Community Programs

Our proposals aimed at helping working-age adults represent a mixture of new government spending and mandated changes in wages and employee benefits. These measures can touch the lives of individuals and families in a positive way, and thus indirectly improve circumstances in low-income communities. The major limitation of such reforms is that they are administered to individuals without directly addressing conditions in the neighborhood of which the individual is a part.

One effective way to deal with neighborhoods is to support community development corporations (cdcs). The Watts Labor Community Action Committee in Los Angeles, Chicanos Por La Causa in Phoenix, the Tacolcy Economic Development Corporation in Liberty City (Miami), and other cdcs make neighborhood-by-neighborhood improvements in housing conditions, street appearance, and safety. Concentrating on housing, commercial development, and the services that support these activities, such corporations provide an organizational structure for local community leaders to control capital, run social programs, and rekindle people's hopes. cdcs may promote street spruce-ups, neighborhood food shopping at fair prices, decent living space for the elderly, and recreational space for youth. They produce visible, tangible results that can provide power bases for community leaders and help attract new funds and residents to deteriorated neighborhoods.

The effect of community development corporations is to create an environment that signals renewal, not deterioration. Their efforts to change and improve communities are in step with the self-improvement efforts of individuals. Their success reinforces the values of the larger society. During the last two decades, several thousand development corporations have been created, along with several national organizations that fund and assist them with technical expertise. Thus, a system for expanding and strengthening them is already in place, a system that can absorb a significant infusion of new financing.

The problems of troubled neighborhoods are compounded by concentrations of the poor. At the same time, many low-, moderate-, and middle-income families find it increasingly difficult to acquire start-up homes or find housing at affordable rents. cdcs could play an important role in experiments that use tax incentives or tax credits to encourage the construction of low-, moderate-, and middle-income housing in troubled neighborhoods.

Community development corporations are only one important part of an effort to improve the environment in which people grow up and develop. We have also pointed out the need to rid our cities of crime and drugs and to rebuild their deteriorating infrastructure. Although our report concentrates on ways to build human