Community Development Block Grant
Every year most cities in the U.S. receive federal funds in the form of Community Development Block Grants (CDBG) from the Housing Urban Development Department (HUD). The grants are monies based on a formula combining size of population and their documented need. The CDBG funds are earmarked as “Primarily for Low- and Moderate-Income residents.” One of the main areas of funding is for Housing Rehabilitation, but it cannot be used for new construction, except by a nongovernmental entity or nonprofit organization.
For funding year 1976, Ellen and I went to the City’s Community and Development Department and asked for the guidelines for CDBG funding. We were given a booklet. At first, I could make little sense of any of it. That first year we were too late, but now we had a full year head start. We read the whole book, and she had said, “They have money for Housing Rehab.”
“Okay, and I saw a section on Self Help Housing.” I was excited about that.
“That is too complicated, we can’t do that,” she said.
“Oh, yes, we can.” I explained, “When I was at the University of Oregon, I asked Dean Harris of the School of Architecture if I could take a term interlude and go to California to work with a project called Visalia Self Help Housing project, as part of my Architectural training. This is where the families build their own houses in groups of about five to twelve families. They were using Farmers Home Administration (FmHA) funding in rural areas rather than CDBG funding, and I spent six months with them. I think I can do one here! I’ll write a proposal for each: Rehab and Self Help Housing. You look at all the other guidelines, and we’ll put our notes together.”
Four things I wanted to do:
1) Get as much money to flow into the Neighborhood as possible.
2) Jobs for residents.
3) Family, Pride and Hands.
4) No more than three years of funding as a catalyst, or kick-starter.
I quit the carpentry job I was in. Big mistake. I copied most of what the City’s Rehab Proposal sample had and changed words to fit our needs and benefit our workers, not the City’s office, all within the HUD guidelines, so that when they read our proposal, they assumed we had just copied theirs. Ellen and I worked well as a team. And then, however, after all that work…,
“Did you see the portion on “sub-recipients?” Ellen asked me one day when we got together to compare notes.
“Sobreee… what?” My head was exhausted with reading the manual full of jargon, and if it had not been for Ellen, I may have never caught on to it. Two heads are better than one.
“Sub-recipient,” she said, “means that HUD will grant the administration of the funding to the non-profit corporation running the program, with supervision by the City. In other words, the City gets the money and passes it on to us. We use it in pre-approved projects in the Proposal, which we administer and pay for. Like a subcontractor. If we ask for sub-recipiency.”
I thought: “more like a contractor”, and then asked, “Do we get to select staff?”
“Yes.”
Had it not been for Ellen’s awareness I would have missed this critical detail. I had assumed that every organization’s program ran its own projects, and I was wrong. Catching that word “sub-recipient” was like Chris Delaporte making that phone call from a public telephone, a total change in direction. That single word shaped the next seven years.
“Sounds good, let’s go for it.” I didn’t have to rewrite it, only do simple surgery, and add one paragraph.
The City Proposals already included job descriptions, titles, and salaries for any staff. To the Board I suggested again Ellen as Director. I would be Project Director, and we would need to hire a Secretary, Accountant, Rehab Specialist, and Self-Help Housing Construction Manager. Each one would get the same $1,000 per month. Less than what I was now getting in construction work. By then it was clear to me that Ellen and I worked well together, and there was no romantic interest to get in the way. We did not interfere with each other’s expertise, and our egos did not collide. She was good at administration and I at direction and creative implementation. I figured the title was important for her motivation before and after we got funding. After we were approved by the City Council, because of bureaucratic tricks, we never saw any administrative money for the next three years and a half! It would take over five years before they would let us use the funds for wood and nails: from 1977 to 1982. The Department played games to no end, but many other cities also have departments with deceitful, lying, and conniving people. Ellen stuck with the TBA all that time; her accomplishments were immense.
We were both very good at letting others carry on with their ideas, and the Barrio was full of people who helped getting things done. The Board was active. Every time there was a party, an event, a demonstration, or an important meeting, people came. Gradually, the local people began to take initiative in doing what needed to be done, with honest solutions. It was a true example of sharing the power.
Neither Ellen nor I were from the Barrio, and life in the Barrio continued its own course. What had been the cause of decline in the Barrio and its families? Who were left, and what future did they have? How could this proposal affect them, and prevent displacement?
To better judge what we were doing and its effects, I accepted family dinner invitations and took part in birthday celebrations. Breaking bread with uncles, cousins and grandchildren, seeing how, who and where they sat at the table, the respect for the elderly, laughing with them at their jokes, asking questions to understand their concerns, it all helped me make fewer mistakes down the road. It was also just as important to understand what others could, by intent or by ignorance, do to sabotage their values and traditions, including me. It would be naïve to think sabotage by others was not constantly in the works.
The tug of war between tradition and innovation, and between different needs in succeeding generations, surfaces often in family events. I was seeing a greater variety of professionals and tradesmen in this Barrio than had been apparent at first sight. While outsiders were putting residents down, most of the kids I had seen in the carpentry training of Creative Teen Power would be seen five years later in our rehab crew, many of them had gone into a trade, and a few continued with their schooling into a profession. The talent was there. A few retired professionals were still living quietly and at peace in the Barrio. However, in both the trades and the professional arena there was a lack of middle age adults in the area and this needed to be corrected. Not unusual in inner cities where after marrying, many moved to the suburbs or pursued jobs elsewhere, so depletion is not a bad thing per se, except that I wanted to create, in this Barrio, the opposite; “an incubator” to attract the capable, provide training, and then say, “Move if you wish, but we hope you stay”. That is what this Barrio could become: an incubator, aiming for capable residents to want to stay and build upon its power. If I could only get our terrific attorney, Art Chapa, to move back to the Barrio and teach by example.
It was known to me then that sometimes peer pressure is the worse force that pulls everyone down. Understanding your weaknesses is crucial, so you can tackle and reverse them. Use peer pressure to build everyone up. Years later, the specific answers came to me and the understanding of why qualified people did not stay in the Barrio. This revelation took place while drinking beer in Cushing Street Bar talking to an Electrician.
In the meantime, when I say “we”, who do I mean by that? The word “we” is used very loosely. We met in groups, committees, casually got together for beers, at board meetings, weekly breakfast after church in the Parquesito Del Tiradito, at family dinners. I say “we” because I can only talk about incidents when I was there, but I want to make sure to state that my involvement often was only peripheral. Things worked out much better when others took ownership of good ideas and actions and ran with them. It never bothered me when others took credit and left me out, but I never allowed anyone to take credit for things they had not done, as that is a quick path to corruption[xii].
The status quo is hard to change, good when it is positive, not so good when it is held captive by those who won’t let it go for self-serving reasons. Sensitive creativity is important. In our case, traditional activities were better carried out by the locals. New and innovative projects, or plans outside of the ordinary, were usually initiated by me and carried out with the help of Ellen, but also filtered by locals to incorporate and promote traditional values already present, and we always had family, pride, and hands in all of them, thus the results were consistently positive[xiii]. Fifty percent of effective participation is preventing abuse, corruption, and self-serving agendas from seeing the light of day[xiv]. Keep in mind that when you break the ice you often get hammered from all angles. But concentrating on Family, Pride, and Hands in all the planning kept me from making too many mistakes. Those three items in every formula were key.