For more than five decades, public, private and nonprofit entities have implemented a range of targeted neighborhood revitalization strategies designed to tackle the challenges associated with concentrated poverty. These efforts have included urban renewal programs, loans and grants motivated by the Community Reinvestment Act, housing redevelopment through HOPE VI, Empowerment Zones, New Markets Tax Credit investments, as well as foundation-led comprehensive community initiatives and local nonprofit ventures. The most ambitious of these initiatives have aimed to concentrate multiple investments in both infrastructure and human capital in a single neighborhood. ; At their core, these comprehensive initiatives try to tackle long-standing disparities in housing, employment, education, and health caused by public policy decisions, market forces and failures, and patterns of discrimination. Yet overcoming these inequalities has proven to be difficult. In some cases, place-based initiatives have led to measurable improvements; in others, efforts have struggled, failing to significantly “move the needle” on the challenges associated with deeply entrenched neighborhood poverty. ; Despite these mixed-outcomes, place-based strategies are receiving increased attention and funding from both the public and private sector. The Obama Administration has explicitly endorsed place-based policy, and has launched an evaluation of existing federal place-based policies in an effort to identify areas of overlap and to seek avenues for interagency coordination. Additionally, the administration has budgeted for a new cohort of place-based anti-poverty programs. On a more local scale, a number of California-based foundations and CDFIs, as well as local government agencies, have also expanded investments in place-based initiatives.

https://www.frbsf.org/community-development/files/N_Cytron.pdf

Improving the outcomes of place-based initiatives

Evaluating them can be an even more complex undertaking. Community change initiatives (CCIs)1, indeed most comprehensive place-based initiatives, consist of multiple interventions over a number of years at individual, group, institutional, social, and political levels. Any one of these interventions could be an evaluation in and of itself, but with a CCI, you want to capture what matters. But what do you measure? How often? Which methods should be used? And how does what you measure influence the very nature of the CCI itself? Over the past 10 years, the Annie E. Casey Foundation has been funding, implementing, and evaluating Making Connections, a CCI in 10 urban neighborhoods across the U.S. As part of the evaluation team for this initiative, I found that I have compiled lists of rules and lessons for myself about the evaluation process, and these lists have become important reminders of things to consider when embarking on the evaluation of a comprehensive placebased initiative. In particular, the final evaluation and documentation of Making Connections has reinforced five lessons about evaluating CCIs that I wish I had known ten years ago. They’re certainly not hard-and-fast rules— maybe one lesson I’ve learned from this work is that there are no hard-and-fast rules! Instead, think of them as prompts to consider when planning and implementing evaluations of CCIs and other place-based initiatives.

Five simple rules for evaluating complex community initiatives

A central goal of U.S. social welfare policy is to ensure that all children have the opportunity to reach their full potential as productive adults. Yet it is increasingly clear that where children live plays a central role in determining their life chances. Children growing up in high-poverty neighborhoods, with extreme levels of racial and economic segregation and inadequate public services— police, schools, sanitation, grocery stores—are at risk for a range of negative outcomes, including poor physical and mental health, cognitive delays, risky sexual behavior, and delinquency.1 The consequences for these children’s life chances—and for society—are severe: they are more likely than those who grow up in less distressed communities to drop out of high school, get involved in gangs, become teen parents, and less likely to be employed when they reach adulthood.2 Despite the importance of place, there has been comparatively little research on the ways that the neighUnderstanding How Place Matters for Kids

Understanding how place matters for kids

/pdf/youth-from-distressed-neighborhoods-vulnerable-youth-and-the-54zeznfh12.pdf

Heidi Johnson

Papers

Youth from Distressed Neighborhoods. Vulnerable Youth and the Transition to Adulthood. ASPE Research Brief.