"Coming Out as a Human Capitalist: Community Development at the Nexus of People and Place"
LIIF President and CEO Nancy O. Andrews' Vision for Community Development
In the recent issue of the Federal Reserve Bank of San
Francisco's Community Development Investment Review, LIIF President and CEO Nancy O. Andrews
outlines a compelling case for a comprehensive,
integrated approach to solving the problem of poverty in
America. "Coming Out as a Human Capitalist: Community Development
at the Nexus of People and Place" describes the unique role of community development in integrating people and place-based strategies, providing a vision of renewal for the community development field.
Read the Executive Summary of "Coming Out as a Human Capitlist" below. The full text of the article and Ms. Andrews' previous article for the Federal Reserve Bank of San Francisco's Community Development Investment Center, "Strength in Adversity: Community Capital Faces Up to the Economic
Crisis," are available at www.liifund.org or www.frbsf.org/community.
Nancy O. Andrews
with Christopher Kramer
Low Income Investment Fund
"If poverty is a disease that infects an entire community in the form of unemployment and violence, failing schools and broken homes, then we can't just treat hose symptoms in isolation. We have to heal that entire community. And we have to focus on what actually works."
—President Barack Obama, "Changing the Odds for Urban America," July 18, 2008
Executive Summary
Recent research is making the case that the communities we live in help or harm us at every level–physically, socially, emotionally. These effects can stay with us for the rest of our lives. There is a revolution in knowledge afoot that demonstrates convincingly that investing in people, especially in children, is every bit as important as investing in markets and buildings. It is important for the community development field to take this on board and, it is potentially transformative for our strategies and programs.
Knowledge emerging from multiple fields–housing, early care, education, health care and medicine–all contribute to a transformation in our understanding of poverty: what causes it and how to fight it. This evolving understanding of the physiological damage caused by poverty, of the connection between community and health, and how early investment can reverse this damage is so new that it is rarely synthesized. Yet, taken as a whole, we see a new picture for community development. Community development in the United States arose from the War on Poverty in the 1960s. But 40 years of trial and error have taught us a great deal about what works and what does not. We must adapt by developing a more integrated vision of people and place. We must understand that our vision cannot be community development alone, but rather community and human development together. Particularly important are strategies that focus on young children, bringing support before too much harm is done.
This new vision raises the stakes for our work. A well functioning neighborhood is a place where investments are made not just in buildings and markets, but in families and children, where they find the support they need to build the skills that secure a better future. As community developers, we must take the lessons of the current knowledge revolution to heart and apply them to our practice. Poised at the intersection of people and place, we are uniquely positioned to play an important role in bringing new strategies to bear, bringing hope to the families and communities where we work. This article is an effort to summarize the new information from the past 15 years and how it informs our work in community development.
Read the rest of the article.
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