The Coolest Village Yet To Be

December 5, 2015December 14, 2015 / Promise / Leave a comment

So, I thought I was onto something new. Two years ago a manufacturer that had been doing business in a six-story building in my neighborhood for 100 years announced it was moving out of the city to a neighboring town where it could have a modernized single-floor operation.

While I was reading the story I was already daydreaming about that facility becoming “Promise Village,” a vibrant place where our young professionals could return to their hometown and live in lower-than-market studio apartments, supported by one another while launching their careers and giving back to their city.

As it turned out, I wasn’t discovering fire. Yet I was happy to see that other places found it to be a good idea.

The manufacturer was almost completely moved out when my alderman led a community tour of the massive plant in June. This fall it was purchased by a developer, who held a neighborhood meeting about his acquisition earlier this week. When it became clear that the facility was going to become housing units, some folks complained about traffic and others spoke out against affordable housing.

I decided to speak up about my idea for the facility. One of the reporters at the meeting offered that I “urged [my] neighbors to think more broadly about the issue of affordable housing.” I told them that we live in a city that has high rent and little vacancy. Our Promise scholars who graduate from college — and we have more than 500 presently enrolled — want to return to the city, but find themselves priced out of launching their career on their own in their hometown, where they’d be able to immediately influence younger members of their families. I told the developer that I’d love to see a place for them, even if the apartments were small studios.

Smaller apartments with more common space is trend. In fact, a place called Commonspace is doing just that in downtown Syracuse. Co-founder John Talarico told CityLab, “If your normal rent is $1,500, we’re coming in way under that ($700 to $900). You can spend that money elsewhere, living, not just sustaining.”

The notion of creating affordable housing in the name of education is not new either. The Newark Teachers’ Village in New Jersey is a national model to attract and retain teachers. Just recently, the City of San Francisco announced efforts to do the same in the Bay Area, where teacher retention is a significant problem. Even rural Hertford County in North Carolina is making space for teachers.

Companies like Google and LinkedIn have also decided that entering the real estate game is simply good for business. Unaffordable housing has a way of contributing to longer commutes and traffic congestion that is bad for the environment. And business productivity suffers.

Googlers in Pittsburgh have taken up residence in the Bakery Square neighborhood and helped change the environment. In a rather snarky portrayal in the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette last December, reporters Mackenzie Carpenter and Deborah M. Todd wrote this:

“Google definitely ups the coolness factor,” said Ryan Teeder, 25, who was sipping a craft beer at one of Social’s outdoor tables on a warm August evening. He had actually come to pick up his 14-year-old brother Ross, who had spent the afternoon at TechShop. “I live in White Oak, but when I come here, I feel like I’m in Brooklyn or some other really cool place where all the action is.”

Perhaps against the wishes of some of my neighbors, I want my neighborhood to be that really cool place where all the action is.

Brett Hoover — who formerly served as the Associate Director of the Ivy League — is a co-founder of Cities of Promise and serves as a digital strategist and Education Pioneers fellow at New Haven Promise.

In My Mind, I’m Going To Carolina

September 17, 2015September 18, 2015 / Promise / 1 Comment

We’ve been writing about this since January, but now we can officially say it — Welcome and congratulations, Guilford County!

Say Yes To Education — founded by George Weiss in 1987 in Philadelphia — made the official announcement today that Guilford County, which is home to both Greensboro and High Point, is its newest partner.

Led locally by the Guilford Education Alliance, the Community Foundation of Greater Greensboro, the High Point Community Foundation and Guilford County Schools, the region has already raised $32.5 million toward its $70 million goal to fund the endowment for last-dollar tuition scholarships. The district — which has a whopping 72,000 students — is comprised of largely low-income and minority students.

“They often have the smarts, they have the GPA, but the money is not there,” said Felicia Andrews, a parent and local Say Yes organizer.

The current class of seniors — more than 5,000 in total — will be eligible for the funds, although details regarding scholarship eligibility are still being finalized. More than 100 private colleges and universities are part of the Say Yes Higher Education Compact, which also serves students from Say Yes programs in both Buffalo and Syracuse.

Why Guilford County? “We had roughly 130 different cities and counties that we looked at, and we winnowed the list down to literally three, and Guilford County just blew everybody out of the ballpark,” Weiss told Katie Arcieri of the Triad Business Journal. “What made the county stand out? Every time we had a board meeting, Guilford County was just shining like a star. There was really no discussion. What we need is people to put aside their differences and just help the kids, and that’s what Guilford County did.”

So it was easy to say yes.

A Tale of Two Cities… Maybe Three

April 15, 2015 / Promise / Leave a comment

Say Yes to Education has been in the news locally in its two well-established New York cities as well as a potential third location in Greensboro, N.C.

First the good news. In Buffalo, school officials have reported that the college-going rate among students from Buffalo City Schools is on the rise since the launch of the Say Yes Buffalo initiative in 2012. In just that short time the percentage of graduates who enroll in college has jumped from 57 percent to 64 percent.

“It shows that this investment is working and year over year,” SYB Director Dave Rust told WKBW reporter Desiree Wiley. “How it’s about an additional 250 graduates that are choosing to go on to college or post-secondary programs.”

But Dave Tobin of the Syracuse Post-Standard recently reported that the promise of free tuition at New York’s public colleges may be coming to an end in Syracuse. While partnerships in Buffalo have proven successful in its early fundraising efforts, Say Yes Syracuse has fallen far short of its goals.

The national office of Say Yes to Education has covered costs for more than 2,500 students in Syracuse, but does not plan to continue that funding. Organization president Mary Anne Schmitt-Carey said that the city received unique benefit because it was the first to adopt the comprehensive city-wide approach and, in that role, it served as an incubator for learning.

But now Syracuse officials and business leaders will need to step up to keep the scholarships in place. Tobin’s story also mentioned an additional point of contention — that Syracuse Schools have been either unable or unwilling to implement a monitoring system which is in place in Buffalo and deemed vital by Say Yes. The absence of the system leaves the funders unable to assess the program’s success, leaving it with “one arm tied behind our back,” according to Schmitt-Carey.

Despite the concerns in Syracuse, the folks in Greensboro remain uber-excited about the potential of Say Yes launching in Guilford County. On Tuesday night soon-to-be presidential candidate Dr. Ben Carson spoke at a sold-out fundraiser with proceeds benefitting the Say Yes initiative, which has generated about $10 million in short order. Officials there will learn this summer if Say Yes will officially launch its first non-Northeast program in the region.