Neighborhood Partnerships

Neighborhood Partnerships is celebrating! We hope you’ll join us on Tuesday September 14, 2010 as we recognize our collective hard work and success!

In addition to celebrating, we’ll be marking the launch of our new effort to support key partners statewide in addressing the disconnect between what Oregon needs and what we’re doing. We are working to create an Oregon which offers its diversity of residents’ opportunities to thrive, pathways out of poverty and disenfranchisement and adequately supported public systems and structures as shared tools for these goals.  Working with all of our partners to improve communications across issue silos, we will work in the coming years to advance a broadly shared view of what it takes to build a state and communities where opportunity is real, asset building is a priority and citizens are engaged in creating the future.

Our special guest for the evening is Patrick Bresette.  Patrick is Associate Program Director of the Public Works Program at Demos: A Network for Ideas and Action.  He heads the fieldwork of the program, leading efforts to translate the research conducted at Public Works on Americans’ perceptions of government into practical applications for interested individuals, organizations, and coalitions

Patrick will share some of the Demos work on how to communicate the role that government can and should play in the lives of our communities. Demos’ work is grounded in theories of effective communications from cognitive science, cultural anthropology, linguistics and other “framing” studies.

The event will be at Northwest Natural in downtown Portland from 5:30–7:00PM.  Email us and let us know if you would like to celebrate with us!

In August 2010, NP Staff Janet Byrd and Alison McIntosh traveled to Seattle to attend the 2010 Strategies to End Poverty (STEP) Conference, sponsored by STEP and Northwest Area Foundation.  In addition to taking in a Mariner’s game, we learned a lot about coalition building, revenue coalitions, and what’s new in terms of TANF reauthorization and improving unemployment insurance.  We got to spend time with some great Oregon partners, which is sometimes hard to do with our busy schedules. And, Janet moderated a panel featuring Rey Espana of NAYA and Kalima Rose of Policy Link, on the Sustainable Communities Initiative and other system integration efforts.

Revenue Coalitions

States all across the Country are facing extreme budget shortfalls for both the current year and coming year, and Oregon is certainly no exception.  With little prospect for additional federal stimulus dollars, and no appetite for raising taxes, advocates for human services and housing are faced with fighting draconian budget cuts to services for low income families, children, disabled, and the elderly.  One strategy that worked last year in Washington State was to create a Revenue Coalition—Rebuilding our Economic Future—aimed at increasing state revenues through the closing of tax loopholes and sunsetting tax credits.  Oregon advocates will be considering similar approaches—e-mail us if you’re interested in hearing more about what’s going on.

TANF Reauthorization

Legislation which governs TANF, or welfare, is due to expire in September, 2010.  However it is unlikely that TANF will be reauthorized in 2010, and we will likely instead see a series of ‘continuing resolutions’—which just extend spending authority temporarily—for the next one to three years.  Liz Schott from the Center on Budget and Policy Priorities presented on the prospects for reauthorization as well as the possibility of an extension for the Emergency Contingency Fund to increase TANF funds due to the recession.

Re-Employment Strategies

We also heard Deborah Schlick of the Affirmative Options Coalition give a great presentation about how, as a result of unequal access to unemployment benefits, TANF has essentially become unemployment insurance for thousands of low wage workers or workers in industries with high turnover such as service industries, retail, and even health care jobs.  As a group, we discussed ways to improve unemployment insurance to make it work for low-wage workers—including extending benefits to temporary workers, part-time workers, low-wage workers, and families.

Overall, it was a great conference filled with interesting presentations, information and connections. We’re looking forward to exploring some of the things we learned, and putting new information into practice here in Oregon.

The Housing Alliance is gearing up for the upcoming 2011 Legislative Session.  We have a series of membership meetings planned, and we are getting ready to finalize our agenda.

In September and October, we’ll hold two Housing Alliance Membership Meetings.  We will be meeting in Salem on Monday, September 27, 2010 from 10 a.m. to 3 p.m. and on Friday, October 29, 2010 from 10 a.m. to 3 p.m. Prospective members may be invited to attend, but will not be allowed to vote—please contact Alison McIntosh if you are a prospective member or have an organization you would like to invite. Find out how to join the Housing Alliance!

Another revenue forecast is scheduled to be released on August 26, 2010.  We will be watching this closely, both to see what it holds for the remainder of this biennium as well as 2011-2013.  Early reports are predicting another downturn—which will make meeting needs and balancing the budget even harder than we already anticipated.

We are continuing to refine our list of legislative priorities.  Right now, the list includes:

Maintain Document Recording Fee Resources for Affordable Housing;
Increase the Emergency Housing Account;
Preserve Existing Affordable Housing;
Maintain current tools to keep affordable housing affordable, including the Oregon Affordable Housing Tax Credit and maintaining state enabling legislation for local property tax abatement programs;
Permanent supporting housing construction to help end homelessness;
Increasing resources to support Minority Homeownership;
Expanding protections for tenants in foreclosed properties;
Supporting resident purchases of manufactured home parks;
Supporting land trusts; and
Protecting homeless from hate crimes.

A full and more detailed list is available here.

Questions? E-mail us.

Individual Development Accounts (IDAs) are a matched savings program that help low and moderate-income families purchase assets such as a home, a post-secondary education, or the capital needed to start or expand a small business.  Neighborhood Partnerships brought Amy Shir—an expert asset building consultant—to present strategies to increase participant recruitment and retention to forty of Oregon’s IDA providers in June.

Ms. Shir recommended developing a recruitment strategy that maps out plans for the year including the target numbers of inquiries, applications and enrolled savers each quarter. Many of Ms. Shir’s recommended recruitment strategies are common sense approaches such as:

Reaching potential IDA savers though major employers of traditionally low wage workers such as hospitals, hotels, big-box retailers, restaurants, cleaning services, and sports and entertainment venues;

Reaching IDA savers by partnering with affordable housing programs, Small Business Centers, tribal organizations, Community Action Agencies, Head Start, vocational schools, or Refugee Resettlement Programs; and

Targeting low and moderate-income families who get their taxes prepared through Volunteer Income Tax Assistance programs, and encouraging new enrollees to save part or all of their Earned Income Tax Credit refund.

Ms. Shir also reminded those in attendance that a well planned retention strategy saves time and money for IDA providers in the long run. Ms. Shir recommended retention strategies such as:

Offering alternatives to participants physically having to go to the bank to make monthly deposits such as direct deposit, mail-in deposits, and ATM deposits;

Staying in touch with participants during the savings period through initiatives like Savers Club meetings, quarterly budgeting check-ins, electronic newsletters and Facebook groups, text message reminders to save, and sending monthly progress statements to savers;

Offering focused asset-specific resources to participants such as peer networking events for microenterprise IDA savers, campus tours and financial aid seminars for education IDA savers, and home tours for home ownership IDA savers;

Making financial education training as flexible and accessible as possible by offering perks for training attendees such as a convenient location, bus passes or other transportation support, multiple scheduling options, childcare, food, and interpreters if appropriate;

Encouraging prospective participants on waiting lists to start saving prior to enrollment since pre-savings can make it even easier for participants to reach their goals; and

Working with participants on credit repair as soon as they apply to the program to avoid unanticipated delays once the participant has met his or her savings goal.

Above all, Ms. Shir stressed flexibility, creativity and the importance of tailoring each IDA program to meet the diverse and changing needs of savers.  Click here to see Ms. Shir’s full PowerPoint from her June presentation. NP’s next IDA provider training will cover strategies for providing financial education to adult learners.  Email Haley Cloyd for more information.