A recap of this week’s equity news.

 ”All Boarded Up,” - The New York Times Magazine

TONY BRANCATELLI, A CLEVELAND CITY COUNCILMAN, yearns for signs that something like normal life still exists in his ward. Early one morning last fall, he called me from his cellphone. He sounded unusually excited. He had just visited two forlorn-looking vacant houses that had been foreclosed more than a year ago. They sat on the same lot, one in front of the other. Both had been frequented by squatters, and Brancatelli had passed by to see if they had been finally boarded up. They hadn’t. But while there he noticed with alarm what looked like a prone body in the yard next door. As he moved closer, he realized he was looking at an elderly woman who had just one leg, lying on the ground. She was leaning on one arm and, with the other, was whacking at weeds with a hatchet and stuffing the clippings into a cardboard box for garbage pickup. “Talk about fortitude,” he told me. In a place like Cleveland, hope comes in small morsels.

The next day, I went with Brancatelli to visit Ada Flores, the woman who was whacking at the weeds. She is 81, and mostly gets around in a wheelchair. Flores is a native Spanish speaker, and her English was difficult to understand, especially above the incessant barking of her caged dog, Tuffy. But the story she told Brancatelli was familiar to him. Teenagers had been in and out of the two vacant houses next door, she said, and her son, who visits her regularly, at one point boarded up the windows himself. “Are they going to tear them down?” she asked. Brancatelli crossed himself. “I hope so,” he mumbled.

 ”YouthBuild: one stimulus model,” - The Christian Science Monitor
The program has turned lives around and builds affordable community housing.

Daniel Brito finished high school, but he didn’t know what to do next. His family, in a low-income Boston neighborhood, just wasn’t there for him. He was scared he’d be a failure.

Then a former teacher connected him with YouthBuild Boston, a local affiliate of a nationwide program that enables low-income young people to stay with their education and learn job skills while building affordable housing for their communities.

“Coalition plans two food stores in Detroit,” - The Detroit News
Community-operated sites would offer more nutritional groceries.

DETROIT — A Detroit neighborhood coalition seeking to bring healthy food to the city is eyeing two sites — one on the east side and one on the West — for the community-run grocery store it envisions.

The M.O.S.E.S. Supermarket Task Force, a partnership among neighborhood groups, churches and a union, among others, is designed to give residents greater access to healthy food through community-owned and run grocery stores.

A recap of this week’s equity news 

“N.A.A.C.P. Calls for Economic Equity,” - New York Times

BALTIMORE — The N.A.A.C.P. celebrated its centennial Thursday by calling on the Obama administration and Congress to spend more on education, establish a nine-month moratorium on foreclosures and ensure that the stimulus package is distributed equitably.

Federal lawmakers must guarantee fair hiring practices for new jobs at a time when black unemployment — consistently higher than it is for whites — is in double digits, the group said in a 38-page report describing its policy goals for the year.

“Wal-Mart eyes 12 Chicago ‘food desert’ sites,” - Chicago Sun-Times 

Wal-Mart is scouting 12 properties in Chicago’s “food desert” neighborhoods for new stores that sell groceries, a Wal-Mart spokesman said Friday.

About 500,000 Chicagoans live in food deserts with no easy access to mainstream grocery stores.

“Mixed-income housing debated,” - The Times-Picayune

Angela Glover Blackwell argued that a person’s neighborhood has become a proxy for his social mobility. Affluent areas tend to offer access to jobs, public transit, grocery stores and quality public education, and their residents often have longer life expectancy than those in poorer neighborhoods.

Blackwell said developers often try to lift up struggling areas by introducing market-rate apartments and hoping they will attract professional people who have a choice of where to live. But she said such a strategy sends the wrong message, by telegraphing that revitalization cannot come at the hands of the people who already live there.

A recap of this week’s equity news

“Nutrition grant will refresh local ‘food deserts’,” - The Courier-Journal
Grant to boost nutrition at two corner stores

They’re called “food deserts” — poor, urban neighborhoods where residents lack cars to drive to distant supermarkets, prompting many to rely on nearby fast food or convenience-store fare.

Now, after months of delays, a project is about to bring healthful food to two such “deserts” in Louisville by helping two corner stores in disadvantaged neighborhoods begin selling fresh fruits and vegetables.

“How Obama can partner with philanthropy,” - San Francisco Chronicle
 
With violence in the Mideast, the spreading economic crisis, the tragedy in Mumbai and the risk of state failure in troubled regions, President-elect Barack Obama has had a glimpse of the in-box that awaits him. Already on his checklist had been the problems of new poverty at home; uneven access to health care and quality education; the climate crisis; and the need for post-war reconciliation and reconstruction abroad.

Yet the president-elect was quick to acknowledge on election night that, “government can’t solve every problem.” He will need to tap all available sources of innovation, including from the nonprofit and philanthropic sectors. In the case of the social sector, its most important asset may be its independence, not only from governments but from the snap judgments of markets or electoral politics, influenced by the 24-hour news cycle. In a world of complex problems, the social sector - philanthropy and those it supports - may be the only sector able to take risks, withstand criticism and make long-term investments in the public interest.

“A Pitch for Mass Transit,” - New York Times

Unlike President Bush, Barack Obama is going to enter office with a clear appreciation of the urgent problems of climate change and America’s growing dependency on foreign oil — and a strong commitment to address both.

One way he can do this is to give mass transit — trains, buses, commuter rails — the priority it deserves and the full financial and technological help it needs and has long been denied.

A recap of the week’s equity news

 ”Farmers’ market trying to attract food stamp users,” - Toledo Blade

Farmers’ markets are practically overflowing this time of year with fresh, healthy produce - corn, zucchini, watermelon, tomatoes, and more.

But many of the most nutritionally needy consumers don’t shop often at farmers’ markets.

“The Trouble with Transportation,” - Newsweek
High gas prices have dimmed private equity’s hopes of rosy returns on infrastructure and transportation projects. Government could be the loser

For private equity investors, the sheen is wearing off purchases of public asphalt. A year ago, banks and private investment firms were racing to pour money into infrastructure projects such as highways and light-rail systems. Compared with an investment in stocks, buying or leasing a highway seemed like a low-risk bet with easily estimated, long-term returns. After all, competing highways or mass transit systems couldn’t just spring up overnight to divert toll- and ticket-paying customers.

But $4-a-gallon gasoline slowed the enthusiasm for such projects. Many commuters are choosing to leave their cars in the garage and take mass transit, or don’t have a job to drive to anymore. “If you look at the publicly reported forecasts for the Chicago Skyway or Wall Street estimates of global traffic, they are completely different now,” said George Bilicic, a managing director at NYC private equity firm Kohlberg, Kravis, Roberts who spoke on a panel held Sept. 3 at the University of Minnesota. “It goes into the risk assessment associated with the investment decision.”

“Miles of Aisles for Milk? Not Here,” - New York Times

HARMAR TOWNSHIP, Pa. — Like cars and homes, grocery stores are beginning to shrink.

After years of building bigger stores — many larger than a football field and carrying 60,000 items — retailers are experimenting with radically smaller grocery stores that emphasize prepared meals, fresh produce and grab-and-go drinks.

The idea is to lure time-starved shoppers who want to pick up a few items or a fast meal without wandering long grocery aisles or paying restaurant prices.