The Piton Foundation Releases Neighborhood Facts Data Book - 2004

OCTOBER 2004 - This fall, the Piton Foundation released Neighborhood Facts: A Data Book on the Status of Denver Neighborhoods from Census 2000. The report is part of an ongoing effort by The Piton Foundation to make data about the health of Denver's neighborhoods and families widely accessible. The Piton Foundation's goal for Neighborhood Facts is twofold: 1) promote the practical use of data by community and city leaders and 2) emphasize using information to build the knowledge capacity of institutions and residents in low-income neighborhoods.

Neighborhood Facts: A Data Book on the Status of Denver Neighborhoods from Census 2000 covers eight topics, including population, race and ethnicity, immigration, households and families, education, jobs and wages, poverty and housing. Each chapter highlights differences between Denver and its suburbs and differences among Denver's 77 neighborhoods. Each chapter concludes with detailed tables providing data for each of Denver's neighborhoods. The book also includes a pull-out map showing neighborhood resources and risk factors that exist in the city of Denver.

This report presents demographic and economic data pertaining to eight indicators: population, race and ethnicity, immigration, households and families, education, jobs and wages, poverty, and housing. Data about Denver is presented side-by-side to data on the suburbs, for comparison purposes, and then, presented at a neighborhood level.

Among the major findings of the report:

• Denver's population increased by 19% - to 555,000 people - between 1990 and 2000, after two decades of population loss. But in comparison, the suburbs grew by much more, 34%.

• At the time of the 2000 Census, the city's population was just slightly more than half white (52%), nearly one-third (32%) Latino, and 11% African American. Almost 80% of Denver's new residents between 1990 and 2000 were Latino.

• Even with the strong 20% increase in wages in the 1990s, 55% of the city's workers earned less than $28,000 and three quarters earned less than $40,000.

• In 2000, 13 neighborhoods in Denver were poor, down from 23 in 1990.

• In 2000, 24% of the city's youth were school dropouts; 37% of Latino youth had dropped out.

The Piton Foundation's mission is to provide opportunities for children and their families to move from poverty and dependence to self-reliance. The Piton Foundation is a founding member of the National Neighborhood Indicators Partnership. For more information about the Piton Foundation and to download a copy of the report, visit their web site at: http://www.piton.org.

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Reentry Mapping Network Expands with Six New Sites

SEPTEMBER 2004 - The Urban Institute’s Reentry Mapping Network, an innovative, three-year partnership that helps community leaders and residents address the challenges of ex-prisoners returning to society, launches its second phase this month with six new partner sites: Denver, Colorado; Hartford, Connecticut; Indianapolis, Indiana; Louisville, Kentucky; San Diego, California; and Seattle, Washington.

With more than 600,000 men and women leaving state and federal prisons each year, prisoner reentry is bringing added pressures to many hard-pressed neighborhoods, including an increased risk to public safety and heightened competition for limited jobs, housing, and social services. Developed with the support of the Annie E. Casey Foundation and the National Institute of Justice, the network seeks to strengthen communities’ capacities to acquire information that will help them better understand the many obstacles to successful prisoner reintegration.

Before the Reentry Mapping Network started in 2002, few cities had plotted neighborhood-level incarceration and reentry data; fewer had attempted to link this information with such indicators of community well-being as employment, crime, housing, and education. With guidance from Urban Institute researchers, led by Nancy La Vigne of the Institute’s Justice Policy Center, network partners pinpoint neighborhoods with high concentrations of returning prisoners, work with residents to target interventions and resources, and assess their effectiveness.

Network partners were selected competitively. Criteria were the feasibility and quality of the proposed research, its value to the community, and the quality and availability of current data.

The new partner organizations and their planned research topics are:

Denver: The Piton Foundation, the Colorado Department of Safety’s Division of Community Justice, and Making Connections Denver will analyze the effects of felon disenfranchisement, unemployment, family stability, and neighborhood risks and assets on reentry. The findings will be used to develop and implement community-based interventions.

Hartford: Building on the research of Making Connections Hartford on deteriorating economic conditions and increasing suburbanization, the Connecticut Policy and Economic Council will promote the coordination of reentry services by analyzing the difficulties ex-prisoners have securing jobs.

Indianapolis: The United Way of Central Indiana will map incarceration and reentry patterns to help local organizations better understand and respond to prisoner reentry issues.

Louisville: Making Connections Louisville will develop neighborhood-level data and analyses to foster residents’ solutions to reentry problems.

San Diego: The San Diego District Attorney’s Office and the San Diego Association of Governments will gather information on the previous residences and criminal histories of ex-offenders and analyze this population’s needs and resources upon returning to the community.

Seattle: Public Health Seattle, King County, and Making Connections White Center/ Boulevard Park will assess reentry patterns on the basis of race, country of origin, socioeconomic status, gender, and the presence of dependent children. Public Health Seattle and Making Connections will collaborate with community representatives in using the data to identify and improve services for ex-prisoners.

The original partner sites and organizations are:

Des Moines, Iowa: Child and Family Policy Center

Milwaukee, Wisconsin: Nonprofit Center of Milwaukee

Oakland, California: Urban Strategies Council

Providence, Rhode Island: Providence Plan and the Family Life Center

Washington, D.C.: DC Data Warehouse

Winston-Salem, North Carolina: Center for Community Safety of Winston-Salem State University

The Reentry Mapping Network follows the successful model of the Urban Institute’s National Neighborhood Indicators Partnership (NNIP), which began in 1995 and is funded by the Annie E. Casey Foundation and the Rockefeller Foundation. For more information about the NNIP, see www.urban.org/nnip/index.htm. The network also builds on the Annie E. Casey Foundation’s Making Connections initiative, with seven network sites collaborating with Making Connections partners. Making Connections works to increase and improve support to disadvantaged families and communities by enhancing social connectedness; linking them to local resources and services; and strengthening community members’ financial well-being. For more information about Making Connections, see www.aecf.org/initiatives/mc.

More information about the Justice Policy Center’s reentry projects is available at http://jpc.urban.org/reentry.

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MPIP Releases First Community Indicators Report

SEPTEMBER 2004 - This summer, the Metropolitan Philadelphia Indicators Project (MPIP) released Where We Stand: Community Indicators for Metropolitan Philadelphia. By bringing together a wealth of social, economic and environmental data in one place, the report provides a common information base for researchers as well as community and regional activists to build civic agendas.

Where We Stand is the first in a series of annual reports intended to measure conditions and track changes in communities across the greater Philadelphia region. Included in the report are two types of information that portray the quality of life in local communities: (1) a set of social, environmental, and economic indicators gathered from dozens of different data sources, and (2) a regional survey of 1,000 households conducted by Temple's Institute for Survey Research.

Where We Stand: Community Indicators for Metropolitan Philadelphia covers more than 60 indicators of community well-being along 14 dimensions of community life: the region's communities, diversity, family well-being, socioeconomic conditions, housing, regional transportation, the regional economy, government and taxes, education, civic participation, environment, arts and culture, health indicators, and crime and criminal justice.

The report features easy-to-read one-page indicator descriptions featuring maps, charts, and tables. The indicators are presented for the region's 353 municipalities, revealing the variety of conditions across the area. Since the city of Philadelphia contains widely differing communities, the report also divides the city of Philadelphia into the dozen Planning Analysis Districts used by the Philadelphia Planning Commission.

Among the findings of the report:

• Persons employed full-time in households with incomes less than 150 percent of the poverty line are more than six times more likely to lack health insurance than those in high-income households.

• Despite the movement of significant numbers of African Americans into the suburbs (from 27 to 32 percent during the 1990s), greater Philadelphia continues to show high levels of separation between Blacks and Whites.

• When asked whether "there is a strong sense of community" in their neighborhoods, over two-thirds (69 percent) of all the region's citizens either agreed or strongly agreed with that statement.

• Across different types of communities, the violent crime rate differed dramatically, ranging from 1,309 reported violent crimes per 100,000 persons in Philadelphia to 118 reported violent crimes per 100,000 persons in the Affluent Suburbs.

Funded by a 3-year grant from The William Penn Foundation and support from Temple University, the Metropolitan Philadelphia Indicators Project aims to promote regional thinking about the area's most important challenges. In addition to the annual report, MPIP provides analysis of specific issues relevant to community organizations, as well as further examinations of the regional and statewide surveys. MPIP was recently accepted as a member organization of the National Neighborhood Indicators Partnership, representing Philadelphia in collaboration with The Reinvestment Fund. For more information about MPIP and to download a copy of the report, visit their web site at: http://www.temple.edu/mpip.

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Reflections on Progress and Future of Information Intermediaries

JULY 2004 - In March 2004, several National Neighborhood Indicators Partners presented their local work at the Community Quality of Life Conference in Reno, Nevada, alongside other organizations interested in indicators and the use of data in communities. Terri Bailey, the Director of Research at the Piton Foundation (the NNIP partner in Denver), gave what many of us saw as the key presentation in the opening plenary session. Her remarks are now available on the NNIP web site at http://www.urban.org/nnip/pdf/reno_plenary.pdf.

In the remarks, Terri reflects on the evolution of the Piton Foundation as an information intermediary for Denver residents, the formation of the National Neighborhood Indicators Partnership, and the introduction of the Annie E. Casey Making Connections Initiative. She notes several widespread trends in the field, as well as several weaknesses within the movement. The remarks conclude with the eight following "Lessons Learned” for advancing the use of data.

1. You have to be in relationship with those who need your data.

2. It is not up to us outside community to decide what is relevant or meaningful to people inside community.

3. One size does not fit all.

4. The process is not linear.

5. There is no action without ownership.

6. The task is even larger than one of creating data and tools. It is one of broadly diffusing the data, tools and skills that communities need.

7. We need to find ways to credential community wisdom both within and beyond community.

8. And finally, we need to actively address issues of power and within that the role of race, class, culture and gender.

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BeehiveSacramento.org Expands Access for Region's Under-Served Communities

MAY 2004 - In March 2004, Community Services Planning Council (the Sacramento NNIP partner) and its local collaborators launched www.BeehiveSacramento.org to help area residents take action and raise their standard of living through enhanced access to vital information and services. The web site will provide residents of the Sacramento region with a centralized online resource that connects them with a broad range of local information, giving them access to financial and government services, educational resources, jobs, community events, local businesses and much more.

"Despite the richness of diversity in the Sacramento region, ongoing language and socioeconomic barriers prevent many residents from participating more fully within the community and improving their quality of life," said Nancy Findeisen, CEO of the Community Services Planning Council. "Many people are socially and financially isolated, not knowing where to go for help, advice or collaboration in their own neighborhoods. By creating BeehiveSacramento.org, we hope to open the door so people can connect with their communities and find resources to improve their lives."

BeehiveSacramento.org evolved from a participatory process led by Valley Vision, involving the California Department of Transportation, Sacramento Housing and Redevelopment Agency, the Community Services Planning Council and a community-based regional steering committee. Valley Vision created a steering committee to explore options for a service that leveraged both technology and innovation and that actively engaged all residents, particularly those in under-served communities.

After examining national models, Valley Vision learned of a Web-based information and referral product called "The Beehive," created by One Economy - a national nonprofit organization. One Economy was engaged to work with (CSPC) to bring information and resources to BeehiveSacramento.org. One Economy has already established Beehives in Atlanta, Baltimore, Chicago, Cleveland, Los Angeles, New York, Portland, San Francisco and Washington, D.C. In Sacramento, BeehiveSacramento.org combines One Economy's technological expertise and carefully developed content with CSPC's vast information about local services to help people in Sacramento find the services and information they need.

In addition, CSPC works with local residents, government agencies, media outlets, service providers and other organizations in the region to determine what information should be included on BeehiveSacramento.org. For each topic - childcare, human services, employment and small business assistance - CSPC defines and secures a local lead agency to help develop content for particular subsections of the Web site. For example, CSPC's Community Services Directory is available on the site free of charge.

The Community Services Directory has been published by CSPC since 1941 and contains over 2,000 programs and services for residents in the Sacramento region. By offering the directory online, CSPC has become the most extensive Beehive Web site in the country - serving as a model for One Economy.

BeehiveSacramento.org includes contributions from award-winning and expert columnists who write on topics ranging from parenting and financial security to auto insurance. All content on the site is written in English and Spanish, and a majority of it is also available in Russian.

Nationally, supporters of The Beehive project include the Time-Warner Foundation, Allstate Foundation, eBay Foundation, Ford Foundation, Annie E. Casey Foundation, Robert Wood Johnson Foundation and Cisco Systems Foundation.

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Urban Institute Study on Housing Integration

APRIL 2004 - Although most neighborhoods in large metropolitan areas remain either exclusively white or predominantly black, there has been a slow decline in residential segregation in the last few decades. As a result, more neighborhoods in metropolitan America are shared by blacks and whites today than in the past. A new report by the nonpartisan Urban Institute, Race and Residence: Prospects for Stable Neighborhood Integration, documents these trends. This report is the latest in the Urban Institute's "Neighborhood Change in Urban America" series.

Researchers Lynette Rawlings, Laura Harris, and Margery Austin Turner tracked changes in neighborhood racial composition in 69 major metropolitan areas where African Americans are the predominant minority group. In addition to finding evidence of a growing number of racially diverse neighborhoods, the authors conclude that most of these newly integrated areas are stable and do not inevitably "tip" to become more "predominantly black" over time. This pattern applies to both city and suburban neighborhoods.

While it has been slow, the steady decline in neighborhood racial segregation is encouraging. The problem of black-white segregation remains severe but this new analysis offers grounds for optimism about the prospects for stable neighborhood diversity. Specifically,

For the full report, please go to http://www.urban.org/url.cfm?ID=310985.

More research from the Urban Institute's "Neighborhood Change in Urban America" series can be accessed at http://www.urban.org/nnip/ncua/.

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DC Agenda's New Issue Scan Report

JANUARY 2004 - DC Agenda presented its new report entitled Issue Scan at its Annual City Leadership Forum to municipal, community, philanthropic, and business stakeholders. Speakers at the event included Mayor Anthony Williams, City Council Chair Linda Cropp, and Chief Financial Officer Natwar Gandhi. The Issue Scan examines a spectrum of issues affecting residents in the District of Columbia on the basis of six sets of social and economic indicators. By measuring and tracking neighborhood conditions, the Issue Scan provides a tool to better understand some of the city's most vexing and persistent problems.

DC Agenda's Issue Scan cuts across many issues such as housing, child and family health, education, and crime, as well as demonstrating where and how the District government is improving its services, and where attention still needs to be focused. From this base of knowledge, DC Agenda hopes to launch an informed discussion of the ways an inter-related set of issues may be impacting a neighborhood's ability to thrive and serve the needs of its residents.

While the report provides social and economic indicators on every neighborhood cluster in the city, DC Agenda identified six targeted neighborhoods to discuss the report's findings with residents in "Community Conversations". These conversations revealed how the issues reflected in the data affect the daily lives of residents, and which issues they regarded as top priorities.

The Issue Scan is different from other research reports in five ways:

• It provides data for neighborhood clusters, so people can focus more targeted geographic areas;

• It reports in indicators across several issues, depicting the diverse conditions of each cluster;

• It reports on conditions regardless of who has responsibility for their resolution;

• It provides both data-driven analysis and community feedback about how the issues are affect people's lives; and

• It provides community residents and city decision-makers with a tool that can help them make connections between related conditions, leading to shared resources and collaborative action.

"The Issue Scan gives stakeholders and decision-makers in the District of Columbia a yardstick for measuring the progress of the city and its neighborhoods," said Oramenta F. Newsome, Chair, DC Agenda and Executive Director of the Local Initiatives Support Corporation (LISC). "It provides powerful information to challenge us, as a city of neighborhoods, to think in new ways when making strategic decisions for long-term progress. Whether it is community organizations working to improve their neighborhoods, nonprofit groups considering new programs, foundations and corporations targeting their investments, city agencies improving their services, or policy makers considering new courses of action, the Issue Scan provides the opportunity to identify and plan for the long-term impact of these decisions on our city, its residents and neighborhoods. It will help to hold all of us accountable for our respective roles in strengthening the city's neighborhoods."

DC Agenda is a nonprofit organization that brings together diverse groups of leaders to address urban problems in Washington, DC, focusing on improving the lives of youth and families in underserved neighborhoods. The Neighborhood Information Service (NIS) formed in 1999 by DC Agenda, aims to provide current and reliable neighborhood-level data and analysis to improve strategic decision-making by government and community organizations. For more information about DC Agenda and to download a copy of DC Agenda's Issue Scan, visit their web site at http://www.dcagenda.org/.

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For additional information, e-mail NNIP at nnip@ui.urban.org.