Right To Stay!

We are committed to solving the issue of displacement in New Orleans’ most vulnerable neighborhoods.  As catalytic reinvestment occurs in communities that have for decades been subject to harmful local, state, and federal public policy—from redlining to urban renewal—the residents of these traditionally disinvested areas now find themselves facing rapid rates of removal from the places where they managed to create family, culture, and heritage in spite of blatant economic disempowerment.  The solution we propose combines the uses of big data, blockchain, and machine learning to aid residents in their ability to investigate, design, and activate equitable development solutions for their neighborhoods, while simultaneously providing opportunities for them to grow wealth.  As cities continue to grow, they expect to welcome 80% of the world’s population by 2040.  If scaled for global impact, our solution could help mitigate displacement for thousands of economically vulnerable communities as urban areas expand.

Current global urbanization trends sees populations moving from rural and suburban areas to cities at ever-increasing rates, often resulting in new groups of more affluent residents moving into once underinvested and predominately-poor communities.  Accompanying development and reinvestment is typically marked by sharp increases in housing prices that almost invariably displace a neighborhood’s longtime residents.  In recent years, as growing numbers of Americans opt for urban lifestyles, the gentrification rates in our largest cities have more than doubled, with large-scale displacement occurring in 39 of the 50.  Those cities’ gentrifying census tracts gained an average of 404 white, 97 Latino, and 62 Asian, while losing 593 black residents.  In New Orleans’ Claiborne Corridor, census tracts lost an average of 1075 black, while gaining 120 white, 56 Latino, and 5 Asian residents.

Greater New Orleans Metro Region has an unemployment rate of 6.4% and Orleans Parish has a rate of 7.1%, while Claiborne Corridor faces 38% unemployment. The per capita income is 73% the regional and 33% the national average, and housing costs are wildly disproportionate;  72% of renters and 62% of owners are cost-burdened, paying more than 36% of their income on housing costs, a third of them paying over 50%.

Claiborne Corridor features the nation’s oldest African-American neighborhoods, and is birthplace of some of New Orleans’ most celebrated icons and traditions.  Yet, despite over $5 billion of recently completed public/private investments, it remains the site of our most glaring socio-economic disparities.  It includes 13 neighborhoods that are 84% African-American where residents live disproportionately in poverty, facing limited access to quality jobs, transportation, and safe, affordable housing.  The median household income is $18,000; 20% are unemployed, 40% underemployed; 38% live below 150% of the federal poverty line and there is a 25-year variance in life expectancy between Corridor residents and New Orleans’ wealthier, whiter neighborhoods.

Having spent two years investing in capacity building, using the deep engagement of residents to build business, neighborhood, and institutional capacity, we have begun to see positive outcomes for our families. Our core finding is that true equity is responsive and to achieve equitable and sustainable growth in areas that have been systemically underdeveloped, we must simultaneously build the capacity of residents to take advantage of economic opportunity.  As the pressures of displacement are soaring, our solution will guide residents in advocacy and investment strategies that help them to assert their Right To Stay!

In designing equitable development strategies for the Claiborne Corridor, we identified three primary realities that shape our approach and decision-making as we make bold commitments to address entrenched disparities.  First, that neighborhoods are eco-systems where residents are the experts and keepers of neighborhood assets.  In planning for the growth of these communities, we plan with, not for, residents, honoring and compensating their expertise.  By inculcating a community-led design processes where engagement is both deep and wide, we have created more meaningful outcomes where change is managed for community benefit, such our resident-led design of a catalytic public project, the Cultural Innovation District.  

 Second, our model contends that while it is essential to identify and implement market-based tools that have worked in more successful commercial corridors, we have learned from previous initiatives where economic growth has led to resident displacement and work to bring the organization of capital and deal flow expertise in tandem with education and technical assistance opportunities, like our Community Development Finance class.

Third, in recognition of the fact that inequity and its impacts have not occurred overnight and are in fact, as old as our nation is, we know that in order to help reverse the effects of centuries of laws meant to disadvantage some communities for the advantage of others, we must exert equivalent intentionality and commitment to the long-term application of resources for remedying these social, political, and economic injustices, such as Corridor Anti-Displacement Strategy.

We work with residents and partners in government to research and co-create policies, practices, and projects that go beyond creating new initiatives, but actually work to restructure our systems to “un-design” the impacts of centuries of inequitable policies, practices, and projects.  We are proud to have provided direct support to residents working to save their generational homes and for businesses working to gain a fair share of the economy, increasing their generational wealth. 

 In acknowledgement that even with the progress we are achieving, the rate of displacement is far outpacing our ability to respond to it, we have conceived a technological solution:  our Right To Stay! App will use big data, blockchain, and machine learning to provide customized and dynamic programming to allow significantly greater numbers of low- to moderate-income residents easier access the information and activities that will allow them to preserve and create affordable housing, participate in neighborhood-based investment opportunities, and include their input in municipal decision-making. 

The Right To Stay! App will use hard earned human knowledge, gained from on the ground experience learning to navigate the municipal, state, federal, and private sector hurdles faced by residents and small businesses as they fight for the right and ability to remain in their communities.  Disparate government systems that each require differing methods of request-making and reporting, and whose systems don't communicate with one another; professional and semi-professional jargon and convoluted private-sector processes used to make knowledge less accessible, excluding the vulnerable and; and high-threshold financial and investment opportunities that keep sustainable wealth generation out of reach, can all be neutralized as barriers with the use of an app to personally guide residents through activities and to opportunities.

 Residents will have access to “a new dimension of performance” in the form of an app that supports them in participating in activities critical to their collective ability to stay in their community, with the use of information normally out of reach to average residents, for various.  Right To Stay! will allow residents to:

1. Design – provide input into community-engaged processes for public spaces and private developments that require community input

2. Advocate – participate in a feedback loop to influence public officials in support of fair housing, anti-displacement, and eqity measures

3. Preserve – walk step-by-step through city processes necessary for preserving their property

4. Create – walk through public and private sector processes for developing available property in their neighborhood

5. Invest – participate in a fund that finances community-driven development projects

Right To Stay! will customize existing technology for cultural relevancy and ease of access for residents: renters, property and business owners, and emerging developers and entrepreneurs.  The core technologies our solution utilizes are big data, which will be used to streamline and make available in large swaths of municipal information that form the basis for housing preservation and creation opportunities; machine learning, which will allow us to customize programming and learning experiences for ease of access for the residents we serve; and blockchain, which will allow the implementation of a community reinvestment fund, that allows poor, and low-to-moderate income residents to invest in neighborhood projects at a rate as low as $10 per month. 

With customization of existing technology, the app will provide residents with streamlined access to the data and tools that will guide and assist them.  Existing technologies with the potential to perform the needed functions of our solution are: Streetmix, a collaborative civic engagement platform for urban design; ArcGIS, connects people, locations and data using interactive maps; Amazon Managed Blockchain, enables the creation and management of networks; Proxeus, supports paperwork and approval processes; Blockimmo, a platform for ownership rights & crowd valuation of assets with no financial history; Blockbyte, a solution for leasing land; and Cadre, a data-driven, institutional-grade real estate investment platform.  

A 2017 health impact assessment conducted in the Corridor revealed the greatest environmental stressor for our target population is fear of cultural loss, caused by rapidly changing access to their intergenerational neighborhoods and traditions, resulting from displacement.  We recognized early in our work that the infrastructure required to extend economic opportunity to Claiborne Corridor residents and businesses was not in place; we needed to build it.  Nevertheless, it was critical to establish strong partnerships and deliver programming immediately. 

In response, we’ve worked collectively to increase ownership opportunities for long-time residents by: 1. co-designing a community development finance course with University of New Orleans and providing scholarships for residents; 2. guiding and supporting residents through city departmental processes for developing long held properties and retaining properties at risk of city adjudication; 3. co-convening consortiums of CDFI’s to increase access to capital and nonprofit developers to increase affordable production; 4. making vacant and blighted properties available for affordable redevelopment; and 5. providing resident voice, advocacy, and access to important policy and planning discussions.

In five years, we have been able to serve – residents with our efforts.  Our solution, the Right To Stay! App, will allow us to serve exponentially more.  By placing the tools of community development and community investment directly into the hands of long time, low- to-moderate-income residents, I expect our solution to directly address the problem by dramatically increasing the occurrence of affordable home and business ownership opportunities for residents vulnerable to displacement. 

By implementing market-based tools, bringing the organization of capital and deal flow expertise in tandem with education and technical assistance opportunities customized for cultural relevancy and ease of access for property and business owners, and emerging developers and entrepreneurs. 

Currently, we directly serve approximately 150 residents with our partnership, indirectly impacting over 500 residents with increased affordable housing opportunities.  In addition, we directly serve 60 neighborhood serving small businesses, indirectly impacting 200 residents with neighborhood-based employment and contracting opportunities.   

In one year, following completion of the Right To Stay! app, we expect to serve 1000 residents and 150 small businesses.  In five years, with replication nationally and internationally, we expect to serve 100,000 residents and 1,000 small businesses.

Claiborne Corridor is birthplace and home to most of New Orleans’ indigenous music, food, and cultural arts traditions.  The very survival of our city’s heritage and legacy, as well as its interdependent tourism industry, relies on the survival of the communities that create and innovate these traditions. With the growing displacement of Claiborne Corridor residents from their intergenerational neighborhoods, this survival is at risk, calling for the development and implementation of a catalytic anti-displacement effort, whose outcomes can inform the structure of a city-wide, and ultimately global, strategy.

As the world moves toward rapid urbanization, with 75% of the global population expected to live in cities by 2040, up from 55% today, displacement is an epidemic affecting many of those cities.  Urban residents, whose communities have been made vulnerable by decades of disinvestment, are directly displaced when they can no longer afford to remain in their homes due to rising housing costs or are forced out to make way for new development.  This is then compounded by indirect or exclusionary displacement, as units vacated by low-income residents are no longer affordable to other low-income households.

In year one, our goal is to engage 1000 Claiborne Corridor residents in the creation of affordable housing, and by year five of its replication, the technology of Right to Stay! will be customized by location in cities with the highest risks of displacement, resourcing the power of 100,000 global residents, giving them equitable access to opportunities to Design Advocate Preserve Create Invest in their own communities.

The New Orleans Prosperity Index: Tricentennial Edition, reports that in 2016, “the poverty rate among black New Orleanians was 32 percent while the poverty rate among white New Orleanians was nine percent, revealing that race remains a clear dividing line for economic success. The small but growing Hispanic and Asian communities in New Orleans also experience poverty at higher rates than whites.  As people of color make up larger and larger shares of working-age populations, economic success becomes more and more dependent upon the ability of all racial and ethnic groups to be performing at their utmost potential and participating fully in the economy. Moreover, large disparities across groups undermine social cohesion and therefore resiliency.”

The reality of this concentrated disadvantage creates inherent financial, technical, legal, cultural, and market barriers.  In New Orleans, African-Americans comprise 65% of the population and own 38% of businesses, yet earn only 2% of the city’s business receipts.  This is reflected in the country at-large where black-owned or led projects receive less than 1% of venture capital.  As we tackle the technical challenges of building the app and the legal challenges of clearing municipal processes, we will be faced with raising capital to serve vulnerable populations, for whom it is most difficult to secure investment—all while the market continues to move at an aggressive pace, with housing bubble bursts projected throughout North America, Europe, and Australia over the next five years, putting more and more populations at risk while we work on solutions.  

Claiborne Corridor residents are acutely aware of the disparities they face, but are resolute in their fight and are ready to join policy-makers and service providers in implementing solutions that use creative approaches and collaborative problem-solving as necessary steps to revitalizing neighborhoods in ways that protect intergenerational residency—the bedrock of cultural preservation and prosperity—thereby demonstrating to fellow New Orleanians and the world, how to achieve managed changed for community benefit.

At a time when cities around the world are searching for solutions to the steadily growing problems created by inequity and organizations nationwide are valiantly fighting mostly losing battles against displacement, the Claiborne Corridor has served as a proven testing grounds for impactful city-wide systems changes, including economic opportunity, workforce development, and business mobilization policies and strategies.  While we still have far to go to change the entrenched disadvantages in life outcomes experienced by Corridor residents, dramatic improvements have begun to take shape, including increases in home ownership, neighborhood based businesses and transportation access.  From 2015-2019, consumer spending in our project area has increased 156%, compared to an 11% citywide increase. 

However, the greatest impact of the work we’ve undertaken has been seen in the system of perpetual resident engagement allowing deeper understanding of the visions and challenges of residents in establishing sustainable opportunities to earn and innovate in their neighborhoods of choice.  The tools we’ve created tools for assessing and sharing these opportunities also provide the pathways for overcoming the systemic barriers we are dedicated to dismantling.

Our solution team is led by Ujamaa Economic Development Corporation, a resident-led CDC with the mission of building sustainable community assets and mitigating displacement in the Claiborne Corridor.  Ujamaa works in strategic partnership with the New Orleans Redevelopment Authority (NORA), Housing NOLA, the New Orleans Business Alliance (NOLABA), and the City of New Orleans on neighborhood revitalization efforts.  Members of each organization contribute staff, data, and resources to building and implementing the Right To Stay! app.

The solution team is led by the Executive Director of Ujamaa EDC and supported by the Director of Programming, both full time staff.  They are supported by the Executive Director and two staff at NORA, Executive Director and one staff at Housing NOLA, and project manager, with input from various departments at the City of New Orleans. 

Our combination of public sector, private sector, resident-led, and university partnership provides a wide swath of stakeholders, experiences, and authorizations to make change more probable and sustainable.  

Ujamaa is a convener of trusted relationships, connecting community and government in mutually beneficial ways. It leads successful community engagement and community design projects, holding all initiatives to a standard of equitable development.

NORA is the quasi-governmental organization that leads neighborhood redevelopment on behalf of the city.  Its participation provides access to the properties and critical data that are pivotal to the project, along with the authority to implement the strategies we co-create. 

New Orleans Business Alliance provides knowledge of and access to the technology, education, and finance industry partners that will be necessary to build the Right To Stay! app.

Housing NOLA crafts masterful advocacy campaigns and pathways into the political infrastructure needed for residents to provide input into decision-making. 

The City of New Orleans provides access to the data and infrastructure needed to align the technology for residents with municipal systems, making delivery of the solution possible. 

In addition to neighborhood, civic, and business associations in the Claiborne Corridor, we plan with the City departments of Code Enforcement, Economic & Community Development, Innovation & Technology, and the City Planning Commission.  Our also solution collaborates with local universities and the New Orleans Data Center to build our cases for policy change.  And we co-convene a consortium of Community Development Finance Institutions to expand opportunities for homeowners to preserve and emerging developers to build affordable housing.

Community Development Corporations (CDCs) are nonprofit, community-based organizations focused on revitalizing the areas in which they are located, typically low-income, underserved neighborhoods that have experienced significant disinvestment. While they are most commonly celebrated for developing affordable housing, they are usually involved in a range of initiatives critical to community health such as economic development, sanitation, streetscaping, and neighborhood planning projects, and oftentimes even provide education and social services to neighborhood residents

At Ujmaa, programmatic goals were developed through an inclusive, holistic process of neighborhood input and planning. To the greatest extent possible, a shared vision has been created. A specific goal throughout the process has been to guard against displacement of residents, small businesses and entrepreneurs already in the area by:

• Empowering the unique living traditions of the Claiborne corridor

•Creating pathways to prosperity for residents

•Facilitating the entrepreneurship goals of residents

•Supporting indigenous entrepreneurs and culture bearers

•Increasing access to quality of life amenities and quality retail

This app is not intended to generate revenue for its creators, but rather for the residents it will serve.  Our project represents a bold vision for influencing issues previously considered to be intractable. As plans are made to operationalize our mission, we must fully understand the limits of the resources available within the project footprint and more broadly in the city.   To catalyze economic development, we must carefully preserve our finite financial resources, nurture our political support and partnership relationships, and build excitement for the replication of the technology by demonstrating impact and results.

Grants from aligned philanthropic organizations will serve as our initial investment to build the app and the fees from the management of the Community Investment Fund will pay for its continued maintenance. Funding to replicate the app for other locations will come from the municipal and philanthropic support of those cities who are looking to invest in the app as a solution for their local displacement issues.

Although gentrification and displacement are often seen as a neighborhood or local phenomenon, data shows that they are inherently linked to shifts in the regional housing and job market.  We are applying to Solve and believe that it can advance our project in ways that provide access to the data and relationships that make it replicable in other communities, thereby scalable and impactful for the citizens who are need to exercise their Right To Stay!

We would love to partner with Policy Link, Brookings Institute, and Lincoln Land Institute for their expertise in anti-displacement and equitable development strategies.  We would also like to partner with the cities of San Francisco, New York, London, and Turin to explore the measures they have taken to battle displacement and to explore how Right To Stay! can help in their cities.

Equity screen and Equity Policy.