COMMUNITY DEVELOPMENT:
THE HISTORY—THE FUTURE
Msgr. William J. Linder1*
New Community Corporation
New Community Corporation provides us with two visions.
First, it is a work in progress building community from the grass
roots of a city, an effort that has been sustained for over 35 years.
Secondly, it is an example of how a community development corporation,
which derives its energy from the power of religious experience, can
work with the community, government, businesses and banking to create
a community that responds to the particular needs of people and enables
them to live with dignity. New Community has been built on a foundation
of moral values. It believes that all persons, as children of God,
are entitled to and capable of determining their own destiny. It sees
its mission as helping residents of inner cities improve the quality
of their lives to reflect individual God-given dignity and personal
achievement. Msgr.Linder outlines some of the accomplishments of New
Community and sees its future in economic development, new educational,
and financial service ventures. His presentation was offered at the
Living Justice Conference on October 20, 2001.
What I'd like to do is give you a brief overview of New Community
Corporation -- consider its beginnings and evolution and weave
some of the principles that guided us in creating our Community Development
Corporation in Newark. This is a really American thing with the people
making the difference—we are of, by, and for the people. That
is what makes it so interesting. It has been a major contributor to
the revitalization of Newark, which was devastated by the civil disorders
of the summer of 1967. New Community was at the beginning of that
whole process of building in service to a distinct community.
We now have over 3,000 units of housing and we employ over 2300 people
in the organizations of New Community. There are about 40 corporations,
by the way, that are part of this network. We do our own management;
we do our own central maintenance; we do our own security. Security,
for example, has 154 people. This was a necessity because we weren't
going to have a community that wasn't really safe for our people to
raise their families. We are also in the area of health -- one
of the areas we never really wanted to get into. We do bottom-up type
of thinking and our seniors kept saying "we do not want to go
to a nursing home outside our community," and we're 100% Medicaid.
Since the Medicaid nursing homes didn't want us, we started a nursing
home. We now have medical daycare centers for the elderly and we have
a whole visiting nurse service home health program. With all the health
programs now in place, 950 of the people out of the total of 2300
actually work in health care. I would also say that probably about
95% of them are working with frail elderly.
ECONOMIC DEVELOPMENT
For Profit Ventures
In our economic development project, we now have twelve for-profit
corporations. Some of them are rather interesting. Do you remember
all the attention that was given to the first Pathmark in Bedford
Stuyvesant? Ours is about 11 years old now and we own all the real
estate -- 100%. Interestingly enough, we also own two-thirds of that
Pathmark which was incorporated separately. We are two-thirds of the
board so we influence the decisions. The best part is we get 2/3s
of the profits, and so the profits from that market are turned back
into that community.
We have a number of good and successful operations. We have fine
dining in our Priory Restaurant and our Pizza Hut, Taco Bell, Dunkin
Donuts. All of these are owned totally by the community. For the past
two years we have had a factory where we turn out housing panels.
Somewhere around 750 homes in Newark have been built in our factory
and assembled on site. We are now doing our prototype of temporary
classrooms and we plan to market them. This is a response to a great
opportunity because there is about a billion and a half of state money
being poured into Newark to produce schools. There will be plenty
of relocation and about a hundred temporary classrooms are needed.
We are positioning ourselves to bid for that business.
The Fashion Institute
We also have a fashion center, which produced clothing and
home decor. We focus on certain niche markets. In clothing, for example,
we focus on African-American attire which we market widely. Our creations
are mostly family type outfits and practical decorations and furnishings.
TRAINING AND EDUCATION
Early Childhood and Primary Education
NCC values education. We have two charter schools, two parochial
schools, and a traditional public school which we've adopted
over the years because 82% of the children in that school live in
New Community. We went to the principal years ago and said "We've
got to work together for these children. Let's produce a new
kind of school that's for our community."
Workforce Development Center
We also have a workforce development center where we train about 500
people a year in twelve different areas. High tech starts with rewiring
and it works all the way up to CISCO programs. We also are in Early
Childhood education aides and we prepare nurse's aides and home
care workers. Early in 2002 we'll be doing a LPN program for
those who have come off welfare and are now nurse's aides or
home health care providers. We're going to allow them, with full
pay, to work half a day and go to school half a day. In this age where
there is a great shortage of nurses, we feel that this is a good way
to go because these people are already working in health care. They
like the field; they're comfortable in the field, and this is
what they want to do. We are just going through the process of selection
for our first class. We hope to take about 20 students per class and
the course will take approximately just over a year and a half. In
19 months they will move up and seek licensure as Practical Nurses.
Relationships with Higher Education
In addition to that we have arrangements with a number of
universities so that classes are brought into our community. We are
trying to bring higher education into our community to continue the
upward mobility and make education accessible and consistent with
family responsibilities. Education should be where people live and
where people work. We're dealing with people who have families and
responsibilities. They need to find accessible and convenient ways
of increasing their knowledge so that they can move on to higher incomes.
BANKING
We're very much into community banking as well. Although they
are not desired customers, people with low incomes need to bank and
to receive financial counseling as well as services. We have a credit
union that is a Community Development Credit Union. We do everything
from micro loans to credit counseling, financial education enrollment,
and mortgage preparation. We now actually process mortgages. We managed
to get ourselves approved as an FHA insured mortgage processor. We
did this basically to bring the financial services back into the community
and to overcome the racism of our banking industry. Again we need
to bring the services to the community where the people who need them
are.
Small Business Fund
We have a small business fund that will give small business
loans. This is separate from the credit union because the credit union
is very regulated. At times, we need to move out and take greater
risks, so through our business loan fund we are able to help anyone
who wants to start a business or anyone who wants to expand the business,
provided that it means more jobs. So, if someone wants to put a new
front on their building, it may look nice, it may increase their business,
but we're not interested. If they want a piece of equipment which
will allow them to hire another person, that's what we are interested
in funding.
Tax Credit Equity Fund
We also have a tax credit equity fund. We found that
many of the small groups, or groups that did special work—for
example with child abuse, domestic violence issues, AIDS, challenged
disabled, mentally ill—had no track record in housing. They could
never get the allocation of the low income tax credits and they couldn't
get to be eligible through the financial institutions because they're
too small. It didn't make sense for the banks because of the high
costs, and so we helped them from a State fund. Because we've been
in housing for so long and we're fairly substantial now, banks are
more apt to give the money to us, and we in turn give it to these
non-profits. So what does it mean? We have done projects for families
with AIDS, and for domestic violence shelters. Normally this would
never be done in the tax credit system. We've done programs for agencies
like Cerebral Palsy where they now have housing for their people.
Over the last four years we have raised 30 million dollars, and that's
all out. We are now going into our third fund (which we hope to have
by Jan.1st) which will be another 20 million dollars, that
won't be for New Community, but will be for other small non-profits.
SOCIAL PROJECTS
Human Services
We tend to be very heavily into youth intervention programs.
We're interested in trying to hedge problems as early as possible.
We are also interested in supplying support services in under-served
areas, but also where the actual social issues are not given attention
by the social service agencies.
Communications
We believe in communications, new and traditional. If you
want to see more on New Community, visit our website (newcommunity.org).
We also found that our people complained about the papers and what's
in them, and so New Community developed its own paper "The Clarion."
People need to see children who are achieving; they need to read about
people who are volunteering, the people who are sacrificing for others.
We need to tell the "Clarion" because there is more good
news out there than bad news, the usual newspaper fare notwithstanding.
Performing Arts
In New Jersey we have a performing arts center that cost 188
million dollars to build. You can only have world-class acts in such
a facility. It has no impact in the overall community with regard
to the arts. So we have our own department of arts, and we try to
stress the rich history of the local people. For example in music
we do jazz because Newark was once a great jazz city. Also in art,
we have our own center -- a 150-year-old Gothic church that we converted
to an office complex. There we display art in the atrium and give
the opportunity for various groups such as Haitians and Trinidadians
to exhibit. As people go through, they begin to appreciate and celebrate
the diversity of our people.
INTERNATIONAL INITIATIVES
Finally, what's happened in recent times? More and more we've gotten
involved internationally. There is a great interest in the world about
community development like ours. We presently have about 20 countries
that have been visiting us over the last four years. The event of
9-11 will most likely impact that negatively. We're involved, for
example, in the Irish peace process in helping to develop non-government
groups. They need to be a new kind of voice in Northern Ireland. We
have also gone to Ireland to help and to encourage the work in East
Belfast -- and to help a Catholic Priest who was developing his part
of the city. We've gone to Central and Eastern Europe, as well as
to Africa. New Community has a demonstration farm in Kenya near Lake
Victoria—a simple operation, teaching people how best to farm.
Four hundred families participated the first year. (first anniversary
10/01) We teach zero-grazing for the animals. We try to seek ways
to increase production of food in a place where the population has
risen, and the food production has gone down. There has been a tremendous
impact and the cost is low. We began to get partners there to work
with the people and it's paying off. Catholic University in East Africa
sent two professors who spent a month with New Community to see on
the ground, the kind of community we created and what could be done.
They now have the first community development project that serves
eight countries. Gradually we hope it will develop into a school.
We're in an age of technology where we don't need governments to talk
to each other; we can by-pass corresponding with government and directly
assist the poor.
Conclusion
Our basic principle is to respond to needs, bring services
to where they areneeded, and have the people of the community involved
and responsible at every level. In everything we do, we try to be
totally comprehensive and responsive. If there isn't going to be a
response to a need, a response that respects the dignity of people,
then we're going to do it.
New Community: Community Development Corporation
Mission
To help residents of inner cities improve the quality of their
lives
to reflect individual God-given dignity and personal achievement.
Objectives
- To concretize the need and the value of working and living
together with mutual respect and courtesy.
- To increase the awareness that each person's presence
and personal gifts should be used to respond to each other's
needs in the crises of daily life: trouble, sickness, death, etc.
- To inspire other thinking and caring people to involve
their time and talent in New Community's corporate effort to
improve both economic opportunities and the quality of life in their
neighborhoods.
- To use the presence and power of new Community to provide:
- dignified, affordable housing.
- a safe, secure neighborhood.
- quality health and day care
- creative education programs.
- mutual awareness of the value of a faith life.
- neighborhood economic opportunities.
1 *Msgr. William
J. Linder is the Founder and Chair of the Board of New Community
Corporation, Newark, NJ, and a priest of the Archdiocese of Newark.
He earned a B.A. from Seton Hall University and a Master's and
Doctorate from Fordham University. Monsignor has also received seven
honorary doctorates and pursued studies at specialized institutions
such as the Wharton School, University of Pennsylvania and Centro
Intercultural de Documentacion in Cuernavaca, Mexico.
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