Community Participation, Civic Capacity & Neighborhood Identity Findings from Focus Groups and Written Elicitations

Community Participation, Civic Capacity & Neighborhood Identity Findings from Focus Groups and Written Elicitations ANDRESS & Associates, LLC Bridging the Health Gap April 3, 2008 Commissioned by The Center for Health Equity, Louisville Metro Department of Public Health & Wellness

PURPOSE OF COMMISSION • A social marketing campaign • Increase the community participation of West Louisville residents by ………….. • Reducing the barriers and, • Highlighting the benefits according to • The specific needs, values, beliefs, practices and interests of the residents.

Investigative Framework • To improve health and reduce health inequities requires changes in public policy and the arrangements in society that support inequality. • If residents of the City [State, Nation] understand and support policy goals, change and progress are more likely. • To change policies and societal arrangements that support inequality communities must have the capacity to engage civically. • We currently have group differences in the civic capacity of some communities and sectors, i.e., corporations, high income vs. low income communities, etc. • How does neighborhood identity shape civic capacity? • How does neighborhood identity shape policy responses? • How do we rectify imbalances in civic participation and civic power?

How Does this Affect Health?

Policies that Reduce Availability of Affordable Quality Housing Policies that Reduce Availability of Financial Resources Government Policies Stress Associated With Income and Housing Insecurity Direct Material Effects of Income Direct Material Effects of Poor Quality Housing Health Status: Increased Morbidity and Mortality

Strategy and Research • Part One • Exploring current “landscape” of public understanding (focus groups, written elicitations) • Part Two • Message development (new “lenses” on the issue - explanations in particular) • Message testing - evaluating effectiveness (online, and in-person

METHODS • Focus groups • Six groups • 2 hours • Incentive $50 • Videotaped, audio taped, transcript • Pre-Screened • Focus Group questionnaire • Written elicitations • Looking for shared thinking patterns, e.g.: • Links between topics • Topics that are not thought about • Ideas that seem important • Differences between how we want people to think and what they think

1 group of young adults Ages 18-24 African American 1 group from Northeast Christian Adults 1 group from St. Stephen’s Adults 1 group of adults from Portland White 2 groups of adults from W. Louisville African American Low income Middle income Homeowners 8 Low Income 7 N.E. Christian 6 Portland 5 St. Stephen’s 6 Youth 18-24 3 FORMAT & SUBJECTS

Ages 18-24 three 30-50 fourteen > 50 eighteen Gender Female 19 Male 16 Home ownership Own 19 Homeless 1 Rent 13 Unknown 2 Race African American 25 White 9 Hispanic 1 SUBJECTS

Education Levels College graduate 6 Graduate degree 5 High school 15 Professional degree 1 Some college 6 Unknown 2 Income > $75 3 $50-75 4 $35-50 6 $10-15 2 $15-20 2 $20-25 4 $25-35 6 SUBJECTS

A study of how neighborhood identity is formed and the implications this may have for area renewal policies published by the Joseph Rowntree Foundation. March 12, 2008 http://www.jrf.org.uk/knowledge/findings/housing/2188.asp Neighborhood identity:People, time and placeDouglas Robertson, James Smyth and Ian McIntosh

Neighborhood IdentityResearch Questions • How is neighborhood identity formed? • the implications for policies that seek to improve and enhance neighborhoods and communities • Why do revitalization policies often fail in their objectives? • Do the reputations of communities– 'good' and 'bad' – persist or change over time? • How are these reputations established and understood by those from within and outside particular places and what implications this has for the identities of neighborhoods and the individuals who live in them? • Do the most inspirational neighborhoods have a community focus or sense of community among its residents? • As people get richer, they move into a more individualized settings: places where community is largely absent. • The social networks and connections of these residents link to a much wider social world, not merely the local neighborhood.

Neighborhood IdentityFindings • Neighborhood identity is established at a very early stage of each neighborhood's history, and is resilient to change. • Identities are underpinned by social class and status – which is sometimes based on historic male employment patterns – as well as physical characteristics, including housing style, type and tenure. • External perceptions of a neighborhood's identity were often stronger and more of a caricature than those held by people who lived there. • Family networks, friends and neighbors were given differing degrees of importance in people's notions of what created a sense of community. However, their presence helped sustain a sense of community and people's own sense of involvement within that community. • Community was constructed through familiar, everyday social interactions within various localized settings, which were often enough to give people a powerful sense of attachment and belonging. • In each neighborhood, respondents interviewed for the study suggested notions of community were declining in response to ever-increasing individualism.

There is evidence of internal differentiation in each neighborhood • Moderator: Does everybody live in west Louisville, or does someone live outside of west Louisville? • Kf Shively. • Moderator: Is that part of west Louisville? • Kf I feel like it is. • Km I'm considered west Louisville. • Moderator: Okay, good. • Kf It's not in the zip code. I put yes on here. • Moderator: But west Louisville has several different zip codes. • Kf They do. • Moderator: P. what are you thinking? • Kf You're going by neighborhoods, right? • Moderator: Yeah. • Kf Okay, this is the Portland neighborhood. • Km When you say west Louisville, it encompasses everything west of 16th Street and I would say from at least Broadway north. • Km Maybe farther south than Broadway. • Moderator: Yeah.

There is evidence of internal differentiation in each neighborhood …………………. • Kf I thought it was Market. • Km That's Portland. Portland, I consider 16th to 35th, Market Street to the river. • Kf Right. • Km But those boundaries are in question. • Moderator: So the comments that you made earlier, were they specific to Portland or to west Louisville? • Km West Louisville mine was. • Kf For me it's to west Louisville. • Moderator: Okay. • Kf But I'm saying there is -- like you brought up the boundaries or somebody did. • Kf Well, west Louisville is home to me and part of Portland, to me, is west Louisville. So I'm claiming loyalty and ownership for both, but since I worked in Portland, I live so close to Portland I have a sense of being part of both. • Km I went to school at Shawnee. • Kf Did you? • Km So I have the same feeling -- 43rd and Market. • Kf And I worked at J.B. Atkinson . . . • Kf . . .and a lot of parents and a lot of the children going to Portland Plaza and been there with some of the people there, so I feel close to many people there as well. But I know there are people in the Portland area that feel more loyalty to Portland and don't feel themselves necessarily a part of the bigger part of west Louisville.

Neighborhood identity is established at a very early stage of each neighborhood's history, and is resilient to change. • Kf Some consider the quality of the homes. They base it on what they've seen in the past, as far as what the houses and apartments or whatever used to look like and the way they used to be treated. • Moderator: P. how do you feel about Portland? • Kf I've only been here 5 years. I married into Portland. • Moderator: Somewhere else in Louisville before that? • Kf Yes, over on the east side. • Kf It's a big change. • Moderator: …………. in what way? • Kf Economically, services -- on and on and on.. • Kf Just totally the look. • Moderator: . . .more, less, better, worse, higher, lower? • Kf Lower. • Moderator: Okay. Fewer service. • Kf I hate to say slam. • Km It's not a slam; it's honesty. That's just being honest. • Kf That's true. • Moderator: So fewer services. • Kf It's cleaner over on the other side too. • Km It seems to matter more to the city officials that the east end is. . • Kf Clean.

Neighborhood identity is established at a very early stage of each neighborhood's history, and is resilient to change. • Moderator: Do you think the people in Portland see themselves as a tightly knit community separate from west Louisville? • Kf Yes. • Kf I think so. • Kf I think so. • Moderator: Why is that? • Kf I think it has something to do with the history. • Kf It was its own township. • Kf Because it was here before Louisville. • Kf Right.

Neighborhood identity is established at a very early stage • Kf And it has a strong historical -- I mean because of a strong history of being the town that grew up on the river and it was here first. And if you look into its history, I think it maintains that it is a town in itself. That's some of what I think it's about. • Kf I think the original name was Portland town or Portland township. • Kf It was it's own place. • Km It was a township. • Kf Right. It was its own. . . • Km It was annexed in 1802 by the city of Louisville. • Kf Right. • Kf And the people I've come to know and the families I've come to know have a certain pride about that and a sense of loyalty about that. They have a museum and everything. . . • Kf Newspaper. • Kf Yes, their own newspaper. • Km It's the oldest neighborhood newspaper in the country.

Let's start out with a really simple question about what you like about west Louisville. What do you find attractive about it. Simply why do you live and stay here? • Identities are underpinned by physical characteristics, including housing style, type and tenure. • Family networks, friends and neighbors were given differing degrees of importance in people's notions of what created a sense of community. • But their presence helps sustain a sense of community and people's own sense of involvement within that community. • Community was constructed through familiar, everyday social interactions within various localized settings, which were often enough to give people a powerful sense of attachment and belonging.

Physical characteristics, including housing style, type and tenure, Family networks, friends and neighbors, Community was constructed through familiar, everyday social interactions • Kf I like the homes. It's the older homes, the style. It's a lot of character in west Louisville. ….. It's what I remember as a child growing up ……. • Kf I mean it's a beautiful area. I love the big homes in this area. I love the yard, the land around it. The bus routes are beautiful. You walk out the door and bang, you're on a bus ………. That's it. Everything else is well convenient to me. • Km Being born here, growing up in west Louisville, met a girl in west Louisville. Raised my kids in west Louisville.

Physical characteristics, including housing style, type and tenure, Family networks, friends and neighbors, Community was constructed through familiar, everyday social interactions • Kf I told you I live(d) in Fern Creek. It's just so different out there. I went to visit a friend and we sat down and started talking. It was daylight when I went over. I stayed a long, long time. When I got home, my apartment had been closed up; my lights was off. I had a bird in the cage outside. He was in there. One of my neighbors watches everything. They felt that I had fallen down because they knocked on my door to tell me it's time to take the bird in because it was getting kind of cool. Then because I didn't answer, they called the police. The police were at my house to see if I had fallen or anything had happened. They took care of my house. They shut the doors; they turned off the lights, and took the bird in and put it in. That wouldn't have happened in the west end. • Kf What I'm trying to say like in Fern Creek -- in the west end people are closer knit. They talk to each other; they communicate with each other. In Fern Creek, they're not going to come to your house and sit every day and watch TV and [inaudible] this and that. You know they are going to speak to you on the way in, speak to you on the way out. But if anything goes wrong, they know who belongs in your household. They know and that's the way they take care of you. But in the west end, it's like everybody is a family. You can come to my house; I can go to your house. We take care of each other like that, but they're not -- as far as if I was sick or something, maybe somebody would say well, her boyfriend be there pretty soon. Well just wait. Don't go in there. They wouldn't have came like they did right johnny on the spot to see what's going on.

Physical characteristics, including housing style, type and tenure, Family networks, friends and neighbors, Community was constructed through familiar, everyday social interactions • Moderator: That must mean you like it a lot. Can you say why? • Km That's all I know. • Km . . .and church is west Louisville. • Kf You can't find a better place. I know with my daughter, they lived out in Chamber Lane, way out Jefferson [inaudible] way out there. When they go on vacation I will go out there and watch the kids. Yet, I'd have to come into work every day. I hated it. The traffic, getting back and forth ………………... • Km I think there is probably a certain degree of socialization, too, because as A. was saying it is the comfort. I obviously turn to birds of a feather, you know. If you live in the west end; he lives in the west end. They look like me. I want to be where other people look like me.

Identities are underpinned by social class and status – which is sometimes based on historic male employment patterns –physical characteristics • Moderator: Anybody else about why people won't come out and participate? • Km I'd like to offer that if you are going to have participation, you need strong support within. -- I'm not being chauvinistic but you have to have strong males in your community who have some representation over and beyond not just living in a community -- where they're going to come and speak out. Because people will look and say okay, here's men and women, not just women, not just children but you've got a collection. You've got men and women, which is a strong representation, and from that you can build. The situation in west Louisville is, and I found this through canvassing during election -- and I talked with a number of men. They couldn't vote. They said brother, I wish I could vote, but I'm a convicted felon. So without having proper statistics I can see a number of men in west Louisville have records, or they may have something else. They may want to keep a low profile.

Identities are underpinned by social class and status – which is sometimes based on historic male employment patterns –physical characteristics • Km Sometimes the members of the community can't help what happens. Where I grew up -- since that time, since I've been away all the industries have moved out, and the complete town has deteriorated to the point that I don't want to go there. It makes me sick to see that nice house I lived in with the gutters falling down and unpainted, and the roof is still the same roof it was 65 years ago. The industries all moved out and the people there really had no say about if they wanted us to continue to live there. White male

External perceptions of a neighborhood's identity were often stronger and more of a caricature than those held by people who lived there. • Moderator: What do you think people who are outside of west Louisville think about this part of this city? • Kf I think they think it is violent, because I have some friends that are Haitians. They drive cabs and they are scared to come down here to west Louisville. • Kf I don't see where it is no “worser” than anywhere else. • Km ………….if something happens in Shively, but you say you live in west Louisville -- but if something happens out in Shively, they are going to say west Louisville. If something happens over in Portland, they are going to say west Louisville. If something happens at Jewish Hospital, that area up there, they are going to say west Louisville. That far up is east end. • Km I think it goes back to the fact, Custer would have been great if the Indians told the story. But it depends on what . . . • Kf Who is telling the story. • Kf We're not represented to the media. We're not really represented.

Neighborhood Identity & Policy • Kf Planes flying over west Louisville and we had the greatest turn out when we had a neighborhood meeting about it. We had the greatest turn out of all the places that they went in Louisville and we still did that. So you feel just like when you have an interstate or a freeway, that the lower income neighborhoods no matter what they say, they're going to do what they're going to do. But the rich suburban neighborhoods, if they raise up a stink, then yeah they'll go around them and leave them alone. • Km People feel because it's the west end it ain't going to change because it's where we live at they already have stereotyped us as where all the crime is. It ain't going to change. Even if I participate, ain't nothing going to happen. … I do remember about a year or two ago when there was a big issue about pot holes in the city and getting them fixed. They were showing how the mayor was fixing pot holes, but he was fixing them out in the county. There was nothing down here getting fixed. It's still the same. • Kf Cleaning the streets when there is all that snow. Snowbound. Couldn't even get out. • Km Make it look like there is something big happening, but again it's the west end. It doesn't matter. The pot holes down there ain't the same.

Goals Civic Engagement • Mobilize residents to become civically engaged • Identify issues • Examine issues • Ask questions • Organize • Take action • Be responsible for what they can control

Our Desire: Community Participation • Increased capacity to: • Make choices; • Transform those choices into desired actions and outcomes; • Build individual and collective assets; • Improve the efficiency and fairness of the organizational and institutional context that controls the use of these assets;(4) • Participate in, negotiate with, influence, control, and hold accountable institutions that affect their lives (5). Community Participation 4) What is empowerment? The World Bank, 2005, (http://web.worldbank.org/WBSITE/EXTERNAL/TOPICS/EXTPOVERTY/EXTEMPOWERMENT/0, content accessed 30 November 2005). 5) Narayan D. Empowerment and poverty reduction: a sourcebook. Washington, World Bank, 2002.

CHURCH COMMUNITY SERVCE REPAYMENT-GIVE BACK Actual Interpretation: Community Participation People assume a different meaning: Acts of Charity Community Participation DO IT OURSELVES

A Limited Lens Community Participation Church Repayment-Giving Back Community Service Do It Ourselves Kf: Working together and using each other for support instead of having to go outside of our area…….We can come together……. Kf: ..keeping the streets cleaned together and looking out for the senior citizens. Make sure nobody goes hungry in your area. Stuff like that. Kf: They volunteer in little soup kitchens that they have around here. Give the church members a little break. Check in on other people. Check in on other people who live alone. Km: Mine is really more about church participation. If it wasn’t for my church, I don’t think I’d probably do too much socializing. Km: I do pretty much what my father used to do. He was a career Army man and when he was in the community he was a father to a lot of boys who didn’t have fathers. He insisted on people doing the right thing.

A Limited Lens Community Participation Do it Yourself Church Giving Back Community Service Kf: Really looking to see what the needs are and the others around you. Kf And then doing what you can to help your neighbor. I think we're just all quick to go well, somebody should do something about that. Kf Well, the only thing I think is that my participation as far as community would be through the church. Kf: My community we do have a block watch and we meet every first Thursday of each month and it does entail what goes around in our surrounding area and beyond……..we are our own eyes because the policemen can’t see and do everything…….. if we see crime we report it. You can remain anonymous. Km: The issue that would make me turn out is getting more control over these police officers, especially the white ones. Note: Issue vs. Service

A Limited Lens Community Participation Do it Yourself Community Service Church Give Back Kf: Being on Portland Now; doing other activities: your neighborhood house, library, the Portland festival, on and on and on. Kf I see community involvement where you have people connecting with other people, networking, internet connecting and just helping each other to fulfill the needs of the community…………… Km It's just doing it, you know, and holding ourselves accountable. If everyone is accountable for their own family and their own well-being, it serves to provide a strong base. We're just not accountable as a whole. If you don't want to raise you kids, you can just drop them off at the neighborhood house, or you can drop them off at one of these social services…... Kf My community participation looks like nothing, but it was spent in lots of years in the classroom and working with children that were non-readers, and working as a volunteer at Plymouth Community House.

Opportunities Community Participation Civic Activism Q: Is there a difference between acts of charity and assistance and organizing to address an issue? Km I'd say it's the same. Km I would say the same. You're active. Km If you asked me what an activist was I would say it would be an initiator as opposed to a follower. Km Community participation, if I asked you to vote and you vote, you participated. If you're an activist, you'd probably ask me to vote. You initiate it.

Opportunities Civic Activism Community Participation • Kf I think it's ongoing with the -- it's ongoing. You're constantly doing it. But if you are just participating, it is just because something is flying through right now and you're going to do it and go on about your way. Versus this is what you breathe; this is what you live for; this is something that you truly . . . • Kf Have a passion. • Kf Exactly. Have a passion for. • Kf I think it is a cross between both. • Km It sounds like to me that in one sense people are being given things or being offered things are being helped. In another sense, people are helping themselves. They're taking some type of incentive to stand up and create their own type of structure or representation. That's what I see from that. • Conservative African-American woman, age 44

Opportunities Community Participation Civic Activism Km Activism, I think, is something that is pro-active. Going forward to do something rather than just participating. We all are participating here but are there any activists here? Activism is an act of doing something a little above and beyond. Kf I think it's more like doing something about what you are talking about. People can talk but it's not going to work. [inaudible] go hit on his door. Kf Acting out. Kf I don't think you can be called an activist unless you are engaging the political system. You have to engage them and so I believe --- community participation, I think, is the big umbrella and under that is activism where the people who are really political go to town. Km Yes. Activism means -- coming from a philosophical base, I believe that we ought to have good schools. I believe we ought to have garbage pickup on a regular basis and alleys ought to be clean. An activist like the ACORN organization, they're an activist organization. They challenge the establishment and they take action steps to get things done. That's activism. Just like in the 60s when everybody was protesting and moving the system toward a certain goal. That's activism. Community participation is Block Watch and keeping the neighborhood clean, and benign stuff that is good for everybody.

Do It Yourself- Community Service Where does it come from? • American emphasis on Individualism, Personal Responsibility • Asking Government to perform –be accountable- is equated with “depending” on government. • “My thing with community participation is most of us don't. I mean most of us don't serve our neighbor or serve the people in the our community. If we would do that, we wouldn't need as many government policies and regulations to take care of that. We're all created to serve one another and if we did that, we wouldn't need -- I think we've created a society of people looking for the government or somebody else to take care of their needs, instead of coming together as a community and doing that within”.Older white male • We can't just sit around waiting for government to solve some of these intractable social problems that we've had for years. Government has a role to play. It is time for all of us to live up more fully to the concept of citizenship. And for those of us who as citizens of this nation have been blessed with treasure, and wealth, and good position, and comfortable homes, and all the blessings of this land, to be a good citizen, to be a big citizen, requires you to do more in the way of sharing with those who are in need. So that a family that has three wonderful children ought to try to see if they could find three hours a week to share that life with a kid in need who doesn't have a mentor, who doesn't get to play in Little League and do the other things that we take for granted. Somebody in that family who might go tutor a school on an afternoon off from a job, and we're encouraging corporations to give them that afternoon off. And so that's what we mean by big citizenship.Colin Powell

Do It Yourself- Community Service Where does it come from? • Km I've been 7 or 8 times to New Orleans since Katrina hit, and the communities that the people in that community that get active and actively pursue building their community back are back and flourishing well. The people that are just sitting back on their laurels waiting for somebody to take care of it for them, are still in the same shape, pretty much, as when the hurricane hit. And it's the same thing in our area. I don't care what part of the city you go to, people that are actively participating and getting out there -- somebody will come along beside them and they'll make an effort, in my opinion. That's just my opinion. And I see that in about everything that I try to do. • Moderator: Okay. What's the difference between communities that are active, they participate and communities that don't? • Kf I think when you have a community that cares, the people are observant of what is going on around and noticing things; whereas if you've got a community that just kind of stays to themselves and doesn't care about what their neighbor is doing. If you've got a neighbor that can't just something as simple as paint the outside of their house, then their house starts not looking as nice. And if you've got a community that cares, people can chip in and help.

“Right Choices” in the News • Media “tells the story” through choice of stories, language, images, etc • Rugged independence stories • Disasters • Katrina vs. California Fires • GetKarma.org • The universal system of checks and balances- what goes around comes around….. • The Ad Council launched the “Get Good Karma” campaign in April 2007 with the Federal Voting Assistance Program. • Targets 18-24 year olds- the largest non voting segment in the U.S. • Help your neighbor, country, world • Smallest efforts can have far reaching effects-volunteering, registering to vote

Opportunities Approaches with the potential to bring about a shift in thinking……….. • Civic Engagement • Civic Organizing • Civic Activism • Civic Accountability

Recommendations So Far • Don’t over do community participation frame • Need an ongoing effort –both the campaign and opportunities for action • Need a new message • Civics…………. • Self interest • Passion • Demonstrate victories with the civic activism

Recommendations So Far • Target different groups differently • Youth- • Start early-grade school • Fear of standing out • External audiences- history & policy connection • Adults internal • Spokespeople--Local, recognizable not necessarily well known • Different communications methods • Texting, my space, internet • Billboards

Next Steps Test New Narratives Create Campaign Evaluate Message Development Message Testing

ANDRESS & Associates, LLC Bridging the Health Gap www.bridgingthehealthgap.com

Focus Group Questions • What do you like most about W. Louisville and why? • What do you like least about w. Louisville and why? • What do you think people outside W. Louisville think about this part of town and why do they think that? • What do you think community participation means? • Is advocacy different from community participation? • Is activism different or the same? • What do people who participate in their community do? Probe examples: a block watch, voting, attending a school meeting, trash pick-up. • Have you ever been asked to get involved in the community? By whom and for what? • Can participating make a difference? How? Any examples? [probing internalized racism and powerlessness] • Why do you think people participate in their community? What kinds of people participate in their community? Describe their characteristics. • Have you ever decided to participate or not to participate in some community action? Why did you participate or not participate? • When you look back on the times you decided not to participate in a community issue, activity, meeting, or project what were the consequences? • What would make you participate in a community effort? Probe systems such as neighborhood meetings, church based meetings, government or university projects [Is it who does the inviting and relationships?], locations, what days and the time of day [convenience?], certain issues like violence, liquor stores, etc [self- interests]. • How is community participation different or the same for people in west Louisville in comparison to other parts of the city or county? Why? • Who would make good spokespeople for a campaign to increase community participation in west Louisville? Who would people pay attention to and believe?

Building Civic Capacity, Engagement, and Action

Civic Capacity Building • Strengthens the ability of community organizations and groups • Build their knowledge, structures, systems, people and skills so they are better able to define and achieve their objectives • Training, education, resource identification and resource building, organizational and personal development • Promotes sustainability and strengthens internal and external -bridging and linking social capital

MEASURING CIVIC CAPACITY • Political Efficacy • Social Cohesion • Social Capital • Collective Self Efficacy

What are We Dealing With? • Many of the inequalities in health- are due to inequalities in the social conditions in which people live and work. • Valentine, et. al, PloS Medicine 2006; 3(6): e106. TH commission on the Social Determinants of Health • Tackling these conditions- social determinants health- underlying causes of poor health can contribute to improving health and health equity.

Central Questions? • Why are you civically active? • Why are you not civically active? • What is your view of west Louisville? • What issues concern you? • Parameters for this discussion • Local economy • Neighborhoods • Your family • Jobs, wages • Educational opportunities

Community Participation, Civic Capacity & Neighborhood Identity Findings from Focus Groups and Written Elicitations