Strong Healthy Community Initiative, Partners Release Report to Help Map Newark’s Future

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.