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"A good overview of the intellectual roots and current policy context for the growing movement to rebuild this country's communities."--Martin Eakes, C.E.O., Self Help Credit Union

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THE COMMUNITY ECONOMIC DEVELOPMENT MOVEMENT

DUKE UNIVERSITY PRESS

Contents

Acknowledgments...............................................................................vii1. Introduction...............................................................................12. Background: The Turn to Community-Based Organizations in Social Policy.....................7General Planning: The Revival of Redevelopment and Community Action...........................7Housing.......................................................................................19Banking and Credit............................................................................26Job Training and Placement....................................................................34Welfare Reform................................................................................37Community Health Care.........................................................................393. Three Logics of Community Action...........................................................41Economic......................................................................................42Social........................................................................................49Political.....................................................................................584. The Community as Beneficiary of Economic Development.......................................69The Local Perspective.........................................................................69The Community as Residual Claimant: Development Rights........................................76Local Trade: Self-Reliance and Import Substitution............................................95Local Knowledge as a Community Asset..........................................................1095. The Community as Agent of Economic Development.............................................113Tools.........................................................................................114Institutions: The Community Development Corporation...........................................119Institutions: Cooperatives....................................................................130Hybrids: Churches and Mutual Housing Associations.............................................1376. Constrained Property: Rights as Anchors....................................................143Subsidized Housing............................................................................145Enterprises: Cooperatives.....................................................................156Community-Based Nongovernmental Organizations: The Nonprofit Corporation......................160Churches: Mobile versus Immobile Membership...................................................1627. Induced Mobilization.......................................................................167The Ex Ante Structural Approach...............................................................169The Ex Post Competitive Approach..............................................................1788. Institutional Hybridization................................................................195An Illustration: Hyde Square Co-op............................................................195Social Control, Opportunism, and Empowerment: Boundary Problems...............................2069. The Limits of CED..........................................................................219Distributive Consequences.....................................................................219The Instability of Low-Income Communities.....................................................222The Limited Appeal of the Communitarian Ideal.................................................223The Weakness of the Inside Game...............................................................225Conclusion....................................................................................227Index.........................................................................................229

Chapter One

Within a five-minute walk of the Stony Brook subway stop in the Jamaica Plain section of Boston, you can encounter the following:

-A renovated industrial site of about five acres and sixteen buildings that serves as a business incubator for small firms that receive technical assistance from the Jamaica Plain Neighborhood Development Corporation (JPNDC), a nonprofit community development corporation, which is also housed there. Known as the Brewery after its former proprietor, a beermaker, the complex is owned by a nonprofit subsidiary of JPNDC.

-A 44,000-square-foot Stop 'n Shop supermarket. The market opened in 1991 after years in which the community had been without a major grocery store. It lies next to a recently renovated community health center and a large high-rise public housing project. The land on which the market and health center sit was developed and is owned by a limited partnership that includes, in addition to a commercial investor, JPNDC and the Tenant Management Corporation of the housing project. Some of the income from the market's and health center's leases goes into the Community Benefits Trust Fund, which supports job training and business development activities.

-A cluster of small, attractive multi-unit residential buildings containing a total of forty-one homes. These units were built with support from the federal Low Income Housing Tax Credit, and most are occupied by low- and moderate-income families at rents limited to 30 percent of family income. The buildings are owned by a limited partnership in which the general partners are a subsidiary of JPNDC and a resident cooperative; the limited partners include five conventional business corporations and a nonprofit corporation with a board composed of prominent government and business figures that promotes housing development throughout the state.

-Two recently renovated apartment buildings-one with eleven units and one with forty-five units-designed with common areas and facilities for medical support for elderly residents. The project benefits from large federal grants. It is owned by JPNDC; the units are leased to the tenants at rents that may not exceed 30 percent of income.

-A wood-frame building containing three apartments recently renovated by JPNDC with support from various public programs. JPNDC then sold the building at a price well below market value to an individual, who, as a condition of ownership set out in the deed, must live in one of the units and rent the others only to people who meet specified income-eligibility conditions at specified rents.

These institutions are products of the Community Economic Development (CED) Movement. Although it is unusual to find so many concentrated in such a small area-there are still more there that I have not mentioned-such projects can be found in most cities; their numbers have increased substantially in recent years, and there will be many more of them if current programs succeed. Such projects figure prominently in the most optimistic and innovative approaches to urban poverty on both the left and the right. They exemplify a kind of social entrepreneurialism that is flourishing across the country. As support for traditional welfare and public housing programs has waned, a corresponding (though far from proportionate) increase in support for CED has arisen. The movement has been fueled by trends toward...