The intersection between community safety and the built environment is often overlooked. Fortunately, new federal funds—including those from the Infrastructure Investment and Jobs Act and the American Rescue Plan Act—can help create the holistic, life-affirming community safety interventions that all people deserve, write Hanna Love, Sam Washington, and Thea Sebastian.
In an analysis of gun violence patterns in four U.S. cities—Chicago; Nashville, Tenn.; Kansas City, Mo.; and Baltimore—DW Rowlands and Hanna Love find that each city’s gun homicide increases were driven predominantly by upticks in neighborhoods where gun violence has been a persistent fixture of daily life, alongside systemic disinvestment, segregation, and economic inequality.
Euclid, Ohio—a majority-Black Rust Belt city—is paving the way for business districts of all sizes to recover and grow from within following the COVID-19 pandemic. In the Bass Center’s latest Placemaking Postcard, Ilana Preuss explains how the city is supporting small-scale manufacturing, which is critical for equitable growth.
Did you know? In July 2021, the Bass Center released a primer on the evidence base behind the community ownership of real estate. The report describes how community ownership is effective at: increasing retention of home ownership for low-income households; helping these households better withstand economic recessions; distributing land-based wealth intergenerationally; and generating fiscal benefits to state and local governments in weaker markets.
What we’re reading
Ownership matters. In cities across the nation, landlords often shield their identities behind LLCs that make it difficult for tenants to address problematic landlord behavior and advocate for their rights. In a piece for Shelterforce, Alex Williamson describes how a new digital tool, Who Owns What, is empowering New York City residents to demystify building ownership and advocate for the safe and habitable homes they deserve. Also in New York City, councilmembers are fighting for the Community Opportunity to Purchase Act, which would enable community land trusts to purchase multifamily properties before they hit the market—presenting an opportunity for these nonprofit organizations to lease apartments at permanently affordable rates. On the other side of the country, another promising effort for community ownership is emerging in Los Angeles, as three local community development financial institutions—Little Tokyo Service Center, Inclusive Action for the City, and East LA Community Corporation—have launched an initiative to help small businesses own their real estate, and have so far secured $5.5 million in loans to buy five buildings with a total square footage of 26,000. For more context on how Little Tokyo Service Center has been advocating for community priorities, see this Placemaking Postcard from May 2020.
Operationalizing equity. In traditional economic development planning, city and regional stakeholders often only engage residents on projects that are already underway, rather than co-creating projects in partnership with them. A new Urban Institute report argues that local economic development leaders should broaden their decisionmaking tables from the outset to ensure planning decisions better reflect resident priorities. The New York Times covered another “quietly radical” approach to equitable community decisionmaking, asking the pivotal question: What if public funds were controlled by the public? In this piece, participatory budgeting is offered as a key mechanism to redistribute power and generate greater democratic engagement among citizens. In promising news for equity at the national level, more than 90 federal agencies released their first-ever equity action plans last month, laying out over 300 strategies to better support underserved communities—from helping people with criminal records access housing to better supporting often-excluded residents in rural communities.
