Stories of Philanthropic Leadership in Advancing Regional and ...

EQUITABLE PUBLIC INVESTMENThad a spillover effect on industrial cities such asChelsea, Lawrence, Lowell, and Brockton.Growing pockets of struggling families incommunities much farther from Boston are aproduct of the same gentrification phenomenon. 22Low-wage workers in Boston and the surroundingformer industrial centers are finding that jobs areincreasingly located in less accessible exurbanlocations and that their housing and transportationcosts are taking an ever larger share of their paycheck,even in the midst of an economic boom.In the northern reaches of the greater Bostonmetropolitan area, environmental and open spaceadvocates are asking hard questions about how issuesof housing affordability in Boston impact theirefforts at habitat preservation. “There are entirecommunities that do not buy into the need,” says EdBecker, executive director of Essex County GreenbeltAssociation, a 3,000-member open space land trust.“We need to start seeing the connection and therehas to be political leadership to translate thatrecognition to policy change.”Staff from PolicyLink ventured to Boston in June2001 at the invitation of the board of the HyamsFoundation, due to considerable interest in hearingwhat lessons PolicyLink could share from itsemerging national work. 23 Just weeks earlier,PolicyLink had launched its Equitable DevelopmentToolKit as an online resource to identify strategiesthat address residential and small businessdisplacement and other negative consequencesassociated with gentrification. “We suspected that alot of our grantees would be interested in hearingabout what PolicyLink had learned, so we pulledtogether an afternoon session for the community,”recalls Cathy Cha, former program officer for theHyams Foundation. “It was assembled rather hastily,actually. We were concerned that no one wouldbe able to make it.” Yet 40 communityrepresentatives attended.By the time of the March 2002 national conveningin Kansas City, more than a dozen organizations ingreater Boston were thinking proactively aboutregional equity policy. To help further thisthinking, the Hyams Foundation decided toprovide scholarship support to several of theirgrantees to ensure that they could attend thenational convening. “It was pretty evident that ourgroups needed to be there,” recalls Cha. “Therewere lessons they could offer other regions, and alot they could learn.” At the end of theproceedings, the Boston caucus shared a final lunchand considered the implications for regional equityin greater Boston.It was clear that for a collaborative effort to beworthwhile, it would need to meet a range ofexisting needs and achieve a set of common goalsfor the local organizations. For Marvin Martin, itmeant getting outcomes relevant to his constituentswith less hassle. Martin directs the Greater FourCorners Action Coalition, a neighborhood-basedplanning and economic development nonprofitserving Dorchester, Mass. “We do not need to joinanother coalition,” he declares, repeating a themeresonant with other representatives, “but any effortthat can make policy impact easier in ourcommunities is worth talking about.”Even more, it meant ceasing the endless cycle ofskirmishes with individual landlords throughout thecity, explains Mark Pedulla, lead organizer for CityLife/Vida Urbana. Pedulla increasingly found himselfdrawn across a farbroader swath of thecity, defending“What will make this worthtenants frompursuing is if we couldevictions bynegotiating rent really think about policy instabilizationa way that cuts across allcollective bargaining of our primary missionsagreements—one and makes it worth stayingbuilding at a time. in that conversation“We are getting because of what results.”called on more and— Warren Goldstein-Gelbmore to provideservices citywide,despite being anorganization focused on Jamaica Plain. We needsolutions that can impact thousands, not dozens.”Finally, Warren Goldstein-Gelb, program director atAlternatives for Community & Environment (ACE),surmises, “What will make this worth pursuing is ifwe could really think about policy in a way that cutsacross all of our primary missions and makes it worthstaying in that conversation because of what results.”22The William Monroe Trotter Institute at the University ofMassachusetts, Boston is conducting a study for the Annie E. CaseyFoundation that includes findings on displacement of the AfricanAmerican community.23PolicyLink was founded in 1999.53Funders’ Network for Smart Growth and Livable Communities