ofsocial assistance rates in two importantways. The first centres on the level ofdeprivation that one would have toendure in order to save money whilereceiving welfare while the secondinvokes the possible adequacy of socialassistance rates if one is able to save inthe first instance.

In my immediate experience beforecoming to St. Christopher House, Iworked in a social assistance field officetalking to clients on a daily basis. Onlytwo recipients had questions around sav-

ing money while on assistance. Each wasin a special situation with special hous-ing and other supports which allowedthem to entertain the possibility of build-ing assets. I was impressed with the num-ber of people calling on the subject ofhow to handle a minor windfall.

These windfalls came in three varieties:

• minor inheritances or payback ofmoney owed in a personal situation;

• compensation awards of some type;

or

• lump-sum payments from a programwhere amounts had accrued over aperiod of time

Put together, these three varieties ofwindfall result in a fairly common phe-nomena experienced by welfare recipi-ents (or people worried about needingwelfare in the near to medium term). Inmany instances, governments exemptthese windfalls under social assistancerules. However, the common denomina-tor among recipients, their trustees, andadvocates is how to use the windfall in aresponsible way to meet the needs of therecipient.

In my mind, windfall management is awhole area that relates to the daily, livedexperience of low-income people thatrequires much more policy considerationby governments and policymakers. Onthe one hand, a concerned public can bedriven to distraction over stories of “wel-fare spending sprees” where clients spendtheir assets just to remain eligible for aprogram. On the other, explicit policiesinsist on real impoverishment as arequirement for eligibility. These policiesare often complicit in forcing these hur-ried spending sprees in the first instance.

At St. Christopher House, we areproposing the Registered DevelopmentSavings Plan (RDSP) as a place to park awindfall until a point in time is reachedwhere recipients can put the money to itsbest use.

Poor people are used to living in their

private boom and bust economies madeup of long droughts and minor windfalls– they learn to manage their money tomeet these realities. Social policymakersshould study these realities and try tomake policies that reduce recidivismamong social assistance recipients. Goodevidence from the US shows that recidi-vism is dramatically decreased where for-mer recipients are able to retain and savea cushion of funds to call on during theinevitable rough patches that occursfrom time to time.

Low Income Individuals andCommunities

A demanding public wants to havesocial programs that exact responsiblebehaviour from those who benefit fromthem. Those who may benefit fromsocial programs must be prepared tochange their behaviour in positive waysin order to derive the maximum benefit.

But the public also wants programsthat work and perform in the best inter-ests of individuals and society. There isno point putting a program in place thatis too hard to access or which createsincentives to work where the rewards ofwork are too meagre.

Low-income people are in agreementwith society at large on the best ways toalleviate poverty. They share a commonview of dependency and have the samedreams for themselves and their children.

At the community level, the same istrue. Community activists have startednew approaches to reverse the negativeview of low-income communities as vul-nerable and weak. They portray lowincome communities as strong, innova-tive and resilient (just like so-called richcommunities). Through such approach-es as community assets mapping theseactivists replicate the positive approach-es that agencies use commonly whenthey approach their donors for funding.

By reversing the safer and more tradi-tional approaches that emphasize weak-

41

John Stapleton Connecting Public Policy


ness, under funding, discrimination andvulnerability, these new approaches showthe hidden assets that these communitiescontain.

But we need to be mindful of the rea-sons that low-income communities hidetheir assets in the first instance. This isnot a simple paradigm shift. It is the real-ity that communities hide assets for thesame reasons that individuals do – thefear that if exposed, the assets will be atrisk of being taken away.

We need assets retention strategies forindividuals to gain traction to live, work,and build their assets in plain view.Communities need the same strategiesand need them even more urgently when

they take pride in the assets andstrengths that low income communitiespossess. Just like individuals, communi-ties need to be able to live, work, andbuild their assets in plain view.

John Stapleton joined St. ChristopherHouse as the second CUSP "policy fellow"in 2002/03 after 28 years in the provin-cial civil service as a senior policy ana-lyst. Stapleton worked with diverse mem-bers of the St. Christopher House commu-nity to explore issues such as access to dif-ferent income security programs, the newImmigration and Refugee Protection Act,the National Child Benefit and how thecivil service and politicians respond to

public opinion to shape social policy.Through his experience in St. ChristopherHouse, Stapleton developed a proposal fora "Registered Development Savings Plan"(RDSP) to help secure the assets of low-income people. This RDSP model is animproved alternative to RRSP's for low-income people.

42

Connecting Public Policy John Stapleton


St. Christopher House, www.stchrishouse.org


A selected list of resources on neighbour-hood revitalization and comprehensive com-munity initiatives. Most of the websitescontain related resources and bibliogra-phies. An additional index for comprehen-sive community initiatives is theCommunity Building Resource Exchange atwww.commbuild.org.

The Annie E. Casey Foundation (2002).Learning from the Journey: Reflections onthe Rebuilding Communities Initiative.www.aecf.org

The Annie E. Casey Foundation (2002).Voices from the Empowerment Zones:Insights about launching large-scale com-munity revitalization initiatives.www.aecf.org

The Aspen Institute (1997). Voices fromthe Field: Learning from the Early Work ofComprehensive Community Initiatives.www.aspeninstitute.org

The Aspen Institute (2002). Voices fromthe Field II: Reflections on ComprehensiveCommunity Change. The UrbanInstitute: Washington DC.

Auspos, Patricia, Prudence Brown, andJ a n i c e H i r o t a ( J u l y 2 0 0 0 ) .Neighbourhood Strategies Project: AFinal Assessment. Chapin Hall Centerfor Children. www.chapin.uchicago.edu

The Brookings Institution (July 2004).Neighbourhoods of Choice andConnection: The Evolution ofAmerican Neighbourhood Policy andWhat It Means for the United Kingdom.www.brookings.edu/metro

Chaskin, Robert J., (December 2000)Lessons Learned from the Implementationof the Neighbourhood and FamilyInitiative: A Summary of Findings. TheChapin Hall Center for Children. www.chapinhall.org.

Chaskin, Robert J. and Clark M. Peters( Ju l y 1997) . Governance inEmpowerment Zone Communities. TheChapin Hall Center for Children. www.chapinhall.org

Couch, Chris, Charles Fraser and SusanPercy (2003). Urban regeneration inEurope. Blackwell Science.

Jacobs, Brian D. (2000). Strategy andpartnership in cities and regions: economicdevelopment and urban regeneration inPittsburgh, Birmingham and Rotterdam.Macmillan.

Living Cities: National CommunityDevelopment Initiative (2002).Something is Working…. Basil J.Whiting, ed. www.livingcities.org

Mangen, S.P. (2004). Social Exclusionand Inner City Europe. PalgraveMacMillan: New York.

Meyer, Diana A. et al (2000). ProgramProfile: Community Building inPartnership, Inc., Baltimore, Maryland.The Enterprise Foundation. www.enter-prisefoundation.org

Pierson, John and Joan Smith, eds.(2001). Rebuilding community: policy andpractice in urban regeneration. Palgrave:New York.

Keating, Dennis W. and NormanKrumholz (1999). Rebuilding urban neigh-bourhoods: Achievements, Opportunities,and Limits. Sage Publications: ThousandOaks, CA.

Popkin, Susan J., Bruce Katz, Mark K.Cunningham, Karen D. Brown, JeremyGustafson, and Margery A. Turner(May, 2004). A Decade of HOPE VI:Research Findings and Policy Challenges.The Urban Institute: Washington D.C.www.urban.org.

Regent Park Revitalization Study(December 2002). Regent ParkCollaborative Team.www.regentparkplan.ca

Roberts, Peter and Hugh Sykes (2000).Urban Regeneration: A Handbook. SagePublications: London.

Robson, Brian, Michael Parkinson,Martin Boddy and Duncan MacIennan.(November 2000). The State of EnglishCities (Urban White Paper). Departmentof the Environment, Transport and theRegions: London. www.odpm.gov.uk/

Spaans, Marjolein (2002). The imple-mentation of urban revitalization projects:an international comparison. DUPScience.

Torjman, Sherri and Eric Leviten-Reid(March , 2003) . Comprehen s i v eCommunity Initiatives. Caledon Instituteof Social Policy: Ottawa. www.cale-doninst.org

Walker, Christopher and MarkWeinheimer (1998). Communi tyDevelopment in the 1990s. The UrbanInstitute. www.urban.org

43

Resources

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Documents

Neighbourhoods Matter - Amazon Web Services...grant launching pads repeatedly take a step or two forward, followed by two or three steps backward, while dilapidation inexorably deepens