Leadership and courage are traits that are hard to come by in individuals and even harder in groups.  Further, leadership and courage are even more difficult to find when times are hard and these two traits are more in need than ever.  The organization I have the privilege of leading from a staff perspective, Beyond Housing, just held our annual strategic planning session on Saturday, September 12th.   Our mission is to strengthen neighborhoods, one family at a time and this already difficult task has gotten that much harder due to the recent economic downturn.  More and more families come to us each and everyday asking for our help in finding a place to live, help to prevent them from losing their home due to foreclosure, help to repair their existing home, help to provide support in the daily struggle to live with the weight of poverty on their shoulders.  The sad irony of this increased need for our mission delivery comes at time, due to the economic downturn, when we are anticipating a 30% decrease in charitable giving in 2009 from 2008.  This 30% equates to around $300,000.

 

In the context of this challenging time, we held our strategic planning session.  In the context...

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In small and large ways, being there for children can truly make a difference.

I normally use this space to solely talk about the work of Beyond Housing and all the issues the families and communities we serve face each and every day. This time I will do something a little different. 

As I write this, I am the only person on a small beach at 5:45 a.m. in Fish Creek, Wisconsin. The beach is in Door County and on a peninsula with Lake Michigan to the east and Green Bay (the bay, not the city) to the west of where I sit. The sun is slowly rising over the water...bright and streaking across the gentle waves toward me. The water rhythmically comes ashore giving me the soundtrack to my morning.

There are several sailboats anchored not too far in the distance. The air is crisp and I am wearing a light weight jacket to keep warm. I am in Peninsula State Park staying at a campground with my family. The beach is in a little cove rimmed with a beautiful green tree line. The park itself, like some in Missouri, is full of forests and trails to enjoy.

Accompanying the water in my soundtrack are the numerous birds starting their day. I forget how beautiful their calls can be if you really listen. The peacefulness of this place, at this time, is simply wonderful....

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Any successful work community building is driven by community engagement which is incredibly challenging.  Patience is required for this task.  How can you be patient and still be driven to make a difference?  Constructive impatience.

Tackling this region's vexing problems requires an intentionally integrated approach with many people coming to the table for the common good.  How do we get this done?

In a span of time from Tuesday, April 28th to Saturday, May 2nd, I learned a wonderful lesson on the difference between what is necessary and what is truly important. Thanks to a wonderful partnership with KETC-Channel 9, the local public broadcasting affiliate here in St. Louis, I was asked to participate on a panel of local “experts” about President Obama’s first 100 days in office as part of the “News Hour with Jim Lerher”, a week-long series focusing on St. Louis. The well-respected and long-time media personality, Gwen Ifill, moderated the panel discussion. Other panel members included former Senator,  Ambassador to the United Nations and Special Envoy to the Sudan, John Danforth, Congressman Lacy Clay and Patti York, Mayor of St. Charles, a suburban community in St. Louis. 

On Wednesday, about 25 minutes of the 1 hour discussion was aired nationally. I was told that I held my own, had a funny line and ended the show with an impassioned plea for more resources and importance to be placed on housing and community development.  It was all very cool. Click here to see the video. 



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Here we go again! Arne Duncan on the national level and Kelvin Adams on the local level are leading the reform of public education. Both men seem very thoughtful, sincere and committed to making the public education system better. My fear is that they too will fall into thinking in a silo trap that true change can happen by just focusing internally on systems. Teacher accountability, principal accountability, more technology, better buildings and more  – all good issues to focus on but even as a collective group if success is had on these topics test scores will not move as far as they might otherwise due to all the real life issues of poverty so many students and their families face each and everyday. 

 

J.D. Forbes has an incredibly moving piece in today’s Post-Dispatch where he juxtaposed a murder of yet another young man in North St. Louis with a small in-home day care for children not yet in kindergarten just one block away. Forbes described and through his photos depicted the crime scene, the police investigation, the neighbors angst, frustration and resignation as well as the innocence of the young children finger painting in the front yard of this day care. Jonothon...

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Thomas Friedman's op-ed today in the New York Times poses interesting questions for our current budget discussions in Jefferson City. 

I won't belabor the national frustration and anger about AIG and the absolute absurdity of people getting that kind of money for precipitating our global financial meltdown.  I do want to ask - do you remember when $170 million was a jaw dropping, oh my god kind of number?  I do.  In today's world it is sadly chump change!  We, the taxpayers, have allocated nearly $200 billion to AIG alone in last six months.  Well, I am here to say $170 million is a lot of money and can do a great  deal of important work.

This is what Beyond Housing could do with $170 million...

We could fund our entire organization, serving thousands of individuals annually, help strengthen neighborhoods without any other support for over 30 Years!

We could open and complete 110,000 individual development accounts helping every family living in poverty in the St. Louis region begin to build their wealth and more to a brighter tomorrow.

We could buy and rehab over 3,000 homes in the St. Louis region and offer them to sell or rent to many families who desire and deserve a decent and safe place to live.

We could fully fund our Pagedale Family Support Center and open four more in the Normandy...

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I was born on the last of 1961 and just about everyone in my generation and the generation before me had a notion that the American Dream is rooted in buying your own single family home.  That was our aspiration.  It was a symbol of our success and then the springboard for our children's success.   Like me most working class people look to our homes to be our nesteggs to help build our wealth.  We have some pension put away - a lot less now than a year ago but our homes were viewed as our "ticket" to both retirement and helping our childen and grandchildren. 

The shift that that has taken place in the last 10-15 years where technology allows us to be incredibly mobile and have the world in our pockets leads me to believe that the idea of the American Dream is beginning to change and will indeed change significantly in years to come.  My 20 year old Nick has told me that as of now he has no interest in owning a single family home like the one he grew up in - "maybe a condo" he says.  I told him of my recent article in the paper and he informed me politely that he does not know anyone who reads a newspaper.   Who am I to pass judgment on this next generation - I do want to pose a question;

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