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local cable or sat lied provider. watch us in hd likes us on facebook and follow us on twitter. next a discussion about how to create opportunities for communities with unemployment, foreclosures and racial divides. then the senate confirmation hearing for the nominee to be

the next transportation security administrator. after that a house hearing on the response to the earthquakes in nepal. the brooksings institution held a forum on the challenges in creating opportunities in communities experiencing poverty, unemployment foreclosures and racial divides. what can be done to help families in distressed communities and the lessons learned since the redevelopment of areas like the baltimore sand town neighborhood. speakers include michael smith the special assistant to the president and director of the white house initiative my brother's keeper which aims to help minority boys and young men. this is just under two hours.

good morning to all of you here today and to those of you joining via our live webcast. on behalf of the brooksings metropolitan policy program i want to welcome you to our baltimore and beyond panel discussion. i'm jennifer vai a fellow with the metro program and i was asked or at least i think i was asked to open our session today for two reasons, first, because of my almost 14 years here at brooksings i have focused my research and policy development efforts on how cities and metro areas particularly older industrial areas in the northeast and midwest can revitalize their neighborhoods and grow their regional economies. that work includes research that i did several years ago the focused on greater baltimore's economy and strategies for better connecting low income residents to quality jobs. the second reason i was asked to provide opening comments is because i live in baltimore. these two things combined give me both a professional and

personal perspective on the events that occurred in baltimore over the past several weeks. in my professional capacity at brooksings i together with several of my colleagues, have been trying to understand the circumstances and the conditions in which the protests and riots took place and put them in a broader regional and national context. it is by now well known that the sand town winchester neighborhood where freddie gray lived suffers from trends joblessness, poverty and the full range of social challenges that accompany approximate economic disparate and distress. over half of the working age population in this community is either not in the labor force or is unemployed and looking for work. nearly half of the children are impoverished and over a third of its homes are vacant and a bapd ond. such distress isn't limited to sand town winchester overall one if five people in baltimore lives in a neighborhood of extreme poverty most of which

are concentrated east and west of the downtown areas. these poor areas are largely african-american and highly segregated by race and income. there is another less well known story that we've been telling in blog posts and media interviews that is that sand town and other baltimore neighbors are located in what by maybe measures is a thriving metropolitan area. income and educational attainment levels are high in the region while poverty rates are relatively low. it has a strong black middle class and it's a region that's rich in a ses including a robust network of colleges and universities, several world class opt systems, close proximity to the nation's capital and unique vibrant urban communities where people and firms want to locate. this story, too, must be understood for it's by building on lease strengths that the region can continue to grow more and better jobs and yet it's not enough. to truly raise more residents out of poverty and into the middle class neighborhoods like sand town and the people living

in them must be far better connected to those opportunities. and this is the issue that brings us here today. but while baltimore will be a platform for our discussion we will look beyond baltimore to focus on what we've learned from years of collective effort to improve you are back and suburban communities around the country. this broader scope is important because the fact is while baltimore has most recently been in the spotlight it's challenges are far from unique. it's degree of income inequality is actually similar to many other big cities and it's level of concentrated poverty people as that poverty may be is actually about average among its peers. unfortunately not only is neighborhood distress a widespread cal length in our cities and increasingly suburbs around the country, if we look back over the past 45 years we realize that we actually haven't made much systemic progress in alleviating it.

according to joe court right and his colleagues at the city observatory since 1970 the number of high poverty neighborhoods if in the united states has tripled and the number of people living in them has doubled. there tends to be to be a lot of focus on gent fiction when as their research those very few of the munts that were poor in 1970 have seen their poverty rates fall to below the national average. these fact may make us want to throw in the towel thinking that the problems are much too big and far too complex for us to address, that no amount of effort or resources will really help us move the dial. but as we'll hear from our really stellar group of panelists today we have, in fact, learn a great deal about what it takes to bring people and neighborhoods out of poverty. from their decades of collective work and that of many many others, we have a chance to assess what has succeeded and what hasn't and that apply those lessons to their efforts moving forward. as our moderator for the panel,

amiy lou will help us devil into these questions, daem together with bruce cats is the crow director and founder of the metropolitan policy program and brings over 20 years of her own research and policy work on cities and metro areas to this discussion. amy will introduce each of our panel lists and then give brief context setting remarks before we get g. he get into what i anticipate will be ain't incredibly dynamic conversation that draws from the deep experience and expertise from our panelists. we will then have time for questions from you and from our live -- from our web audience which by the way if you're joining us by webcast you can ask those questions via the #beyond baltimore. unfortunately i will take this community toount to mention that we will not have the hear to hear from daurn walker today. he was originally on our program but was called away on urgent foundation business oupt ut country but i foe that he was very much regrets not being able

to join this conversation. so i said earlier that the second reason i was asked to provide some opening remarks today is that i live in baltimore, a city that i didn't grow up in but where i happily made a home with my family. so i will take this this as some license to add my -- to my remarks a bit to end my remashs on a bit more of a personal note. since freddie gray's death and all that's followed i think many of us, maybe all of us in baltimore have a collective purveyervasive ache. for me this feeling comes from two sources, first the events in baltimore over the past several weeks have simply been heart breaking heart breaking because freddie gray shouldn't have died the way he did, heart breaking because businesses were destroyed and people were hurt and heart breaking because the young people taking part in the destruction and violence didn't see another better outlet for their frustration at the systems that they feel have shut them out and have left them behind. butt second source of that ache comes from knowing that because

of these events this diverse and special city that has so much to offer and that has experienced so much progress has been portrayed to the world over and over again almost solely through the lens of its deep e. challenges. for those of us who care deeply about the city who root for the city this is really, really tough to see. all the positive statistics i cited are what they are i would be lying if i said i didn't feel some satisfaction in having a platform from which to tell them. as a way of letting people know there is so much more to baltimore than what they've been told and what they think that they know. and yet it's these two realities together that bring the most discomfort, that the economic hardship that underpins what occurred in baltimore can exist alongside progress and prosperity. not just in baltimore, but in communities throughout this nation that's supposed to be the rand of opportunity. it's not that we haven't understood this to be true for a very very long time, but it can be easy for many of us to forget

the real impacts until you see testimony firsthand in your own community and you're forced to question whether or not they will catalyze change for the better or whether things will only get worse. i have to believe the former. baltimore was an early pioneer in applying new approaches to neighborhood revitalization, some of which have worked and some of which haven't. since then the practice of joining people and place based strategies has evolved and developed a body of evidence-based programs that can make and that are making a profound difference in the lives of families and communities. today we have an opportunity to have an honest conversation about these efforts to ask important questions and to help lay the groundwork for a new path forward. thank you. [ applause ]

while everyone is getting miked up i wanted to say good morning. thank you for joining us today here and on the webcast. i want to thank my colleague jennifer for just a very heart felt opening to this day. it is a stark reminder about why we are talking about these top picks. i did have -- listening to jennifer i had a groundhog day moment which was, you know, after hurricane katrina which i was very actively involved in there was a design for a renewed conversation about urban policy and poverty. i think part of our motivation for having this conversation today was to make sure that even as the news cycle has resided a

bit that we continue to he can plor what needs to be done to ensure that we don't find ourselves in this position again. there is no doubt there is now a national discussion about poverty going on in the country right now that we hope gets sustained. in fact, president obama was served -- took part in a panel discussion last week in georgetown among faith-based leaders to talk about how we tackle the challenges of poverty and he it did that alongside with robert putnam who has written a book about the role of parenting and families in that. i want to stress just to reiterate some of the themes that jennifer talked about, today's discussion is focused specifically on the role of place in that opportunity story. because there's so much concern about the packet that your zip code or the neighborhood you live in has such a major

predictor on a person's life outcomes. and so when we talk about entrenched poverty entrenched poverty as you heard from jennifer is highly concentrated in a neighborhood, whether it's in an urban core or increasingly in the suburbs. so as jennifer said i think at times when i -- when we read the media stories or we see the images of the frustration on the streets, there is a sense that a lot of our policies and our programs had failed our communities. and so i think what we want to do is really focus on the fact that there has been a lot of well-meaning efforts, org dbrags organizations working in these communities often for decades trying to really reverse a lot of trends that we've seen. and the field has evolved. you know, since those severity efforts to revitalize sandtown west chester whether it's hope 6 low income housed doechls, the

place based investments with people based investment, social services, job training housing mobility and choice there are now new forms of finance and there's more efforts to connect low income neighborhoods to the wider regional economy whether it's their skills, land use or transportation planning. this morning we are going to try to touch on all of those issues and we're going to explore what are those effort that are underway today to unlock opportunity in these high poverty neighborhoods. we're going to discuss what we have learned over the years, what has worked and what has not and what we've been trying to build on. and we are going tos also say we understand that the work is not finished. we have to acknowledge where duds the field have to go so we can continue to push the envelope on the policies and strategies that are needed to make sure we improve the life chances for low income families and their children. so for this conversation today

we wanted to bring leaders together and organizations who have actually been on the front lines of working on these issues. often for decades. now, to convert neighbors of poverty to neighborhoods of opportunity takes a village and so today we kind of brought you a little mini village. and so i know this seems really simplistic, but we have on our panel today a community developer, an anchor partner, an investment banker, a resident and next generation leader and a fill anti-miss and policymaker and each one of them have an important role to play in this complex issue about neighborhood opportunity so let me introduce each one. so to my left is bart harvey he is the former chair and ceo of enterprise community partners. he joined enterprise in 1984 shortly after james rouse

started and formed the enterprise foundation and bart himself ran the foundation from 1993 to 2008. he is an expert on affordable housing, he is an expert on community development. he was with list, help formed with the foundations and the financial institutions trying to scale cdc's and community development capacity around the country. and like jennifer bart lives in baltimore and has been an integral part of the efforts in sandtown winchester where we're going to hear about in a moment. next to him is joe we will miranda the director of leadership development for youth build, usa. youth build was started by dorothy stone man as a wee little housing rehab program in harlem back this in the late 1970s and today it is a program that has scaled. it is now in 100 programs across

ten countries helping disconnected youth become leaders in rebuilding their own communities. and joel himself is one of those leaders. he is not only a graduate of youth build but he is now a director in the organization and on top of that he's also involved with my brother's keeper. next to him is donald hinkel brown who is the president and ceo of the reinvestment fund. they are expert approximate in financing neighborhood revitalization, providing market information, programs that increase the wealth and assets of people and communities. you're going to hear a lot about the neighborhoods they are involved in. >> to his left is dare rick douglas, he is going to wear two hats for us today, currently he is the vice president for civic engagement at the university of chicago, he is working on a lot of the partnerships around south side -- the south side chicago neighborhoods, the city and the region around urban mic development, but the other hat he wore and how i got to know

dare rick is that he was special assistant to obama in the first administration helping to lead the domestic policy council and the white house work on urban policy and metropolitan policy. >> and then not least is michael smith who is the fills miss and policymaker i talked about. he is rently the special assistant to the president and helps run my brother's keepers and before that he oversaw the social invasion fund and a couple invasion initiatives at the case foundation. so i think we are going to have a really dynamic discussion. >> just as a reminder we're going to go and have this conversation for about 45 minutes or so, do think about your questions and we're going to open it up for q and a and, again, folks on the webcast our welcome to join in this discussion. so let me start with bart.

and, bart, went to sandtown winchester the day after the riots to help contribute to the cleanup. why don't you start first from that personal story about what you saw and what you experienced. >> thank you, amy. like jennifer, being a baltimore yan, being raised there and coming back and settling there i was heartbroken. when you saw that cvs on the loop, that kept bushing and burning and burning, i wondered what -- what had really happened and what had happened in sandtown. the next day i went to both look for myself and to help clean up and it was -- it was -- it was a very different scene than you might have expected. there were about 200 people that were out, out of the community and some of the churches and they were -- they were cleaning up and on north and pennsylvania avenue where the cvs was and

also in a couple of other areas for small stores that had been impacted. i went and toured all of the investment that enterprise had made 524 homes that we had directly contributed to and about 250 through sandtown habitat for humanity and they looked better than they looked 20 years ago when we built them. the homeowners were there, they were in great shape, there was no property damage in any of them. there was a beating heart at the center of sandtown winchester. so that was very positive andrea shurg. and then i attended yesterday a one baltimore meeting of fill anti-pea and state and city to see how does baltimore react to this. basically they surveyed everything that had been touched by the riots and the looting and

there were 350 different businesses, a half of them were broken window or something on the exterior. the serious ones you saw on that clips over and over again, a very large shoe store, the cvs, one senior center that burnt to the ground if you take those 350 and look at the cost that is estimated on it, it's about $12.5 million from just initial preliminary estimates, a third of them have full insurance a third of hem have partial and a third have none and the city and philanthropists and others banks and community financial institutions are getting together a pool to try and put everybody back into business. is so it's a lot more hopeful situation than you might see

from what you watch. and i'm sure jennifer had the same thing, that i got 67 e-mails saying are you okay? baltimore is burning. you know, and so put it in perspective. it's still is a huge issue and we should get into those issues. >> so let me just follow up with bart about what were the original plans or what was the effort that was made by enterprise habitat for humanity all your partners in sandtown? and what's your reaction to the -- striems criticism or assumption that the $130 million spent in sandtown westchester didn't work? >> and i will say at the outset that this was jim rouse's view, which i think is the right view

of a neighborhood transformation, it's what real community development is. it's saying what would happen if not only the housing but the schools and the employment and the healthcare and all these systems worked to really help people become productive -- more productive and really integrate into part of the system so there's a path upwards for either them or their kids going forward. and we did undertake a major effort around that and we learned a lot and part of it was successful and part of it was not successful. and if you -- i was interested in fox news that said $130 million wasted in sandtown winchester. well, i went back, if you just take in the housing and infrastructure was a major part of that expenditure there was other expenditures, but that

have the major part and the $130 million is a mix of public and private financing, that was all added together out of an able report. if you took just what we know about ours, which is chicky grace and enterprise homes of the 524 units cost $58 million and it's all there and it's all owned by people that are working and a significant portion of that's being paid back to the state in mortgages over time. so -- and then if you look at the amount that was spent with habitat for humanity that's being paid back back into habitat that goes into other houses along the way. so that's all there. now, let me just do one thing if i may on this. not to avoid your question but just put it into context. if you took 524 people and put

them into starter houses in the county and in some of the wealthier metro areas at a $350,000 home over the same period with the same interest rate you would spend more in the mortgage interest deduction on them. they have their houses the cost to the government would be more than it is in sandtown winchester if you do the math over the same period of time. so you have these houses almost 700 if you count ours and habitat's together that are there, are effective, they are a heartbeat. what didn't happen? the connection to jobs was incredibly difficult. there is a large number of ex offenders in the area they are an automatic exclude by law. we went round and round on that. that was a failure. economic development did not occur. so you can see where sandtown's investment begins and ends.

where freddie gray lived was on the outskirts of the area that had been improved dramatically and had the strongest home ownership portion of all of sandtown winchester. and what didn't happen was there wasn't an economic driver that kept that redevelopment going past where the homeowners and were and past where the stability in sandtown winchester was. the employment didn't occur can. the healthcare systems we -- and i'm sorry i'm probably taking too long -- the healthcare systems we organized all of the various healthcare providers all the payment systems changed, very hard thing to do but we signed up every -- almost every kid this sandtown for the chips program, et cetera so there is more healthcare available than when we started. the schools, we took on two

public had schools under an agreement and combined them into one from k through 6 to k through 8 and it went from one of the worst schools into the top half by all statistical person urs along the way. so that improvement in still there. more needs to be done. so there are positives and negatives to this whole situation. most of that investment is still there, it's in -- and it's amazing that it's in better shape than it was when it was first done. >> so is i think that positive progress, the one outstanding issue was jobs. >> jobs and development economic development. >> and which takes us really naturally to joe we will and joelle and i talked a bit before this about how -- what we see is that despite some of this positive progress a lot of young

people still very frustrated and so youth build works directly with those young people and it's, by the way, it is not lost on me that we are having this conversation at an institution that is like the symbol of privilege. so i asked joelle to just get us out of our ivory tower and really make everyone in this room really uncomfortable. and tell a story about how youth build really works with kids who feel left out and how you get to a place of promise. >> thank you amy. so youth build just to give you some background on youth build, youth build is in its 36th year as a program, it started in 1978 in east harlem, became a national -- federally funded program in 1993 under the department of housing an urban development and is a faed real

funded program under the department of labor. as far as the numbers go we went from this one tiny program in harlem to 268 programs nationwide which sounds great right, but there are over 2000 communities have applied to have a youth build program in their communities and only threes 268 are able to operate because of lack of funding. here are the needs if in those communities, the young people who come to our programs they come to our programs, we don't have to do very much advertising, word-of-mouth gets them in. they have a brother, a sister, an uncle, a if a err who graduated from youth build and talks about this as a unique experience that helped them tap into their potential it. they're coming to us from fragmented homes some of our young people were or are currently gang members single parents, struggling with substance abuse, homelessness. i mean they're really feeling the sing of poverty every day

and they're feeling of sting of generations of poverty. so they're coming to our programs sort of saying i need something to change. they're survivors. when -- in the youth build program they're engaged by a loving and supportive community that believes in their innate and abundant potential and we provide economic enrichment, career redness skills, life skills development, leadership development, the opportunity to engage if meaningful service and we tap into that desire right, to want to change their communities. the story isn't all linear. i will give you an example. myself. i dropped out of high school when i was 17 and i literally walked out in front of high school officials and i remember at the moment feeling like i didn't want to go back but wondering why no one was coming after me. wondering why no one was telling me to turn around. at the age of 17 when that

happened and you feel disconnected from the rest of the world and see that some of the people who are supposed to be responsible for your education, for developing you aren't doing that and don't bother to say, hey, wait. you believe that the world doesn't care. so enema of our young people who come to the program in addition to the many stings of poverty that they're suffering they're coming angry because they feel like they've been disappointed. sort of jet a sond out of society. had he come to the program we believe in them. they nurture them. we provide a place for them to heal, to develop real world skills, to tap into what i call, you knew -- i compare this to the laws of energy which is that their ability is neither created more destroyed but transformed from one form to another and we take these amazing skills and talents that they bring and within the walls of our program we are that reactor and we tap into the leadership that they already have and we help them come out and find a sense of self efficacy, make better

decisions about their lives. they're able to succeed if career and post secondary education. we provide this ongoing love and support. we have this motto this mantra amongst graduates that says once if youthful always in youth build. so we're a family. i have 140,000 brothers and sisters nationwide who have graduated from youth build programs over the years. these 140,000 brothers and sisters have engaged in the building of 28000 units of affordable housing. so not only are they building themselves, they are building their community. those two things go hand in hand. so we take the young mother who is coming out of an abusive relationship and she comes to us and we provide the healing we provide the real world skills. the young man who is suffering because he has been the victim of poverty but also has also been the aggressor of the many things that come with poverty violence on others, violence on a partner violent on himself.

and so is you knew, we work with a group of young people that to many in society are not that attractive. i wassing having a conversation earlier with you, bart, about you know there are some programs that have scaled really quickly but they're working with the folk who are a little more attractive. folks from more affluent communities, college graduates they're easier to talk to, they're easier to deal with, they're not going to blow up in am your face-to-face the minute you confront them with some of the problems they're facing. but these are young people that need us. we really are living in two americas. one that -- one that looks pretty and is pretty to talk about because we're doing something about the problems that kpi in that america and one that we're not really dealing with and one that we know is there because we saw the anger come out right, in baltimore. and, you know i think back, a colleague of mine pointed me to an interview on one of the news stations and i can't remember

which one it is at the moment but a young man, the reporter turned to the young man and the young man said, we are hurting. we are hurting. we are not being listened to. and at that moment the reporter turned away because he wanted to focus on the riots. so that is who we are working with. we are working with young people who are hurting and our goal is not only to them them heal but to become productive responsible citizens who are not just living in their communities and not just part of their families but building their families, building their communities, they're becoming leaders. what i mentioned earlier that's who our young people were, today they are community leaders they are police liaisons, they are working to go into the prison system and work with young people before -- before they're released to give them some hope to let them know once they get on the other side there are opportunities for them. that was long, i'm sorry. >> no. no. i don't want to ever cut you off. tell us about youth build's experience if ferguson because i think you do have a chapter there or working in st. louis and your peer yen in baltimore,

too. >> so youth build has a chapt nr st. louis and soon after the events in ferguson we got a call from the director in st. louis and she said you know, we -- michael brown's uncle is actually a graduate of the st. louis program. he needed some help for funeral costs, clothing related to the funeral, we provided that. and the young people at the st. louis program and the staff at the st. louis program said we are close by we need to be doing something. they were going into the community, sort of just being there, being part of it and beginning conversations with officials approximate in the community. it's taken longer than anyone would have liked, but recently the mayor of ferguson actually gave youth build st. louis two plots why they can begin to build homes, affordable housing units. and the hope is that this grows so that the young people in ferguson are then able to build real community assets. and, you know where we've seen this work we've seen in the

young people once they're building these community assets they remember that for a lifetime. they drive by that house, that building that they helped build and they say, i built that. and, therefore i am taking care of that. you cannot touch this. and so what we hope is that that -- that's where we get into ferguson and we think we're on our way there. >> you mentioned in the green room that for every student that come into youth build there are so many more. >> for every young person that make it into the youth build program we have at least five young people who can't because of lack of funding. so you know, we hope that the following year those young people come back. many of them do. there are some times when they don't. and we'll go out into the community and search for them, but we worry about where they ended up. so if they're not -- if we're not able to capture them when they're saying, hey, we want this, right, we're going to lose them. it's the responsibility of everyone, right, it's the

responsibility of our government, our corporate partners of everyone in the community, it takes a village, right, and we've got to take a look at who is answering the call and most of them are. >> that's great. lots to cover, but don, why don't we go to you and talk about trf and trf is actually spent -- they work in a lot of communities, but they've been in baltimore for ten years. so deep long-term patient capital investment and partnerships in that community. talk about your work in baltimore and what -- how that's a reflection of your theory of change at tr if. >> sure. the reinvestment fund is both a cfi, financial institution that's a nonprofit but also we've founded a development company, very specifically for baltimore, but it is working across the mid-atlantic as well. then we also are a data and analytics company and that's part of both the development entity and our data business are really reveal our theory of

change. we were invited to baltimore by build an if organization just after the dawson fire bombing, an event that today would spark a riot, but then it sparked a tremendous amount of despair. the neighborhood and all of it organized with build's assistant and they wanted something positive to follow that horrible heinous event and they invited us to come and help them develop a redevelopment strategy. >> can you tell the audience with oliver is where that is. >> oliver is in east baltimore it is where they film the wire. it is adjacent to the ebdi region around johns hopkins medical. it is between johns hopkins medical and amtrak station. and we work there near the station, station north through green mount down through johnson square and oliver. we have built about 230-some

units across that region and we have reduced vacancy from over 40% to 8% thus far, we believe we will reach 5% vacancy in a couple more years with a bit more effort. we have increased median incomes within that region which was pretty consistently whom oj nous very low income population we've -- median income have raised 64% since we'ven investing there and performing in the city a series of neighborhood over time i believe baltimore has done four different iterations. they have a time series of the market traj ekt reese value trajectories of place and can then adjust their programs individual communities can adjust their strategies or make their case based on data for why they need resources and of what kind. the cities in this current environment of scarcity and ever

diminishing resources need to be able to aim their resources. you know equity 20 years ago was provide every service everywhere and then you provide it to the next person in line. equity today in a sense of scarcity is you had better use your resources where they are most peck testify. one of our theories of change is around those data advised decision makesings for efficient use of resources and amplification of resources. we specifically picked oliver not just because of the fire bombing and the organizing effort, we originally told the folks we can't guarantee you that that's the neighborhood we would pick. we scanned the whole region and found that the combination of factors around there presented an actionable development that over a number of years with a specific amount of money we believe we could reactivate the marketplace. a build from strength strategy around community development and the reason why that is our strategy is we want the private

marketplace to scissor with us around market activities. so when we started our work in east baltimore we represented 80% or 90% of building permits over $50,000. today we are a minority of the building permits over $50,000. when we started we were the majority of home sales over $150,000. today we are a minority of the home sales over $150,000. the private market is drafting on our wind and that is what makes it manageable in terms of public subsidy in today's environment of shrinking budgets and it allows you to then shift your focus to the next neighborhood while the existing neighborhood is still being drafted with market activity and you can build a crescendo. it is planned change and, you know, the last topic we need to cover given the context is gent fiction, but jen friday fiction is unmanaged change where the

public sector is disengaged. what we're trying to do is manage a joint effort to building value and opportunity for existing residents and new residents in a way that's managed change and self sustaining then once we're able to move on to the next neighborhood. >> we're going to -- we promised to get beyond baltimore so the neck is chicago. i'm going to bring tark into the conversation. as you know university of chicago is on the south side of the city and since he has arrived at university of chicago in his role he has really reinvented the role of an anchor institution in sort of economic opportunity. so can you talk about that, particularly in the context of sort of distress and inequality because i think many of us who are observers of the news cycle know that the mayoral race in chicago was very much defined by the frustrations in some of these neighborhoods and the inequality in chicago.

so talk about the conditions and your role. >> thanks, amy for inviting me, it's good to be here and see so many people i haven't seen in a long time. the issues that chicago faces are dis is similar to the issues in baltimore and many of the cities in the united states and around the world. you have this phenomenon in chicago where you have a very growing and thriving downtown area and then when you get out to the neighborhoods, particularly on the south and the west sides, you see dee population, dis investment, high unemployment. and in my estimation the main issue driving that is is that the neighborhoods are not connected at all to what's driving the economy. i think one of the big challenges that neighborhoods often face is this dis connection that needs to be spoken to. what you saw in the mayoral race

was some of that peeling and some of that frustration. the mayor did a lot of positive things, but a lot of people still felt frustrated this he felt they weren't listened to they felt that things were not getting better. and so that was why it was such a contentious race and went to a runoff and all of that. what we have been doing at the university of chicago has been trying to reimagine what the role of an anchor institution is in the city and in the community. looking at it not just as the traditional anchor things that a lot of institutions do which are very important, like our buy local, hire local, toes sorts of things, but trying to really look at what are all the things that universities do and how can we leverage those things to have an impact in the community and the city? and so it's important to emphasize what are the things universities do. so we try to develop a civic

engagement policy that doesn't have us trying to become the city, it doesn't have us trying to be a bank doesn't have us trying to be a foundation it's be a university, but there are a lot of things universities do that can be leveraged for impact. the anchor stuff is very clear the amount of -- you know the university of chicago is the largest employer on the south side, largest purchaser on the south side, largest developer on the south side. we run four charter schools, we have the largest medical provider on the south side. you can go down the list and so there's a lot of things and a lot of tools that we can use and have been using to try to reorient those to have an impact in the city, in the region, in the local community. but we also -- universities are also educators that's what they do, so we've been trying to develop initiatives to support and provide more access to the educational resources of the university and the city. things like college readiness,

college access types of programs. we've been recently doing a lot more work around leadership development in the public sector, in the nonprofit sector. we created a new program to inc. u bait and accelerate nonprofits kind of at an organizational level which is another big issue. universities are also research discussion institutions that's the core mission. so we've been thinking about ways in which we could try to encourage and incentivize more of our faculty as they're doing their scholarship that's getting published in the best journals to do things that also can have an impact on policy evidence-based kinds of approaches and we've been seeing a lot more of that. i will give you an example in a second. and the last area we've been really focusing on is around invasion and entrepreneurship. a lot of chicagoans become high priority for the mayor and a lot of effort in the city around had a and universities are you know, with the research that

goes on, the ideas they're a huge opportunity to create new companies, in you commercialized research, new technologies new products and so to correct those into the neighborhoods and the community and we recreated a new invasion centers the first one on the south side that ties kind of the neighborhood and the south side into the broader economy. of a couple of examples, if i could just highlight that are focused on one is this initiative called case chicago anchors for a strong economy, where we at the university brought it to the world business chicago, which is an organization in the city that leads a lot of its economic development, business attraction types of initiatives and the polk brothers foundation was an instrumental partner. the idea was to leverage the procurement power not just of one anchor but of multiple anchors. and also anchors in different sectors. so it's -- a lot of times you will see educational institutions or medical

institutions band together, but here we have the major universities, the major medical centers, the city is a partner as well as city agencies like cha and cta, the county is a partner, we have the private sector, banks, health providers and energy company, we have the -- all the largest museums in the city that are part of this consortium and the idea -- the motivation is really to think about ways in which these anchors can come together to pull their resources to connect the neighborhoods that are most in need on the south and west sides to the economy. so a big -- one big pillar of the work is around our purchasing and so we do both capacity building for businesses, which is a big issue, to how they can grow their businesses and get contracts with these institutions, we try to do -- work together to do big plays where we can go to one of our joint vendors and say we'd like you to set up an praying on the

south side and we will give you a long-term contract and it creates jobs we also are coming together to borrow from each other's networks. so one of the big challenges we might have from local suppliers, this vendor doesn't know who we work with and so it helps in that regard. we're going to be building out a work force development pillar as well. another example of something that i think is relevant to the conversation today is this new initiative at the university now it's called the urban labs which is a project that is focused op doing very rigorous evidence-based research to inform policy. it's building on the success that we had with the crime lab and which you know very well was -- studied this program becoming a man which got into issues of youth violence, tested a program that showed how being in the program reduced youth violent arrests by 44% and that program then got scaled by the mayor to 2000 young men the

president met with those young men and then went back and that helped to spawn the my brother's keeper initiative. creating lab in crime there's one in education, there's one in poverty, there's one in energy and the environment and there's one in health. they will do random miezed control trials studying these programs and work with cities to help scale them up. so it's a way in which we leverage what we do. those are just a couple of the ways, but there's a lot that i think anchors trying to do to be catalyst for change. >> michael, it's a lot of interest from probably everyone in this room and around the country, what the administration is going to do in this moment so we'll touch on that. let's start first about my brother's keeper. it's a little over a year in

implementation. you really received a lot of local commitments to action. explain to people in the room who may not be familiar with it what's the approach for my brother's keeper, what's the result now a year in. >> good morning. my brother's keeper is really what the heart of the obama administration is, which is making sure we're expanding opportunity for all americans. not only restoring economic prosperity. that's what my brother's keeper is all about. you know derek talked about the president meeting with these young men and i think that was an impetus after the death of trayvon martin i think many of you may remember the president surprising the press briefing corps and sharing his raw emotions and trying to explain some of the anger and angst the americans are feeling about a life tragically lost. there has to be something we can do about it, i don't have a big plan up my sleeve but i'm going to put my teams together and see

what happens. and six months after the president going to the press corps, my brother's keeper was launched. it's about addressing these gaps that boys of color face and making sure all young people reach their potential. you look at the data latino tribal, certain asian-american and pacific islander populations, the data is staggering, starting at making sure they're in kindergarten ready to learn. reading at grade level, where they're trailing behind their piers and it's an important indicator. the high school graduation rate we were just applauding that america, we're now at over 80% graduation rate, you look at black and latino and tribal boys, you're still at about 50%. we had a group of folks from rochester that were in -- meeting with us recently. just about three years ago their graduation was was 9%.

you look at shopping homicide, where black boys, for instance are 6% of the population, but more than half of the nation's murder victims. unemployment rates you realize we need to pause and say what's going on here. the president did three things. he created the my brother's keeper's task force, a task force made up of almost every single cabinet member. he gave them 90 days to come back with a strategy on a series of recommendations and they did just that. we're focused on a college career strategy. young people zero to 24. and six key milestones in their lives, where if we can make a difference there, it can have long term transformation. you've seen in the past year, all sorts of new and expanded grant programs new public private partnerships anything from department of labor and 100 million dollar apprenticeship program, which is making sure we're looking at this

population. the corporation for opportunity americorps or even guidance where i think many of you know the statistics that we see, kids of color being suspended at extraordinarily high rates as early as prek, sometimes involving the law enforcement system. and when you used to kind of get put in the corner for that kind of thing it's exciting to see what's happening on the policy side. on the play side, where my heart is, the president launched something called my brother's keeper community challenge, and it was really a way to say hey, local communities, we know that real progress begins and ends with you, and this can't be something that we're talking about from the grassroots, many of you have been working on this anyway, we now have 227 mayors tribal leaders and county executives that have accepted the president's my brother's keeper kmoont challenge. they're aligning with our strategy, and they've taken the president to town to say, we're going to pick the areas we're going to focus on.

we're going to convene local stakeholders to own the challenges and opportunities in our community. we're going to do an exhaustive policy stance to see what works and what doesn't work. we're going to release a local action plan to tell the community how we're going to address these persistent opportunity gaps. we're kind of toward the beginning of that 180 day period, philadelphia was the first city to release their local action plan, followed by indianapolis, boston. several others, but philadelphia just to give you an example. they're doing some really interesting things they have a bold goal to reduce juvenile arrests by 50%. that's what you're seeing in many of these plans. they're going to do that through a diversion program. they have a program where they're trying to bring in literacy specialists to work with the hardest, the highest need kids. in indianapolis, they're expanding the police athletic league and they're also doing

bias training for all of their police officers. and boston they've expanded their street worker program, getting more youth workers on the streets to work with young people that may be at risk for crime and violence. they've expanded the mayor's mentoring position where he's challenging the city to get involved. what's exciting is, you're seeing people be very serious about this but also blang for the long term to hopefully prevent not only address what's happening now, but prevent challenges in the future. and real serious bold goals. lastly i'll say the president really called the private sector to action, what we've seen since the launch of my brother's keeper is more than $500 million, and serious private sector commitments most recently just a couple weeks, we were with the president at the bronx where something was launched called the my brother's keeper alliance. the former ceo is leading us, with an all star corporate board. they launch about 80 to $100

million in commitments to really get behind these communities, so that these plans can actually be implemented. you name it jpmorgan chase, ubs. many many corporations who have gotten behind this work, there's some good momentum here, and the next stage is making sure that we implement and are really shining a spotlight on what's working and where we're going to have impact. >> to build off that, i want to move to the next set of topics. i want to make sure we open up to questions in about 10 minutes. we're going to do one last round of questions here, start thinking about what you want to ask, and i want to invite those from the web cast to start sending your questions to the #. when we think about there's a lot of excitement and momentum here, and a lot of energy by the leaders on this panel. we know the work is unfinished we know this is a long game. so as we think about what's next for the field, we have to build on what we've learned.

i think there has been a lot of learning. now, whether there's a lot of institutional memory in that it's not clear, we want to make sure we don't replicate mistakes. i'd say -- i want the three organizations that have been in existence for 20 years to sort of tell us what you've learned that we really need to -- we need to build on. as we go forward. i think for derek, i think it would be great to hear from your administration hat and now being on the ground what you think scaling at the national level looks like given the reality on the ground. and i think michael your work on social innovation on evidence -- impact investing leveraging to sustain and scale proven programs i think that's where the dialogue is. what you're learning from that, that we need to continue to hold on to. let's just run through real quick. >> i think a lot's been learned

since the neighborhood transformation. and part of it connects to what's being done in east baltimore as well and the oliver neighborhood. the oliver neighborhood can succeed because just south of it you had john's hopkins hospital and -- which is the largest employer. and in a lot of the old industrial cities, you had eds and meds, and they are now the major employers. and have you to connect to the investment and employments that are going into those eds and meds. and east baltimore development initiative, which is where they were originally cited to be. but because of politics, it was elsewhere. and we worked with bill just as you're working with build and prf, which is community -- really basic organization out

of the community that holds politicians accountable. but what's happening for ebdi which is tough and gone through some cycles, because it's absolutely right. the involvement of john's hopkins, the involvement of the president of john's hopkins, this is really to derek. and the buying power and everything that derek said is in effect as well as a new school that hopkins is knee deep. in essence the economic development and the employment has to follow and has to be connected. and it's still really hard and difficult, you go through cycles and your investment's got to be patient for the longer term. and enterprises doing similar kinds of efforts to that in fact in new orleans around laffit, with the charter school and with employment et cetera. and in other places that it's operating. the final thing i'll say is you

need patient long term capital. and calvert social investment foundation is trying to tap this longer term capital that can come in and be part of the effort. and that really gets to cdfi's and to others that have to be able to have 7 and 10 year money. a lot of people would like to see if they have safety that their capital can go to rebuild their cities in a really constructive way. that's all in the works too. there's some positive lessons learned, positive things on the ground. the biggest issue that isn't being addressed in my estimation by the administration and everyone else is do we have an intention al intentional jobs program that gets down to the ground to this

concentrated poverty that really reconcentrated after the great recession in a major way, and really threatens our cities? you know this was not as much a race issue? you have an african-american mayor, prosecutor, et cetera. it's a poverty issue. and there's real anger. and it isn't just in baltimore it's all over in different areas of concentrated poverty. >> we learned over the years that -- i think the biggest lesson is that if you simply stop and ask a young person what they would like to do for their community. they're going to have many, many ideas. and we need to listen. this is how you started many years ago, and i've seen a consistently in the 17 years i've been involved with these

program program, when we bring people together, ask them what they would like to see happen in their community, they have many, many ideas. i love the energy behind a lot of the research that's going into finding what works, i want to make sure that we don't become too fragmented and we focus on one approach. it's just mentoring or just internships. it really is about -- it's about the instruction, the twrang, the development, mentoring, internships, service. it's -- because none of what the young people are experiencing result of many policies and practices and attitudes and behaviors, right? we have to look at a holistic approach that provides the skill as an individual, as a leader, and that also allows them to heal. this is a poverty issue, right? the poverty issues way back have

a racial element. and we have to confront that at some point. i have many friends. my fellow latino friends and african-american brothers who say racism doesn't exist, but they can all point to an example where they were treated differently, because of who they were i have many white friends who say, i'm not a racist, but little things we do come from a history of racism. we have to acknowledge that and confront that. the impact it's had on poverty if we learned anything, all we have to do is ask. and engage them in decision making. they put a lot of resources behind youth policy input. they're engaged in policy decisions within the organization. we want to make sure that we are

listening and that we're bringing other folks into the conversation. you mentioned that -- this is an ivory tower. on the list of attendees i saw someone registered as mom and -- let's bring everyone into the conversation. >> i want to follow up this issue about two jobs leadership two jobs, at the end of the day people do want to end up with that other worth you know, and we talked a little bit about this beforehand. when the recession hit, construction stopped. how did youth build create demand, find demand so that young people can get work ready experience and end up in a place of employment. what's the model there? >> he had to look at what other industries were in demand, and

so many youth programs started looking at health careers starting as a nurse's assistant. and going to community college and there's an rn program there. and pursuing this path. in some regions there is a need for people of color and retail management, we're looking at -- we're taking a look at where the need is right? and it matches our model that it's engaging young people to meet the needs of the community, to meet the needs of this country, and so what's been a great development is that through our federal funder, the department of labor we now have something called construction plus. youth build started out building homes. and a construction program is a youth leadership program, we build homes we're also looking at other high demand industries we know we have the skill and talent. >> i think this is about capital

integrated approaches. >> i would say one thing i didn't emphasize as much in the first question. we definitely learned that our work is more impactful when we connect well organized data, and well organized money to organized people. we can connect data and money to transactions all day long. some of those transactions are self-sustaining. connecting those resources to organized people and listening to what they want to have happen, and then executing on what they want to have happen is a whole different tier of success. it's much more likely to have the longevity, be valued in the neighborhood. and it spawns unintentional positive effects. our building oliver with build was part and parcel of a series of successes which led to a grocery store organizes with

build and community organizations somewhere else in the city. and led to the political success of the credibility which helped them advocate for a billion dollar school rebuilding. these things are not completely detached. they do -- success builds upon success, especially when you're connected to organize communities. it is the hardest money in the world to get, organizing money. nobody really wants these people to have an organized voice. there's the risk of what will they say and ask for? silence is a lot easier to manage, just like politicians can manage decline quite well. they can manage silence quite well. giving voice is threatening, but it's really important. the other thing i'd say is you know, there's this premise within the world of community development, the places where we work are broken markets. are disconnected from the regional economy or disconnected

from any particular pipeline of opportunity or resource. take it a bit further and live there for a little while and try to invest, one realizes you're not just in a broken market, there's the other kind of market. the other kind of market where the residents of these neighborhoods are an input to a false and upside down economy which is keeping them in poverty, an economy that is fueled by the status quo. we see this in payday lending in high costs of food in particular neighborhoods. we see it in abusive landlords not maintaining quality of residencies, it perpetuates itself. and this builds up a level of cynicism of anger of residents in place. we're rescuing people from kind of this bad economy that is

using them as fuel. you listen to the radio, we watch tv, we are the product, right? we all forget this. we are the product being sold to advertisers, in poorer neighborhoods, the residents are being sold into an economy which is a weight on their shoulders, keeping them where they are, that's how i think community development has changed, we've begun to realize that. you said earlier the need for cross sector approaches. community development can't do this on its own. as we talk about jobs we need to come together with the workforce system and the economic development pillar. different motivations, you know, jobs are jobs but jobs for poor people. jobs with suburban pickup trucks coming into the city to take advantage of the new jobs and then we have a new opportunity with public health where a whole different profession and frankly another silo is coming to bear in our work, if we can

bring together the new world of health care community benefits with the classic municipal county silo, around economic development, with community development, that's where the big opportunity is. >> you said something earlier about capitol and you talk about the scissors and how that's important to make sure we have good leveraged investment before you move on to a different neighborhood based on data. what's the lesson around capital now. sustaininging these investments takes a while. give us some thoughts on that. >> we raised particular capital for our work, as i'm sure enterprise did. we went out and raised 10 million

million. and that patient capital coming from a wide lens of civic and community stakeholders was important. providing a channel where the broadest audience can be invested in your work, it is much more -- it leads to more success, and it mitigates the risks that you will bump into down the road. when you need six degrees of separation from access to the mayor or access to the solution. if all of your money comes from one federal agency and parachutes down and you're not invested in a set of civic stakeholders that's a challenge. they do that quite well in blending forms of capital and sharing ownership over the transactions. >> eric? >> yeah the -- that was reflecting on this panel given that i was in the white house and now i've been working more

on the ground, what are the things that if i knew then would i know now would be different. >> tell me. >> sounds like you're on the right track. >> one thing i think we do a lot in government, is that when you're on the ground it becomes an issue is that there's -- we need to do more doing and less planning. not to say planning is a problem, but if you go into these communities they have 50 plans and every year some new group is coming to do a plan. the city is going to announce a new plan. and they feel that they're essentially planned all the time, with nothing ever happening, it actually is a negative from the community perspective, because it creates disillusionment, it makes people feel that if the new thing of what we're going to do, but nothing ever comes of it. and i think that sometimes -- not to say that we shouldn't be

doing planning, but the balance needs to be maybe tilted a little bit, where you're starting to do things. make an investment, whatever. >> applied research? >> act before you study and while you study. >> that's one thing that i think is very important. the second thing that we did that sounds like you actually figured this out. we spent a lot of time focusing on the city to our urban policy strategy, trying to figure out how we can work with cities, give them ideas, give them resources. i don't think we did enough to get the institutions and resources. the cities are all broke for the most part, states are all -- at least our states are broke. most states are broke the federal government is always struggling. and so if you don't get the private sector or cdfi's, universities who have resources.

not just to invest, but to see that investing community is in their interest, it's good for the city, good for the economy, you're not going to make things happen, there's so many ideas, but there's no money to ever do the stuff. you have to bring those people more and more into the game. the last thing i would say is that we also focused a lot on the capacity of cities, but not nearly enough on the capacity in neighborhoods. and one of the clearest things i saw when i went to chicago is that you have some neighborhoods with strong leadership and strong capacity they get all the money, all the resources, every foundation wants to give to them. you have some neighborhoods that don't have any of that and they get nothing. people want to give to places that they know can execute. you have whole neighborhoods and communities that are cut out. i think we should have, and i would encourage my brothers keeper and other initiatives to really focus on how you can

build up the capacity and infrastructure in the community. so you have strong, well organized, well functioning strategic organizations that can do stuff. and you can work through them to make things happen. >> michael i'm going to -- i'm sure you have a lot of lessons you want to give. i want you to talk about scale. i think the one thing that folks experiences of all the proactive things that were done under derek's leadership and all the other things is lots of pilots. you see a lot of programs that are funded one year, two year, one year in testing this or only in a couple places you walk into any city, there's five pilots on skills development, and another set of pilots on youth. what -- the biggest question that everyone wants, how do you get to scale? i do think that's what the social innovation office has been trying to figure out what do you -- how do you respond to that? and any other lessons you want

to observe? >> so the social innovation fund is one of six tiered evidence programs across the obama administration like the i-3 program at the department of education. it's about proving improving and scaling what works. in order to get to the conversation of scale, have you to talk about what works. as obsessed as we are in america with data, our fit bits and apple watches and trip adviser and yelp, when it comes to organizations and initiatives that are supposed to be the spring boards and safety nets we throw all of that out of the window, and we keep investing in them, because our grandparents started it or it has a friendly member in the legislature. and when we have an economy where need is up, and since the great recession philanthropic and government investment into the social service organizations is flat at best we have to do something a little differently. one of the things we have to do is realize that good is not good enough, and we have to stop investing in organizations that

are counting how many kids went through, and not counting real meaningful impact. and so that's the first thing about scale. have you to uncrowd the field a little bit and bet on winners. and often times i've been in philanthropy and the private sector of government, we are making the decisions with our hearts and we're dolling a little money here and a little money here and we're not investing on the youth builds of the world that have real meaningful evidence of impact. and so that's what we tried to do or were doing at the social innovation fund. what we do is, and to your point, we give real money, we make grants to foundations between one and ten million dollars, they're five year grants which is another thing we don't like to do in philanthropy realizing that this work is not overnight, five year grants, 1 to $10 million a year, the grant makers match that 1 to 1, and then they help

us to find evidence based on profits across the country who match it with corporate dollars philanthropic dollars and so you're tripling the federal investment, and we then do two things, they use the money to improve their model, they might have a preor post test that shows that 50% of the kids leave here and go on to college. it may be a little more anecdotal. >> we let them spend 30 40% of their budgets to prove out that model. at the end of their social innovation fund funding, they can go to other funders and say, we have real evidence, we have causal connections that this works. at the same time, while we're researching and testing and planning, we're giving real money to scale. we have organizations like national college advising core and you aspire that have gone from a