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What makes Holistic Neighborhood Development unique?
Place-Based
One of the greatest indicators of one’s life-long economic mobility is the neighborhood in which one lives. HND asserts that place is the most important factor to consider when seeking long-term outcomes, and it is one of the most neglected lenses within traditional poverty alleviation tactics. Place allows us to go deep, work broadly, and invest in the long-haul for real results.
Proximity
We cannot solve anything from a distance. We have to draw near, enter into relationship, and open ourselves up to the possibility of mutual transformation. Transactional giving between strangers will never end poverty. You cannot serve someone out of poverty. HND leads with neighboring and relationship.
Integrative
Poverty is neither caused, sustained, or solved by any one thing; it is the dynamic intersection of multiple factors, systems, and circumstances. The “holistic” dimension of HND is about committing to comprehensive engagement that seeks innovative, integrative strategies for long-term outcomes.
Agile
Cities, people, opinions, policies, and economies can all change in the blink of an eye. Strategies that worked last year might night work in the next. Work done for months may come up empty and expectations may get upended at a moment’s notice. HND can create real change because it is flexible and adaptive, constantly committed to the best, healthiest approach, even if that means a radical course correction mid-stream. We do not seek the perpetuation of our program; it is always about the thriving of a community and whatever it takes to make that happen.
Impact-Oriented
Results matter. Not activity, not busyness, not arbitrary program numbers, but impact. They may be hard to come by, hard to define, or hard to measure, but they are core to what it means to commit to HND. We want to see lives and communities thriving, not dependent on external support year after year. We do not settle for less than true and lasting change.
Data-Driven
Flourishing communities is not just a big vision for us. It is a process we have developed with tools to track and measure the health of a place. This process will define and create the strategies that will lead to long-term, lasting change in your neighborhood.
Own the Assets, Control the Story
In the midst of rapidly gentrifying cities, people often ask us what can be done to stem the tide of rising costs and the displacement of legacy residents. As welcomed as more retail, nicer parks, and better infrastructure are for neighborhoods that have been historically denied these basic things, they are often evidence that longer-term, lower-income residents will soon be pushed out and that all this new development wasn’t done with them in mind anyway. So what do we do? For us, the answer lies in a having a robust acquisitions strategy. In today’s episode, Shawn will talk through the FCS acquisitions strategy with Jim Wehner, Marvin Nesbitt, and Cynthia McNeal.
How We Got Here
When people visit us in Atlanta to see up close and personal what our holistic neighborhood development work looks like, they’re often struck by the volume, quality, and complexity of housing that we are working on. As of today, in Historic South Atlanta alone we have completed construction on about 200 single family homes and 100 multi-family units. But we didn’t start out with a plan that far reaching. So where did it all begin? How did we get here? Join us for the next episode in our series on Mixed-Income Housing for a deep dive into housing at FCS throughout the years. Shawn is joined in conversation by President of FCS, Jim Wehner, and Director of Mixed-Income Housing, Cynthia McNeal.
Our Big Idea for Housing
It is no secret that the United States is in the midst of a housing crisis. It is all but impossible to find quality housing that is affordable and located in healthy neighborhoods. This is not just a challenge for those living below the federal poverty line. Working adults from a wide array of ages and incomes are struggling to secure housing. But what if thinking about housing alone is not the solution to the nation’s housing crisis? At FCS, the big idea behind how we approach housing is a belief that the crisis we are facing is not actually a housing issue; it’s a neighborhood issue. Joining Shawn Duncan for this first episode is Jim Wehner, President of FCS; Marvin Nesbitt, Senior Director of Community Development at FCS; and Cynthia McNeal, Director of Mixed-Income Housing at FCS. Throughout this season, you’ll get to hear more about FCS’s approach to housing in the past, present, and future.