Public Policy

In In order to support family-based community development, public policies must be designed that enable state and federal agencies to engage in mutual decision-making with communities of place. Such an approach would depart from the traditional focus on working with individual businesses and agencies only (as regulatees and grantees). Moreover, government resources must be reorganized in order to be applied flexibly and through integrated approaches that add value to community efforts to strengthen productive family institutions. These two changes -- recognizing communities of place and adding value to productive family enterprises -- could reorganize and integrate many government programs across a broad array of policy arenas: health, education, economic development, housing, human services, regulation of financial institutions, transportation, energy, and others.

FTo illustrate, for a state government to make a commitment to fostering family-based community development in its localities, it would need to:

1. Create a cross-agency planning body capable of getting agencies in diverse areas to work jointly with identified communities. In order to have the authority and legitimacy necessary to do the job, the agencies would need to be directed to do so either by the governor or through legislation.

2. Create a staff unit capable of working collaboratively with similarly cross-cutting bodies from identified communities (schools, local government, community associations, community development corporations, businesses, human service agencies, and others).

3. Through the staff unit, work with local leaders to develop community plans that pursue outcomes agreed upon jointly with the state body.

4. Include in the plans specific strategies for bolstering productive family institutions and strengthening the roles of parents as co-producers of the goods and services that will be needed to achieve the outcomes.

5. Creatively package state resources -- grants, information, tax credits, technical assistance, research data -- in order to add value to the community development strategies.

6. Create a state-community mechanism for tracking indicators of whether the desired improvements in the community are being achieved.

Can state governments foster family-based community development? Dr. Kordesh led an innovative experiment from September, 2000 through October, 2002 from the Illinois Governor's Office. This project, Illinois Workforce Advantage, targeted distressed communities in urban and rural areas, and was widely embraced by community leaders. For more information on this project, including lessons learned, click below:

Perhaps no single government office in America has more power to mobilize policies behind community development than a state governor. A governor is close enough to communities to know their leaders, and presides over enough programs and different agencies to mount coordinated efforts to support community development plans. This power remains largely unexploited by holders of this important office.

With colleagues, Nik Theodore and Tracy Harriss-Lewis, Rich completed a study (2005) of how states can support comprehensive community development projects. This investigation examined projects in five cities supported by Living Cities: The National Community Development Initiative. The cities included Miami, Baltimore, Chicago, Portland (Oregon), and Kansas City.