By John Gallagher

Many American cities have enjoyed a comeback in recent years, particularly in their downtown cores.

But such revitalization has made it painfully obvious that not all city residents have been benefiting to the same degree. Indeed, the income and wealth gaps between educated workers in the downtown cores and residents with low incomes in the neighborhoods have remained stubbornly hard to close. This has led The Kresge Foundation to increasingly turn its attention to issues of equity and inclusive growth in U.S. cities.

That focus is illustrated by Kresge’s support for two organizations through its American Cities and Detroit programs: the Center for Economic Inclusion (CEI) in Minneapolis/St. Paul and Detroit Future City (DFC) in Kresge’s hometown. Both organizations are working to measure and move the needle on metrics of income, wealth and opportunity in real and significant ways.

They are also serving as role models for similar efforts in other cities. CEI has already worked with more than 20 city organizations from Connecticut to California, says founder Tawanna Black.

Tawanna Black is founder of the Center for Economic Inclusion in Minneapolis/St. Paul.

“We’ve had foundations, business leaders and government leaders reach out and ask us to come in to help them begin to think much differently about how they build economic inclusion and inclusive growth,” Black says. “We’re really happy to do so and partner helping other regions craft different models that really build on what has been good work — but it hasn’t gotten to great yet.”

CEI is a top city-based partner in the Kresge-led Shared Prosperity Partnership initiative. A collaboration between Kresge, the Brookings Metropolitan Policy Program, the Urban Institute and Living Cities, the partnership convenes local leaders in select communities to focus on challenges to inclusive growth. The effort provides data, research and access to national experts, networks and financial resources. The Shared Prosperity Partnership supported CEI in its initial efforts to convene two local roundtables starting in summer 2018.

Elevating the Metric

Black led a funders’ collaborative for five years before founding CEI in 2018. She saw that while there were many good programs in place for workforce training, education and other needs, no single entity devoted itself to closing the racial wealth gap. “A new approach was needed,” she says.

A couple of metrics illustrate the problem. Over the past 10 years, the Minneapolis/St. Paul metro area saw healthy increases in productivity, average annual wages and standard of living, all in the 7% or better range.

Over the same 10 years, the relative poverty gap between white metro residents and people of color decreased by only 0.6%. And the median earnings gap narrowed by only $521, with white people still out-earning people of color by more than $15,000 a year.

“And if you were to total up the dollars spent and the number of efforts expected to address them, I’m certain they would total well over $50 million to $75 million throughout this region,” Black says. “So to only have made a 1% impact on that is completely unacceptable. And yet, when we think about racial equity, it’s a statistic that nobody was paying attention to before we elevated that metric.”

With data produced in partnership with Brookings, CEI has been building shared accountability “where we help leaders connect data to action,” Black says.

CEI connects metrics such as graduation rates at colleges and workforce development, so leaders can think about how well people fare after they come out of workforce development programs, and what wage equity looks like, as well as factors such as housing affordability for rental markets.

“What leaders in this region asked us to do is really be that spotlight and remind them of the commitments that they’ve made — draw their attention back to it, so we don’t forget those commitments — but also that we learn the promising practices that are going to move results,” Black says.

"We know that … between Detroiters and suburbanites in terms of wages, even when all things are the same — the job is the same, the education is the same — there’s still about a $20,000 wage gap. Understanding that and what it actually requires to close that gap is going to be really, really important." — Anika Goss, Detroit Future City

Lifting All Boats

In Detroit, Anika Goss, executive director of Detroit Future City (DFC), was reaching a similar conclusion. Having been a longtime leader with the Local Initiatives Support Corporation, Goss assumed her role at DFC about four years ago. DFC was formed in 2013, following the release of the Detroit Strategic Framework Plan — a citywide community engagement effort and series of strategies for creating job growth and economic prosperity. Among its most notable recommendations were ways to utilize Detroit’s vast supply of vacant land, revitalize commercial corridors and strengthen neighborhoods.

Anika Goss is executive director of Detroit Future City, dedicated to creating economic prosperity for Detroiters.

But even as the greater downtown district has seen increasing success in recent years, it was clear that a gulf existed between downtown and the neighborhoods. There are other problems as well.

“We know that … between Detroiters and suburbanites in terms of wage, even when all things are the same — the job is the same, the education is the same — there’s still about a $20,000 wage gap,” Goss says. “Understanding that and what it actually requires to close that gap is going to be really, really important.”

Goss recently announced the creation of DFC’s Center for Equity, Engagement and Research to create a baseline of key measurables by which to track progress. Alice G. Thompson, CEO of the nonprofit Black Family Development Inc. in Detroit and a DFC board member since its inception, is thrilled with the direction the organization is taking.

“For me personally, it’s the most exciting thing since we began Detroit Future City,” she says. “Anika is really broadening our vision of what we should be doing in our city. Anika knows we need to share information that can be used by the foundation world, by the city, by industry, to really ensure Detroit is a city that is making decisions with a clear lens on equity, and what that should look like.”

Some of the studies and reports DFC has published in the recent past, such as a finding that Detroit has evolved from a city of homeownership to one of primarily renters, have already moved the debate on poverty and equity in important ways, Thompson adds.

“It has helped to inform many of us who are doing this work,” she says.

Dr. George Swan III, an educator and consultant who has served on the DFC board from the beginning, says the mission of the office always included the notion of inclusive growth, but that it became more obvious in recent years.

“Burden sharing becomes very important,” he says. “I think that speaks to those who have been in the city for generations and not able to participate in the viability of what’s going on in downtown and Midtown and certain parts of the city. It’s a challenge. The question is how to make people feel that they have the ability to be included. So, inclusion becomes a key element of the rising tide that’s going to lift all boats.”

Connecting the Dots

Both Black and Goss hope to change the narrative on how leadership addresses issues of poverty, income and unemployment. They want to shift the spotlight from perceived limitations of people with low incomes to a more systematic approach focusing on employers and leaders in government and civic life.

Goss says excuses for not hiring Detroiters don’t cut it. She lists a few: “They’re not ready, they’re not qualified, they can’t pass the drug test or the criminal background test,” Goss says. “Or the only jobs we get excited about for Detroiters are very low-level baseline jobs, like hourly wage jobs.”

But those jobs don’t offer a career path for growth — an enormous problem that Goss says “is giving pause to everyone.”

In Minneapolis/St. Paul, CEI has already held workshops for more than a thousand local leaders in business, government and civic life. But Black says the more important metrics of success will come in years ahead when those promising outputs translate into real outcomes for people of color with low incomes.

And it won’t be enough for employers to commit to hiring or wage goals if those are viewed as just another set-aside. The goal is to see real change become part of how business is done.

“Are they seeing people of color come into the workforce, stay in the workforce and advance up the channel as a result?” Black asks. “Are they seeing more dollars being spent with businesses (of color) than before? And is that spending leading to creating more family-sustaining jobs than it was before?”

Creating inclusive policies means helping leaders “come inside their own institutions and say, ‘What levers can you pull to impact that — things like not only pay, but what benefits do you offer?’” Black adds. “‘Can you supplement transportation for workers who may live very far away from where your business location is? Can you supplement housing affordability for your workers — things like minimum wage that haven’t gone far enough to drive equity?’ We help leaders connect those dots.”

A Strong Equity Agenda

Wendy Lewis Jackson, managing director of Kresge’s Detroit Program, notes that a lot of Kresge’s efforts in Detroit from the mid-2000s through the mid-2010s were focused on the city's core, helping create Detroit’s RiverWalk waterfront promenade and fund the QLINE streetcar line.

“As we began to look at what’s going to be required for Detroit to fully come back with a more just and healthy economy, it was apparent that we needed a much stronger equity agenda that was focused on neighborhoods,” she says.

“If the person that you’re seeing now who looks to you to be someone who is really, really low income — if that person has every opportunity, just like you do, to access wealth, to improve their own condition for her family, to live in a neighborhood that’s really great, the same kind of neighborhood that you want to live in? ”— Anika Goss, Detroit Future City

Chantel Rush, managing director of Kresge’s American Cities Program, echoes Jackson’s words. “People have been thinking about place-based transformation for a long time,” Rush says. “They’ve thought about, ‘How do I strengthen neighborhoods? How do I strengthen cities?’ But they haven’t necessarily had a clear focus on ensuring that the least well-off benefit from the change.”

Goss says it’s a matter of thinking differently about inclusivity. “If the person that you’re seeing now who looks to you to be someone who is really, really low income — if that person has every opportunity, just like you do, to access wealth, to improve their own condition for her family, to live in a neighborhood that’s really great, the same kind of neighborhood that you want to live in? ”

(After this article was written, Kresge’s Detroit Program team learned that Betty Mills, a vice president of the Manistique Block Club who was active in the treehouse project, died of COVID-19. She is in the group photo on pg. 49, dressed in a gray jacket near the back. The Detroit Program honors her as emblematic of the many Detroiters working toward better neighborhoods in a better city.)

Freelance writer John Gallagher is based in Detroit, Michigan.

Detroit, Memphis Projects Focus on Neighborhoods

Above Photo: Tammy Black and her colleagues in the Manistique Block Club.

Kresge Innovative Projects: Detroit (KIP:D) is committed to advancing resident-driven priorities through transformative projects that build on the assets and distinctive attributes of neighborhoods. A signature grantmaking initiative of the foundation’s Detroit Program, KIP:D has supported nearly 100 such efforts since 2015.

“One of the things that became obvious to us as we thought about an equitable approach to the city’s overall development is that you couldn’t just invest in downtown or Midtown without thinking how that connects to the neighborhoods,” explains Wendy Lewis Jackson, managing director of Kresge’s Detroit Program.

In 2019, Kresge’s American Cities Program sought to translate the approach that had worked in Detroit to strengthening neighborhoods in other cities. That has begun with Memphis, another Kresge focus city, where Kresge Innovative Projects: Memphis (KIP:M) supports 20 grantees including The Collective (The CLTV).

Projects such as The CLTV in Memphis and the Manistique Community Treehouse in Detroit could seem modest in themselves. But they illustrate Kresge’s understanding of and commitment to a more equitable recovery strategy for American cities, including neighborhoods like Orange Mound and Jefferson-Chalmers.

As Jackson says, it’s not enough to hope for a spin-off benefit from a more robust downtown. Recovery requires direct involvement at the neighborhood level.

“It must be intentional,” Jackson says. “It won’t happen unless you do things to make it happen.”

Found in Translation

Taking lessons learned from one city and applying them in another

To advance equity and inclusive growth in America’s cities, The Kresge Foundation also drills down to support neighborhood-specific projects.

Two such efforts — one in Memphis and one in Detroit — exemplify that work.

The Collective in Memphis

The lack of opportunity and venues for Black artists was the inspiration behind Victoria Jones’ creation of The Collective (The CLTV) in Memphis. A 2014 graduate of Middle Tennessee State University, where she helped found the Black Student Union, Jones had been thinking since her student days about diversifying the city’s cultural base.

Victoria Jones is the founder and executive director of The CLTV in Memphis

Out of school, one of her first gigs was putting on an exhibition for a Black artist that drew disappointingly few visitors. So, she founded The CLTV as an arts organization to provide a promotional platform and resources for artists of color.

In the almost five years since its founding, The CLTV has grown into a thriving community of artists.

Jones’ decision to locate The Collective in the historic Memphis neighborhood known as Orange Mound was deeply personal. Founded after the Civil War, Orange Mound is said to be the first neighborhood in America founded by and for African Americans. It has always been a place of vibrant Black culture, but it suffered disinvestment and other urban ills in the late 20th century.

While Jones grew up in a military family and moved a lot, her extended family is rooted in Memphis. That’s why Orange Mound became her choice.

“This has been my only consistent (place), making this my home,” she says.

The district not only symbolizes Black self-determination, but it emphasizes how Black artists do not necessarily need the validation of mainstream cultural institutions for success.

“We had to make an intentional decision to activate the spaces we cared most for, the ones that reflected our narratives — where we live, our aunties, cousins, the folks that look like us,” Jones says, adding with emotion, “Memphis has always been home for me.

"I’ve always been hyperaware of the legacy of Orange Mound. It felt like where we belonged.”

Much of this work takes place in The CLTV’s space known as The Complex (The CMPLX), which opened in early 2019 in Orange Mound. It now includes two galleries, a workspace/computer lab and an open studio space. Rotating exhibitions and artist- and resident-driven events are also part of the offerings.

Jones says The CLTV employs a staff of about 10, almost all under 30 and “very excited and very energized and a little rebellious." They serve upwards of 200 artists and community residents working in all forms of media, from dance and music to art and writing. But regardless of the medium, it all comes down to storytelling.

“A lot of times, Black folks get told who we are. Rarely do we get the chance to tell our own stories,” Jones says. “We’ve seen this emerging community of young Black creatives who just needed the space to do the work, to be energized, to be inspired.”

Looking beyond art itself, Jones hopes The CLTV can energize Orange Mound through property development. In fall 2019, Kresge gave The CLTV a grant to support the development of community space in a project called “Cultivate the Mound.” Jones envisions the space serving as a resource center and convening location for Orange Mound residents, as well as studio and living space for artists of color.

“I’m looking forward to a bigger impact in the neighborhood itself,” she says. “A big shift for us is going to be in property ownership. We Black folks don’t own a lot in the city.

"A lot of times, Black folks get told who we are. Rarely do we get the chance to tell our own stories,” Jones says. “We’ve seen this emerging community of young Black creatives who just needed the space to do the work, to be energized, to be inspired.”— Victoria Jones

Manistique Community Treehouse

An unusual type of community center is rising in a distressed neighborhood on Detroit’s lower East Side with Kresge’s support. The district known as Jefferson-Chalmers suffered from widespread closures and abandonment in past decades, but has been mounting a comeback in recent years.

A rendering of the Manistique Community Treehouse, slated for completion in 2021

The Manistique Block Club is among the groups making that happen by taking the lead on its own street. Its signature project is the Manistique Community Treehouse, to be built as a safe place for children, seniors, veterans and others to gather, play, learn and grow.

Tammy Black, a lifelong resident and project leader for the Manistique Community Treehouse, explains that the idea grew from within her family.

“It started from me being a mother of children who are considered slow learners. I do a lot of skill-building things,” she says. The family enjoyed " Treehouse Masters" on the Animal Planet network. It's a program that introduces viewers to creative and playful treehouse designs. As she watched one day, Black thought that a treehouse could be the ideal concept for the community center she wanted to build. She hoped to provide a safe place for children and teens to grow and heal, and to connect with seniors and others in the community.

The treehouse won’t actually perch amid branches, but renderings show it will indeed look like a treehouse — albeit one that is accessible via ramp. Black’s organization received a grant through the Kresge Innovative Projects: Detroit initiative in 2019 to advance the effort. Construction was to begin in mid-2020 with completion later in the year.

Black describes the treehouse as a place of growth and healing, where neighbors who may be socially isolated — particularly the elderly and people with disabilities — can connect with one another and “share their wisdom” with children. All kinds of events are planned, from an investment club to home repair instruction to a dance class and horticulture therapy for seniors, veterans and children.

And while the treehouse is rooted in the Jefferson-Chalmers community, Black adds, “We’re not just limiting it to Jefferson-Chalmers. Anybody who needs a positive place to be” will be welcome. Her only rule: “No negativity!”

Betty Mills, pictured above in the gray jacket, lost her life as a victim of the COVID-19 pandemic. Betty was a vice president of the Manistique Block Club and active in the treehouse project. Kresge honors her as emblematic of the many Detroiters working toward better neighborhoods in a better city.