Neighborhood Economics: Realizing Justice in Urban Renewal w/ Collaborative Community Efforts

When Melissa stepped away from the corporate world and ventured into the transformative space of community development, she brought with her a wealth of knowledge and passion that's been reshaping neighborhoods for the better. Our latest conversation peels back the layers on how strategic partnerships and philanthropy converge to create spaces where equity and opportunity are more than buzzwords; they're the cornerstones of revitalized communities. Drawing from her experiences with Hands on Atlanta, the Georgia Justice Project, and the innovative Purpose Built Communities, Melissa illustrates the profound difference between mere charity and true justice.

We take a close look at the four pillars that hold up the vision of communities thriving on their terms: quality mixed-income housing, comprehensive education, community wellness, and economic vitality. These aren't just abstract concepts—Melissa breaks down the tangible effects of the community quarterback model, demonstrating how dedicated nonprofits can orchestrate resources in tune with the residents' dreams. However, the journey isn't without its hurdles, as we tackle the complexities behind funding such endeavors and the unwavering commitment required to address racial equity and effect long-term change.

Wrapping up, our discussion illuminates the joy of collaboration within neighborhood economics, where local leaders and residents are the catalysts for transformation. We share anecdotes from our visit to Jackson, where the lines that demarcate neighborhoods became a tapestry for focused community work. Melissa's insights are a testament to the power of local impact, and her stories offer a beacon of inspiration for anyone looking to weave their efforts into the broader tapestry of social change.

https://purposebuiltcommunities.org/

This program is brought to you by:
Arc Integrated

Be sure to visit BizRadio.US to discover hundreds more engaging conversations, local events and more.

Transcript

Joel: 0:33

What if investing in each other could change the world? I'm Joel Skeen with bizradious, and this is the Mindful Marketplace, hey y'all thanks for watching.

Joel: 0:48

I just wanted to quickly inform you about my financial services agency, which operates in the life insurance space. So we help families with debt elimination plans and create tax-favored retirement solutions. We support small businesses, nonprofits, worker-owned co-ops, unions and social enterprises with employee and member benefits. We offer white glove insurer tech services to community banks, credit unions, financial co-ops and CDFIs, and we provide enduring acceleration and downside capture strategies for all kinds of investors. Check out the link in the video description and enjoy the show. Hey Melissa, how are you this morning? I'm good. How are you? I'm good. It's very early for you, is it?

Melissa : 1:34

It's very early. It's very early. I am, yeah, but I'm awake and have been for a while, so Well, there you go. Yeah.

Joel: 1:45

I guess early is relative, but for when we booked initially I wasn't thinking about the three-hour time difference. It's all right.

Melissa : 1:53

It's all right. It's sort of the story of my life.

Joel: 1:56

Yeah, well, I'm glad we got to meet here, I'm glad Kevin made the connection, yeah, and I'm glad to get to talk to you here. This is a special series that we're doing with neighborhood economics, so it's a lot more free-flowing and there's a little less structure around it. But basically I want to take the next 40, 45 minutes to just talk with you and let our audience and neighborhood economics audience get to know you and get to know kind of just your perspective. I kind of just want to pick your brain, because I know you've been in doing nonprofit and catalytic work and everything for about 20 years. Is that right? Oh, at least.

Melissa : 2:36

Yeah, yes, let's just say that.

Joel: 2:40

Well, and I thought it was interesting because I'm in Asheville, North Carolina, so I'm pretty close to where you were for a long time in Atlanta. What was that? You worked with a few different groups in Atlanta, right.

Melissa : 2:53

I did. I went to Emory as an undergrad that was a long time ago and left for a little while and came back and had a career in the for-profit sector and was volunteering in my free time and really kind of got to a point where I wanted to sort of align my vocation and the vocational lives a little better. It kind of felt like I was living a little bit of a double life. So I made a career switch and started working at Hands on Atlanta. I was there for a number of years and was in the fundraising function. The through line for my career in the nonprofit sector has really been about relationships and relationship building, whether that's in fundraising or in strategic partnerships. So yeah, I started at Hands on Atlanta, took a little time off, had some children and then went back and worked for a number of years at the Georgia Justice Project, which I loved and then worked for a good friends political campaign and then we moved out here to Northern California.

Melissa : 4:12

But I wanted to keep my connections to Atlanta and I knew the Eastlake story and wanted and knew that there was a movement to try to grow that story and expand it. And so I kind of got connected with the folks working at Purpose Build and was able to kind of carve out a niche for myself here. So I was the first remote employee, but now I'm definitely not the only one.

Joel: 4:41

Yeah, what is that Eastlake story?

Melissa : 4:44

Yeah, the Eastlake story is one of neighborhood transformation that started really back in the late 90s and it was a public housing project that was home to many wonderful people and but it had been run down and was not a safe place for a lot of folks and the public housing authority and resident leaders and some local philanthropists were interested in perhaps.

Melissa : 5:20

Well, that public housing story was definitely going to redo the public housing project there, but they decided to do it in a different way and instead of replacing the units and reconcentrating poverty, they decided with the residents to try to make a mixed income approach. They also added some of the amenities that anybody would want to have in their neighborhood, like grocery stores and YMCA and so on, and then there's a school there as well. So it's a little. It's much longer story than that, but the success is pretty astounding and continues to this day. So that work also has continued to evolve to include more units for folks, for low income folks and folks across a broad range of incomes, additional amenities and so on. So anyway, that was attractive to a lot of folks. Local leaders around the country, people were coming to visit. How can I do this in my neighborhood? And that's how Purpose Built Communities was born.

Joel: 6:38

Yeah, I can see why it would be. I was talking with another one of the neighborhood economics conference speakers coming up, Sydney Williams Reverend, Doc, Rev. I kept calling him and he was talking about this difference between when we think about these issues, the difference between charity and justice, and he said that charity is basically we can give the leftovers, my leftover time, my leftover food, the things I'm not using. You may as well have them, but justice is about making sure people actually have quality food, a quality neighborhood, that it's not just about giving the leftovers. So, in the creation of what you guys call really you guys say that your conveyors and catalysts for social change on the neighborhood level what was the biggest insight that you took away from that story in developing what you all are working on now? I'm going to unpack that a little bit for me.

Melissa : 7:46

Yeah, I think and I love your earlier story about justice versus charity.

Melissa : 7:53

I think that's a really animating concept for us and for all of our network members.

Melissa : 7:59

There's actually a book by a guy in Atlanta named Bob Lepton, who wrote a book called Toxic Charity, and it's been a real inspiration to us and to many of our network members.

Melissa : 8:13

And it's exactly this, this concept of walking along, walking alongside neighbors, residents and neighbors. We don't know better than the folks who have lived in these neighborhoods, and so the concept of neighboring and walking alongside, advocating for and helping them fulfill their vision for their neighborhood, is really what we are trying to do, and there is an imbalance of power and resources in our country and in our world, and so the obligation is for all of us to realize that some of the history that's created these situations that folks find themselves in neighborhoods and a lot of it was done on purpose there was policies that set up to extract wealth from these neighborhoods and harm them, and so understanding that history and taking approach of walking alongside and helping neighborhoods fulfill the visions that they have for their neighborhoods and bringing resources and I guess our website says being catalytic partners is really absolutely what we do, and certainly what our network members do around the country.

Joel: 9:34

It seems like a really great third way in a lot of ways, and what I mean by that is I think there's one narrative out there that says if you help people too much it's kind of the teach someone to fish sort of idea that if you just keep giving fish and giving fish, then there will become a dependency and in the long run that might not give you actually the outcomes that you're really looking for, but a lot of times it seems that the response to that is then, well, let's just do nothing and let's just tell people to bootstrap it all on their own. But it sounds like what you guys are doing is more of an empowerment model.

Melissa : 10:13

I think that's absolutely right. I think that's absolutely right and I would say it's reparative, empowering and reparative. There have been active harms done and we have to seek to repair those harms, so that involves extra resources going to the neighborhoods. It's not really about equal, it is about equitable, and that means outsize investments in places that have had outsize extractions. Yeah, exactly.

Joel: 10:49

I mean, I think that lines up even when I think about psychology and my own personal journey and the journeys of the people that I know that have. When you go through something, you can't just fix yourself. You have to do some actual healing and repairing in order to actually do real growth and do real change. What do you see as one of the biggest misconceptions, I guess, about these communities in the work you're doing?

Melissa : 11:20

That's a good question, I think. Well, I guess they're often they're so overlooked. I mean, I don't know what Asheville is like, but I know in most of the places I've lived these are often neighborhoods that people don't ever go through there, can be unknown except to the people who live there or are from there. They have rich, rich histories, has been my experience. I'm not proud to say that. At least in Atlanta, where I lived for many years, I didn't know those histories. There's a whole parallel set of stories and experiences that I think for me personally and in our world we're only recently being woken up to that is deeply shameful to me. I think it's so easy to say, oh, this is a poor neighborhood. Most often these are deeply proud neighborhoods with rich histories of success and flourishing. Our goal is to help folks recreate that in a new way. It's not going to go back to the old way because time has passed. It's time. That's our effort to try to help folks recapture the flourishing of the neighborhoods that once were.

Joel: 13:20

Yeah, and a lot of times they're very resilient people and very resilient neighborhoods. You mentioned different places, even in a small city here like Asheville, when the Vanderbilts came here and built the big, famous built more park, which I'm sure half the people in Atlanta have gone on vacation at some point when they came to town, they displaced an entire neighborhood of African Americans in the Shiloh neighborhood that's now known as a built more lake or built more forest Everything's called built more around here. Those communities have still, even though they've been moved and they've been downtrodden and they've been taken advantage of many times and overtaxed, they are still flourishing with real community, real people who are, in my experience, doing their best and doing everything that they can. I'm curious about the kind of the model and the strategy around how you guys are doing this development, because from an outside perspective it seems pretty unique.

Melissa : 14:21

Yeah, I think it's unique in that it's cross sector and it's concentrated in a small geography, in a neighborhood geography, right, we're very like, underline, underline, neighborhood, right, we're really committed to that unit of change and that's pretty counter-cultural. You know, our systems are not set up for that. You know, state from federal on down to local. So it's a radical, more radical approach to be focused there, trying to drive resources at that level in public and private resources. So our model includes four pillars high quality mixed income housing, so providing housing for folks across a broad range of incomes, including market rate housing and deeply subsidized housing. Sometimes, that is, it's most often has a multifamily, large sort of set of multifamily units, rental. There's also homeownership strategies and single family home strategies in different neighborhoods. So that's the first thing.

Joel: 15:33

So really, so truly diverse within that neighborhood. It's not just like you said, it's not just concentrating, you know, the wealthy people over here, the poor people over here and the middle people over here but saying, no, we can actually. We actually can live together, we can actually live together.

Melissa : 15:48

That's right, yeah. And the second pillar would be education, and that's really from the cradle to post-secondary and beyond college and career. We really are pretty convicted about the importance of those first three years of life, first five years of life, whatever the latest number is, but those earliest years. So a real concentration in the early care and education, and then a seamless pipeline for the children to in the neighborhood to attend and that looks different in every neighborhood, but a real commitment to an education pipeline.

Melissa : 16:28

The third is called community wellness, and these are the things that you know, we all, we all know make a nice neighborhood right. It could be sidewalks, it could be parks, it could be grocery stores, it could be YMCA's, places to recreate. In a lot of our neighborhoods it's an acknowledgment of that neighborhood's history. So it might be an historically Black theater or a jazz museum, things like that. These are the characteristics that made the neighborhood special and we want to sort of help celebrate and lift up. So that's the community wellness pillar.

Melissa : 17:06

And then the fourth pillar is our newest pillar. We're sort of being more explicit about it. It's always been part of the work, but we're trying to be more explicit about our commitment to economic vitality in a neighborhood and that's sort of a two-sided sort of the sort of personal capacity for folks to earn a good income and advance their situation for themselves and their families, and then sort of a economic thriving in a neighborhood. So that's how much does a dollar stay in a neighborhood? Are there places to spend your money stores, coffee shops, grocery stores, etc. At Main Street? And again, that looks different in every neighborhood but it's pretty important to us.

Melissa : 17:53

I'm going to say one thing I buried the lead, the sort of essential piece of our model. So those are the four pillars. Essential piece of the model is this concept of a community quarterback Right? So this is a single non-profit whose sole job is to get up every morning and think about Advocate 4, relate to and drive resources for the residents in that neighborhood. They're coordinating all these investments across the four pillars and they're making sure that the resident voice is at the center. So they are key and there really are clients at Purpose Built Communities. They're what we call our network members and the folks we work with every day and we've got 27 of them around the country and that's an increasing number.

Joel: 18:45

I think that that emphasis on having leadership there is truly vital, because it's an old, it's an adage, and I think it's true is that you know, when everyone's responsible, no one's responsible, and so that makes so much sense to me, and I also like that. It doesn't seem like a one size fits all approach, but it seems more holistic. Could you talk about the difference between the kind of more siloed approaches that have been tried before versus your more holistic approach?

Melissa : 19:20

I think one of our adages I like yours, one of ours is co-location does not mean collaboration, right? So just because you have a housing project or an affordable housing or a mixed income housing development coming in and a school right across the street and a health clinic that's around the corner, doesn't mean that the residents at this place know that they can go to that school and that they're allowed to go to this health clinic, right? So somebody has to be paying attention to all of that, and it is hard, slow, long-term work, and this community quarterback is the entity that stays the course as new investments come online, as new programs are needed and want to be brought in. We don't want to program people to death, but people do need programs. The idea, though, is to create the conditions out of which a healthy and productive life is inevitable, and that's essentially inevitable, so that's the goal, but these community quarterbacks are focused on ensuring that the investments come and that the residents there take advantage of them and know that those investments are for them.

Joel: 20:38

Yeah, yeah, absolutely, and you mentioned it being slow, hard, long-term work, and I think anything worthwhile really is. If anyone tells you that you can do something great and it's going to be quick and easy, they're probably selling you something that's exactly, especially since it is hard and it's really focused on racial equity.

Melissa : 20:59

We didn't get in this ditch overnight and we're not going to get out of it overnight.

Joel: 21:03

Yeah, I was talking with Angela Barbash, who's a local investment advisor and has a really, really wonderful firm up in Michigan, and she said the same thing on here. She said that it took us 500 years to get into the economic situation we're in right now. This may not be solved in our generation's lifetime, but that we're trying to do the work for seven generations from now, not just for ours or for the next one. What do you feel like is the biggest challenge that you guys see on the ground in that slow, hard, long-term work?

Melissa : 21:39

Well, I think this is it costs a lot of money and the costs are increasing, and so there's sort of two levels of that. There's funding for an intermediary organization like a community quarterback. That's difficult to find and it's getting a little easier maybe, but that generally they're funded philanthropically and they need to raise their funds every year. So that can be tricky, right, because they're not delivering programs, they're creating holistic, long-term change in a neighborhood, and it's expensive, although it's not nearly as expensive as the alternative. And then there's the need for low-cost, flexible capital to come into these neighborhoods to help make these investments possible, and it just takes a lot of financial tools and a reasonable amount of sophistication to pull these deals off right.

Melissa : 22:49

So these are often not the neighborhoods where capital flows most easily. So you need things like all the federal tools, like low-income housing tax credits and new markets tax credits. You need philanthropy to help fill financing gaps, traditional debt, other kinds of debt. It is incredibly complicated sort of patchwork of financing, and that's one of the things we try to help folks do. But they often have to figure it out locally because it can sometimes be the rules are different, different states and so on. So it's complicated. So I would say over $3 billion has been invested in our purpose-built community neighborhoods across the country, and that's probably a conservative estimate, with more debts, more to come, but it's expensive and hard work.

Joel: 23:47

Has there been any over the years? With the increase in awareness around local investing, catalytic investing, impact investing, have you seen an increase in some of the capital coming from that area as well, or does it still have a really long way to go?

Melissa : 24:06

Yeah, I would say not as much as we would like or hoped. I think there were things like opportunity zone funds that we were excited about for a time that really have not materialized at the scale that we would have hoped. So no, I think the truth is these are not places. If you were going to think about return on investment in a traditional way, then probably you're going to be disappointed with a lot of investments in there. But if you can expand your definition of what a return on investment is to include the creation of assets in a community, then I can't think of a better investment. Right, so, but but we are still working on on telling that story and convince people. It's difficult, I understand. It's a real paradigm shift, but it doesn't mean there's no returns, but they're probably not, you know, going to be market rate returns.

Joel: 25:22

Why is it important for you all to start that growth of prosperity at the local level and start with place.

Melissa : 25:30

Yeah, I think we are deep believers in neighborhood being the unit of change. In our country. People think about how people experience their lives. Right, they experience it at the neighborhood level. It's where they go to school, it's where they shop, it's where they, if they're living in a healthy and thriving neighborhood, and think about the cost, if those amenities are not in their neighborhoods, right and so of their life. So, and what sort of tax that puts on folks to have to take a bus to the grocery store and bring, bring, you know, groceries back, or or put things together to get their kids into a school that's higher performing because the school in their neighborhood is not high quality. So so we just think it's really sort of that's, it's sort of the baseline level and if, if the conditions can be right in and and sort of appropriate and high quality enough in a neighborhood, then then really there's no, there's no stopping them right, there's no stopping people, there's no, there's no lack of potential in these neighborhoods, there's no lack of ideas and creativity and and smarts. It's really about about having the conditions that you know in the neighborhood, conditions to be able to live into that potential and and then you know, we, we think prosperity ensues right, and you know that's a broad definition of prosperity. That's that's a healthy life, that's a, that's a you know, one where you can take care of your family and and have a lot of personal choice.

Melissa : 27:28

We've been at it since 2009 officially. I think there were probably a few years there when people were coming to visit the East Lake neighborhood in Atlanta and, and, and we were, but really 2009 was the official start. So we're added it for, you know, 14 years here and we have 27 neighborhoods around the country that are official purpose built network members. And then we are in conversation with about 3 or 4 more who will probably become purpose built network members this year or in the next year or so. We've a pretty long diligence process before somebody can become a network member. We want to have a high degree of confidence in leadership, in their strategies across all the pillars and so on, and we support them in developing that. So that's a big part of what we do, and and then so and that's suspect will grow to about 35 or 37 or so in the next in our strategic plan period, which will be between now and 2008.

Joel: 28:39

Yeah, what do you you know when you think about all these different communities? I'm sure you've gotten to interact with the people that are actually living there day to day and the impact that it's had on their lives and their family's life. What's been the biggest moment for you that's really demonstrated the effect of the work that you all have done.

Melissa : 29:00

It's really hard to pick one and really I guess one community is actually a little bit unique in our network is in Houston. It's called connect community, is the community quarterback there and this is a refugee resettlement neighborhood. So it's a very concentrated neighborhood with people from all over the world who have been displaced from their home country and are now living in the United States, and the community quarterback there has done a really beautiful job of really cultivating local leaders. And we have a conference every year. We haven't had one for a couple of years, but we're gonna be reconvening in April for the first time since 2019. And often a resident will be part of that conference.

Melissa : 30:01

And the Houston the folks from Houston often are particularly poignant to me. I mean, they've just had incredible personal stories, like so many people, but there's this often pretty stark, and then to be able to be becoming leaders in their own communities in the United States is pretty extraordinary. So there's story after story. There's Grand Rapids incredible local leadership there. There's not one story I can tell you. They're all amazing people and our community quarterback's job is to elevate those stories and lift them up.

Melissa : 30:47

Well, I think, coming from the traditional nonprofit sector with traditional fundraising, grants and individual giving and the traditional pieces of a nonprofit pie.

Melissa : 31:04

It's been quite.

Melissa : 31:07

It's just so interesting to sort of learn more about community development finance and how complex it is, and there's an impatient part of me that just it says it just shouldn't be this hard to do the right thing. And when the right thing seems so painfully obvious and I am so I think that's been the biggest. I mean the fact that these things happen is extraordinary. It's so complicated and financially and logistically and everything else, and it happens because of extraordinary leaders who work together in their neighborhood with all the appropriate folks, and I mean that civic leaders, nonprofit leaders and resident leaders, all those kinds of leaders working together to figure out how to get something done across, without regards to partisanship and red and blue and all of those sort of traditional things that divide us. It's pretty extraordinary what it takes to get these projects done, and so it's been a hard aha for me. But also I mean just incredible stick to it Of Ness and creativity and generosity. There's a lot of generosity that's happening around our country at the local level and that's it's beautiful to witness.

Joel: 32:43

Finding that sort of catalytic issue that we can all agree on. I think you said something the effective, or it's just obvious how good it is. To me, neighborhood economics fits that same description and in the conference that's coming up in San Antonio, and I'm just wondering, like from your perspective, what is it about neighborhood economics that excites you and what are you looking forward to, both at and coming out of the upcoming conference in San Antonio?

Melissa : 33:14

So I'm here in the Bay Area and have been to SOCAP and which is the other conference that the neighborhood economics folks were had a hand in and were really founders of, and I loved the idea of it and I remember going and thinking I'm not sure this is really the idea of it is actually being actualized here, and then when I saw it in neighborhood economics I was like, oh, that's the right level. Again, back to this. That's the right unit of change. Right, let's get really proximate to the challenges, to the people and bring the resources together. And I love the idea of having additional and I don't wanna having the faith community in the mix. I think it's critical. They have a lot of resources in land and then certainly in social capital and so on in cities around the country.

Joel: 34:15

Yeah.

Melissa : 34:16

I think it's the right scale right and of course, kevin, rosalie and Tim have the ability to bring people from across the country with a lot of resources together, and that's I mean their convening power is extraordinary. So that's a group we wanna be associated with. We really feel like our network is doing the very work that neighborhood economics wants to celebrate and invest in, and so we're super excited. I went to Jackson with a couple of network member staff last year and everybody got a lot out of it. We really are looking forward to showing up big as purpose built this year at neighborhood economics. We think we have a lot to offer even folks who are not in our network and certainly we're not the only ones doing this by any stretch and we wanna be a resource and support to folks who are doing it in their own way and their own context in around the country. So we're really excited to be part of that growing field of neighborhoodists.

Melissa : 35:27

I really appreciate Tim Soren's offering. When we were at a meeting not too long ago he said the boundaries of a neighborhood are a gift. They help create the sort of focus that we need. Problems are hard. They've been around for a long time and to have the gift of neighborhood boundary is really helps. You know where you're gonna say yes and where you're gonna say no. So we're very happy to be broadening our circle of neighborhoodists around the country.

Joel: 36:09

I think that is such a powerful insight.

Joel: 36:12

And the other thing that I love about what you're saying and that I'm noticing the more and more I talk to people in the economic development impact, investing, local investing, social enterprise, really the solidarity economy in general is that that piece of solidarity does seem to mean that, hey, we're here.

Joel: 36:34

We might be here to compete in like how much good impact could we have, maybe, but it really does seem that it's more about a collaboration. I remember the very first local economies conference or meeting I ever went to, the business alliance for local living economies up in Buffalo, new York, back in 2013. And I don't remember her name, but the first speaker talked about biomimicry and talked about how people know this more now, but at that time it was brand new. Information to me was that trees aren't actually competing for sunlight in the way we always thought, but they're actually sharing their nutrients through their root systems in the soil, and that we can a rising tide can lift all ships, and the more that we collaborate and empower each other, the more we actually are empowering ourselves and our own communities. Because at the end of the day as I like to close out my show with is that we say we are each other. So I'm wondering if there's anything on that point of collaboration that you would like to speak to or to highlight.

Melissa : 37:37

Yeah, I think I mean that's such a beautiful, that's such a beautiful image and I think the stories of so many of the residents of our neighborhoods around the country are that these neighborhoods have been doing this for years. It's not new, right? This is not new. This is about creating the recognizing that that reciprocity, that sense of neighboring, that sense of we need each other, has been there all along and to be able to help it, to be able to walk alongside, is an extraordinary privilege, and we're at purpose built a little bit at the 10,000 foot level, but it's our great privilege to walk alongside those who are deeply in the work in communities and we don't take it for granted at all.

Melissa : 38:41

And I think this idea of you know we have one of the things purpose built does, I think, particularly well is network or network right. Our job is to help folks find each other. And this work I've said it before, I'll say it again the work is hard, it can be kind of lonely, and so our network. We spend a lot of time convening community practice and helping folks solve problems together. The idea of adding folks through the neighborhood economics network is really exciting to us and because we need each other.

Joel: 39:26

I really appreciate your time here today, melissa. I'm really excited to get to meet you in person in San Antonio and I'm excited for our audience both on Biz Radio and for the neighborhood economics cohort and following here to get to know the work of purpose built communities even better, and yeah. So thank you so much for your time today and for everyone listening out there. You know, take care of yourself and make sure to take care of someone else.

Melissa : 39:52

Great. Thanks so much for having me, Joel.