03/23/2022
The Philadelphia Department of Housing and Community Development (DHCD) held its Consolidated Annual Performance Evaluation Report (CAPER) Needs Assessment Hearing on March 22, 2022. NWCLT's President & CEO testified at that hearing. Dr. Churchville’s testimony spoke of one of NWCLT’s primary purposes as being founded in establishing racial equity. He concluded his testimony by recommending five practices that CAPER should consider. They are as follows:
FIRST, The Consolidated Plan should make Racial Equity its major goal and embed it in its requirements and practices. Government funded programs can advance Racial Equity by ensuring that unravelling racism is an explicit goal, and that all stakeholders in housing initiatives understand and commit to antiracist action. The design of all housing initiatives should include antiracist principles in how they select communities, and hire, manage and train staff for the initiatives.
SECOND, The Consolidated Plan should focus its efforts on developing and equipping community-based housing development organizations that are led by Black and other People of Color. Priority should be given to growing and supporting these grass-roots efforts through funding and technical assistance, as well as providing them opportunities to partner with more experienced developers of low- , moderate- and mixed-income projects. The goal of this policy is to increase the number of experienced, reliable, and organizationally stable BIPOC partners who have the best interests of their communities at heart.
THIRD, The Consolidated Plan should require the shifting of power, the taking of risks, and the building of trust. Inequitable outcomes invariably flow from inherently inequitable power imbalances. Shifting power means offering more authority over goal setting and decision-making to those affected by an issue, including hiring community members as staff, and paying them as participants. Traditional actors with power and control over resources—funders, business leaders, government officials—can take greater risks in their commitments by investing in communities with less capacity and allowing those communities to set goals, act, make mistakes, and change direction based on lessons learned. Powerful interests should also be held accountable for their own actions and alter course if they are not furthering an initiative’s antiracist goals. Over time and positive experiences, sharing power and risk builds trust and respect that allows for continued collaboration toward common goals.
FOURTH, The Consolidated Plan should bridge communities, initiatives, and sectors. Place-based initiatives can advance Racial Equity and amplify their outcomes by intentionally building connections with other communities and initiatives doing similar work. Initiatives and their sites can learn Best Practices from peers, compare data and evidence, and collaboratively drive city, state, and federal policy reform by leveraging their combined evidence of broad-based needs for systems change. Pulling together representatives from all parts of a system— including public, private, and nonprofit stakeholders—can ensure that everyone involved in producing racially inequitable outcomes is made accountable for changing them.
FIFTH, and finally, The Consolidated Plan should stay the course and commit for the long haul. The roots of racism run deep, and all these changes and outcomes take time to achieve. A long investment horizon, and an even longer timeline for measuring outcomes, fosters trust with the Black community, enables a focus on structural changes instead of short-term gains, and allows for adaptation and learning. With a long-term outlook, initiatives can attend to all conditions necessary for systemic change, which promotes more durable results.
In closing, I have but two brief final points to make. The first point is that the Racial Equity road ahead of us will not be popular, pleasing, or predictable; but it will be principled, progressive, and profitable for everyone, including the naysayers.
Northwest CLT Corporation understands that because Racial Equity and systemic change through antiracist government policies have not come into being from the founding of America to this very day, we cannot expect to see Racial Equity and systemic change come in the next twenty-four or even forty-eight hours.
The second and final point is that Northwest CLT Corporation knows that by making Racial Equity the goal of The Consolidated Plan today, we will all have the courage to move forward together toward the Beloved Community that awaits our coming tomorrow.
