June 30, 2014 — Last week, a coalition of Newark stakeholders released a comprehensive report on the conditions, trends, and disparities in Newark neighborhoods since the foreclosure crisis. Having received support from Newark’s leadership, the study promises to be a key guide for revitalization efforts in the city for years to come.
The report, entitled Measuring the State of Newark’s Neighborhoods, was commissioned by Living Cities’ Strong Healthy Communities Initiative (SHCI). The study was conducted by a team that included New Jersey Community Capital (NJCC), the Center for Community Progress (CCP), and the Joseph C. Cornwall Center for Metropolitan Studies at Rutgers University.
“We commissioned this market condition assessment to give the City and our partners a tool to measure our progress and plan for our neighborhoods’ futures as thriving residential communities”, said Monique Baptiste-Good, Director of SHCI.
The study team looked at seven factors affecting Newark’s 18 primarily-residential neighborhoods and 85 census tracts, including foreclosures, median sales price, median rent, vacancy, mortgage/sales ratio, violent crime, and poverty. The study looked at key trends, ranging from annual changes in crime and foreclosures to medium term changes in economic and racial characteristics.
The study reveals great discrepancies in conditions between the various parts of the city. According to Alan Mallach, principal author of the report, “Newark has been on a roller coaster for a decade, and while things seem to be settling down, we’re far from being out of the woods.”
The report is intended to inform planning decisions and strategies by the public entities, community institutions, and funders that serve Newark, helping them to design effective strategies to revitalize Newark’s distressed neighborhoods. “This information can be applied in many ways,” said Diane Sterner, Community Strategies Advisor for NJCC. “It can help decide how to reuse Newark’s thousands of vacant properties, which types of housing activities to promote, and where to prioritize such activities as home ownership strategies, infill development, foreclosure prevention and greening.”
The study was guided by an advisory committee of potential users of the report data, including city staff and representatives of Newark community development corporations and other community institutions. “I look forward to working with the new administration to see how the information from this report can support our neighborhood strategies moving forward”, said Alle Ries, Director of Community & Economic Development for La Casa de Don Pedro, a member of the advisory committee.
To access the full report, click here or visit www.shci.org.
About the Partners
New Jersey Community Capital (NJCC):  NJCC is a twenty-six year old nonprofit community development lender that transforms at-risk communities through strategic investments of capital and knowledge. NJCC invests in affordable housing, community facilities, and economic development ventures that strengthen neighborhoods, improve education, and increase jobs, ultimately providing greater opportunities for low-income residents in these communities. For more information, visit www.newjerseycommunitycapital.org. 
Center for Community Progress:  Founded in 2010, the Center for Community Progress is a national nonprofit organization dedicated to ensuring that communities have the vision, knowledge, and systems to transform blighted, vacant, and other problem properties into assets supporting neighborhood vitality. The Center serves as the leading national resource for local, state and federal policies and best practices that address the full cycle of property revitalization, including blight prevention through the acquisition and maintenance of problem properties and their productive reuse. 
Joseph C. Cornwall Center for Metropolitan Studies:   The Cornwall Center encourages and conducts relevant research and hosts learning opportunities all aimed at improving the cultural, social and economic development of the community, city and region in which the Center resides. The Center’s mission is to research and analyze complex issues facing urban areas, primarily metropolitan Newark and northern New Jersey, and to ultimately generate solutions to those challenges.
Strong Healthy Communities Initiative (SHCI): Launched in 2011 in Newark, NJ, SHCI is a cross-sector institutional partnership working collectively to improve the health and wellness of Newark’s low-income children in order to enhance their academic outcomes and their abilities to learn. As part of The Living Cities Integration Initiative, and through the generous support of the Prudential Foundation, SHCI uses a cohesive “one- table” approach to tackle complex social problems that challenge the success of Newark’s public school system. The partners of SHCI aim to rebuild and stabilize Newark’s neighborhoods, align public policy and private investments to sustain innovations, and create lasting systemic change to improve student success in all of Newark’s schools.
 

By John Upton

Have poor Californians hit the environmental-health jackpot?
The money raised through the sale of carbon credits under the state’s young carbon-trading program is earmarked for projects that help the climate and the environment. And under a law passed a couple of years ago, SB 535, 25 percent of that money must go to programs that provide benefits to disadvantaged communities, with 10 percent to be spent on projects located directly within those communities. Disadvantaged communities are determined by the state based on pollution levels and socioeconomic factors. They are typically poor neighborhoods of color, where health is compromised and lives are cut short by pollution from the refineries and power plants whose greenhouse gas emissions are being capped.
A $156 billion budget signed recently by Gov. Jerry Brown (D) outlines how the state will spend $872 million expected to be raised over the coming year through the sale of carbon credits. (Note that the $832 million figure in the chart below excludes a $40 million emergency appropriation to help manage the drought.)
 

A quarter of $872 million is $218 million. That money will be spread across projects that benefit disadvantaged communities, such as efforts to reduce pollution from trucks that pass through them. The 10 percent, or $87 million, that must go toward projects inside those communities will help plant trees in cities, provide affordable housing near transit lines, and improve energy efficiency in homes.
Which is great. But, despite its sunny reputation as an environmental and social leader, California remains plagued by income inequality and environmental injustices, and these funds will go only a small way toward addressing those problems. As Vien Truong, an official with the Berkeley-based nonprofit Greenlining Institute, which helped draft the SB 535 bill and implementation plan, notes in a recent Harvard Civil Rights-Civil Liberties Law Review article:

Although there is a rising environmental movement — with corresponding social and financial investments in being “green” — the benefits of clean technology have been available and accessible almost entirely to the wealthy few who can afford them. Many in low-income communities are economically locked out of these resources, even though it could be argued that those areas are in greater need of the energy and cost savings from emerging, clean technologies.
As the wealth gap widens, there is a growing disparity between the effects of environmental policies on the ecological haves and have-nots. …
The passage of SB 535 is an example of a policy effort that is paying more attention to the resource gaps and needs of low- income communities. It is a start, but woefully insufficient. Greater efforts must be made to persuade all environmental policymakers and advocates — even those who are “mainstream” and not necessarily representing low-income communities and communities of color — to develop policies that are similarly responsive to the nation’s highest need communities.

So, no, California’s poor have not hit a jackpot. But at least the state’s high-profile carbon-trading program is paying some dividends for those who are hurt the most by polluters.
Source

John Upton is a science fan and green news boffin who tweets, posts articles to Facebook, and blogs about ecology. He welcomes reader questions, tips, and incoherent rants: johnupton@gmail.com.