Neighborhood CDCs push for closer collaboration with next Cleveland mayor, city council

The last time Cleveland’s nonprofit community development corporations, or CDCs, developed a neighborhood platform was during the 2001 mayoral election. Some of the things they lobbied for then, like establishing a separate department of building and housing, creating business improvement districts (BIDs), and connecting neighborhoods with the Towpath, have become realities, while others, such as investing in creative home repair programs, remain ongoing issues.

Now, 20 years later, a winnowed-down but nonetheless still powerful group of CDCs have launched a neighborhood platform to influence the next mayor’s agenda after the Nov. 2 election. They see an opportunity to not only influence a Kevin Kelley or Justin Bibb administration, but also to help the city recover from the COVID-19 pandemic, which has disrupted city services, exacerbated disparities between residents, and wreaked havoc on local business districts.

A CDC is a nonprofit organization that provides programs, services, and activities that promote and support community development, or neighborhood improvement. CDCs in Cleveland are involved in activities like helping to attract new businesses to their neighborhoods, helping landlords fix up storefronts, organizing block clubs, building affordable housing, redeveloping vacant homes, cleaning up empty lots, and more. Even more than in most other cities, local CDCs in Cleveland are viewed as the vehicles for getting things gone. 

The issues CDCs are dealing with now are pretty much the same as they were 20 years ago: housing, neighborhood economic development, infrastructure such as parks and broadband, and modernization of city services among them. Still, there’s an urgency to making progress now, leaders say, because of the upcoming change in mayoral leadership and the city council. 

“We wanted to develop a platform that the mayor and council candidates could respond to,” said Tania Menesse, CEO and president of Cleveland Neighborhood Progress (CNP), an organization that provides support, training, and capacity building for CDCs. “Once the election is over and people start to govern, it can be a blueprint and set the tone for the next administration.”

Laser-focused on equity

What do CDCs want? Their priorities include beginning to address the racial disparities that have been laid bare by the COVID-19 pandemic, the murder of George Floyd, and the Black Lives Matter movement. In a city where neighborhoods are often harshly divided along east and west side lines, as well as racial ones, CDCs want to tip the scales towards greater social equity.  

“New leaders in city hall will face longstanding challenges, including a deteriorating housing stock, disparities in investment across neighborhoods, the persistent effects of redlining, and the many pernicious ways that systemic racism continues to manifest in the lives of people and communities of color,” the platform states. “As the new administration and city council seek to implement a new vision for the city of Cleveland, it is incumbent on CDCs and CNP to be trusted resources and partners in those efforts.” 

The 2020 U.S. census also provided yet another reminder that Cleveland’s deeply-ingrained challenges are far from over, noting that the city’s population dropped by 6 percent from 2010-2020. On the other hand, it was the smallest drop in the last 50 years, suggesting that the only way to go at this point might be up. 

A healthy portion of CDC revenues come from federal Community Development Block Grants (CDBG) distributed by the city, and the platform argues that the city should continue and even deepen its relationship with the city. “CDCs are best positioned and qualified to be the primary mechanism to mobilize and strengthen Cleveland’s neighborhoods,” it says. 

The long-term goal is to help the city steer its way out of COVID-19 toward equitable recovery. “Cleveland’s next mayor and city council should partner with CDCs and leverage their expertise, relationships, and ability to mobilize, with the goal of delivering transformative change in every Cleveland neighborhood,” the platform states. 

Ed Stockhausen, vice president of advocacy and public policy at CNP, said the organization spent several months gathering input from CDCs on the document. “We wanted to make sure what’s in the platform had been thoroughly grounded in what CDC leaders wanted,” he said. “We also wanted to make sure it’s actionable and can be accomplished in four years.”

“This is the work plan,” he added.

A legacy of mixed results 

It’s worth saying that Cleveland’s CDCs haven’t always been successful at the hard work of bringing change to their neighborhoods. Cleveland remains a stubbornly poor city, with 46.1 percent of children living in poverty and a homeownership rate of just 41.6% percent. 

There are also fewer CDCs serving residents than there were 20 years ago. During that time, the number of CDCs have roughly been cut in half, Stockhausen said, from 47 to 23. That’s not necessarily a bad thing. Many have merged for funding reasons or because there is greater efficiency serving a larger area. Others, though, have failed because they were ineffective and eventually lost funding. 

In a handful of cases, CDCs, which tend to be political entities because a portion of their funding typically comes from the city and its council members, have gotten caught up in misspending funds and even criminal activity. Examples include Collinwood Nottingham Villages CDC, where former executive director Tamiko Partner was indicted for stealing hundreds of thousands of dollars from the nonprofit, as well as Buckeye Shaker Square CDC, where former Ward 4 council member Ken Johnson orchestrated schemes to steal more than $200,000. 

Stockhausen acknowledged CDCs’ lingering challenges and the recent spate of mergers and failures. However, he said in an email that many “shut down not because of a lack of talent, but because the resources available to them…were not enough to outweigh disinvestment, redlining, racial bias in the appraisal of homes, and other forms of racism that cut off Cleveland neighborhoods – and their residents and businesses – from opportunities for growth.”

Stockhausen also said that by investing more in CDCs, and holding them accountable for results, the city can push towards a more equitable future. “We should do more to elevate them, to empower them, and to help them accomplish what our many neighborhoods need,” he said. 

Wanted: transparency in local government 

CNP’s neighborhood platform includes a raft of policy recommendations such as increasing homeownership in the city by 5 percent within the first four years of the new administration, creating a local Housing Trust Fund to support and develop affordable housing, and updating the city’s tax abatement policy to incentivize development in areas where it isn’t happening. 

Yet underlying it all is the need to create a renewed partnership between CDCs and city hall. In recent years, the Jackson administration has grown distant from residents at the local level and it’s been harder for CDCs to work with or partner with the city, said Rosemary Mudry, executive director of West Park Kamm’s Neighborhood Development. 

“We want to be on your side, not an adversary,” she said. “I think it’s fair to say that there has not been a lot of engagement at the mayoral level lately.” 

Of course, city residents have heard a lot this election season about the need to modernize city hall, and CDC leaders chimed in to say that residents have little faith right now in the city’s ability to deliver high-quality services, in part because its technology and website are out of date. 

“You shouldn’t have to go to city hall to access services,” said Stockhausen. “You should be able to do it while running to the library or raising your kids, if you’re working 9 am to 5 pm.”

On the campaign trail, Bibb has said tracking a complaint with the city should be as easy as tracking an Amazon package, while Kelley has said that city hall should remove barriers between residents and services.

As Stockhausen said, “Government doesn’t have to be some kind of clunky, bureaucratic obstacle course.”

If the city was better at delivering basic services, this could free up council members, who often act as ambassadors or gatekeepers to basic functions, such as obtaining a new city trash can, to legislate for important neighborhood or city-wide changes. “Council people need to be focused on policy that improves the life of the city, and less so on consumer affairs,” said Stockhausen.

He added that city employees should spend more time in the city’s neighborhoods. “Just by being present more often, it makes city hall feel more accessible,” said Stockhausen. “It turns bureaucrats into real people you can have relationships with.”

To foster equitable development, each neighborhood needs to have its own revitalization plan and partner with the city to achieve it, said Joy Johnson of Burten, Bell, Carr Development Corp., which serves the Central, Kinsman, Buckeye, and Shaker Square neighborhoods. 

CDCs can work with the city to realize those plans, she added, continuing a partnership that has existed in Cleveland since the 1970s. “We’re not asking them to create world peace,” said Johnson. “We’re asking them, ‘How can we help you get things done?’”

Mayoral candidates Justin Bibb and Kevin Kelley responded “yes” to 5 questions at CNP’s Progress Institute last month. The questions were:

1. Will you commit to convening CDC leaders, your cabinet, and Council Leadership on a bimonthly basis?

2. Will you commit to working with the community development industry to re-think how the city funds and works with CDCs?

3. Since 2004, Cleveland has had a tax abatement program. Will you commit to working with us – the community development industry – City Council, and other stakeholders to update the city’s tax abatement policy before it needs to be reauthorized?

4. Will you work with outside partners to launch a comprehensive marketing plan for Cleveland and all of its neighborhoods?

5. Cleveland’s zoning laws are antiquated. They do not work for anyone anymore. Will you work with Council to pass and implement form-based zoning?

6. Will you work with CDCs, CNP, and other partners – like CHN Housing Partners, the Downtown Cleveland Alliance, Enterprise, and the Greater Cleveland Partnership – to bring home capital dollars from the Statehouse for neighborhood projects?

For information about the Tues. Nov. 2 general election, visit boe.cuyahogacounty.gov. To view CNP’s neighborhood platform, visit http://www.clevelandnp.org/neighborhood-platform/.

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Lee Chilcote is editor of The Land.