Violent crime is down.
Kids are picking up basketballs instead of guns and community hubs are built or planned in eight of the neighbourhoods.
Champions of Toronto’s strong neighbourhoods strategy are adamant it has sparked change and laid the groundwork for the future.
But a large chunk of the strategy’s initial funding for programs and infrastructure — some $85 million — came in the form of one-time cash injections that will dry up over the next year. No new pots of money have come down the pipe.
With what is left of these funds set to expire against the backdrop of an increase this year in gun violence and cuts to youth justice programs, people on the ground are worried fragile gains made since 2005 could be lost.
“In these communities, issues of violence and dropouts are still taking place. But the government is moving away from prioritizing the need,” says Lekan Olawoye, executive director of the For Youth Initiative in Rexdale.
“We need to keep our foot on the gas.”
The seeds of the city’s strong neighbourhoods strategy were planted in 2004, when the United Way released a groundbreaking report, Poverty by Postal Code. The reportrevealed poverty had migrated from the downtown core to Toronto’s inner suburbs — the former cities of Etobicoke, York, East York, North York and Scarborough. No longer spread out across the city, Toronto’s poor were clustered together in areas that were egregiously underserved.
Then came the catalyst. In the summer of 2005, gang violence erupted across the city, leaving a trail of victims, many of them young black men from poor neighbourhoods. That year, 52 of 78 homicides in Toronto involved firearms. Much of the violence came from the areas identified in the report.
Money followed the casualties.That October, city council adopted the strategy, designating 13 areas — like the Jane-Finch corridor and Crescent Town — “priority neighbourhoods.” The United Way switched gears, moving 75 per cent of all new funding raised annually from its campaign to the inner suburbs.
“There was energy, this impetus carried on for a while,” says Likwa Nkala, manager of resources development at East Metro Youth Services in Scarborough.
Seven years later, community workers say they worry political momentum is drying up.
“We need to be sounding small alarm bells,” Olawoye says.
The city’s biggest financial contribution to the strategy was a $13-million infrastructure fund — an election promise by former mayor David Miller that ballooned into $38 million with private donations. The fund has paid for 26 projects across the priority areas, like playgrounds and sports facilities. There is no more to go around.
The single-largest injection of money to enter the 13 neighbourhoods thus far has been the Youth Challenge Fund, which pays for youth-driven projects and programs in the priority areas.
A pot of $46.6 million — most from the province, with about a third from private donors — has been used to launch radio stations, urban farming projects and a host of other youth-led initiatives.
YCF has funded 111 initiatives over the past six years; however, only 21 continue to operate with its support. The fund will be phased out as of March 2013. Most of the money has already been allotted.
“A number of the people we spoke to held up the Youth Challenge Fund as an example of a great program that sort of just disappeared out from under their feet,” says Martin Horak, a political science professor at the University of Western Ontario who interviewed project leaders as part of his research on the 13 neighbourhoods.
Horak’s point is echoed in a 2010 evaluation by Astwood Strategy Corp., a crime and social justice consultancy group. Though the report found YCF was successfully engaging young people, researchers expressed concern about sustainability.
“As noted by youth participants across the range of YCF initiatives, there is concern about the potential void left emotionally by initiatives which engaged youth, but later cease to exist or operate in a restricted form,” the report said.
Pamela Grant, executive director of YCF, says the intent was never to fund 111 projects indefinitely, and this was made clear to the youth leaders involved in the projects. “That was not ever in the cards,” she says.
The first phase of YCF, Grant says, was about using small doses of funds to “seed great ideas,” out of which came 17 “legacy initiatives” that will continue to operate — with funds from other donors — when YCF shuts down.
“We’ve planted the seeds and laid the infrastructure for those relationships and partnerships to evolve further,” she says.
Clayton Thomas launched Recognize the Real in 2006 with a grant from YCF. The project, a sports program that teaches kids from the Jane and Finch area about health and fitness, was given $21,000 to get started, but wasn’t chosen as a legacy initiative. The funding ran out in 2009.
“There was a lot of panic, a lot of frustration” says Thomas, standing in a school gymnasium where a few dozen kids, as young as 5 and as old as 17, run furiously from one end to the other. It’s drill time at Recognize the Real’s eight-week summer camp.
Clayton and volunteers have continued to run the camp and an after-school program with small grants from the United Way and other donors, but this year has been a particularly challenging one, he says.
In the past, the program has been able to accept up to 100 kids in its summer camp and hire seven youth leaders. Thomas had to cap this summer’s camp at 60 kids and hire only three youth leaders. Recognize the Real has enough funds to continue operating until the end of the summer, but Thomas is unsure about the project’s future beyond August.
“If we don’t work with these kids, I think they’re going to resort to looking for mentorship in their own communities,” he says. “And let’s face it, most of these communities don’t have the most positive influences.”
Other organizations funded by YCF are feeling its void as well. Racquiah Topey, program co-ordinator for the Black Action Defense Committee, says her organization was given funds to hire kids in priority neighbourhoods like Lawrence Heights to mentor other young people. “You could see some healing going on during that time,” she says. When the funding ran out, they had to let their youth mentors go.
Cuts at the federal level are also having an impact. John Sawdon, executive director of Breaking the Cycle, lost his funding from Service Canada earlier this year. The program, which worked with youth with criminal backgrounds and histories of violence — or those kids “most people won’t touch and don’t want to work with,” he says — was considered to have a proven track record. For the last five years it drew participants from priority neighbourhoods, teaching kids the skills to manage anger, helping them plan for their futures.
Sawdon sought help from both the province and the city, but getting funds elsewhere is proving “hugely difficult.” He has lost four trained staff because of the instability.
All levels of government are tightening budgets. While the city’s community grants program has been spared from cuts, it also hasn’t increased to keep up with the cost of living. Cutting the budget by 10 per cent last year meant laying off one of 10 vital community workers.
Seven years in, with city figures putting total dollars spent at $210 million, everyone wants to see a report card.
There are countless stories of individual triumphs — teens like Oneil Barnes, who in the summer of 2009 was employed by a carpenter’s union to help build a youth centre extension in the Weston-Mount Dennis neighbourhood. There, he learned about carpenter’s math and how to lay flooring. Barnes, 22, parlayed his training into an apprenticeship and is now installing cabinetry at the luxury Shangri-La hotel downtown.
Stories like this abound, but hard data on the campaign’s impact does not exist.
The future of the strong neighbourhoods strategy — a mainstay of Miller’s tenure — was thrown into limbo during the 2010 election. The extent to which Rob Ford would adopt Miller’s baby was unclear. But in March of this year, council voted to extend the strategy to 2020, with two key changes in place.
The city is working on a plan to track progress this time around. A new website called Wellbeing Toronto will compile data like crime rates, health, income level, employment and school dropout rates. Semi-annual report cards will be prepared for all 140 planning neighbourhoods across the city — from Rosedale to Kingston-Galloway.
“The problem is we don’t have it going backwards, and that’s what everyone’s looking for,” says Chris Brillinger, executive director of the city’s social development, finance and administration division.
The real value in Wellbeing Toronto, he adds, will only be seen five or ten years from now — 2012 is the benchmark year.
The second key change in the strategy is a shift in focus from the 13 large areas to smaller pockets throughout Toronto’s 140 neighbourhoods. Many of the pockets still fall within the 13 priority areas, but some are in other parts of the city that have demonstrated need, like Etobicoke South or Thorncliffe.
“It’s time to look beyond the 13, not move out of the 13, but move beyond,” Brillinger says.
To focus on smaller pockets is a strategy that makes sense, says Western’s Horak. He wonders, however, if the change in strategy is also because there is simply less money to go around. More stable core funding from all levels of government is crucial, he says.
“I’m kind of hoping that the wheel will come around a little again and that we’ll see more interest, we’ll see more money,” he says. “Hopefully not just because people get killed.”
The bureaucrats in charge of the city’s strategy say they’re managing with what is available.
Take this example from Denise Campbell, the city’s director of community resources. A few years back, she was invited to the Netherlands to talk about neighbourhood building. The amount of money the Dutch invested in that country’s 40 priority neighbourhoods —millions more per region — left her salivating. But it also got her thinking about the art of doing more with less.
“Sometimes, when you put a lot of money on the table, it doesn’t force people to think about how do you change the behaviour, the priorities, the relationships, to use what we have better,” she says. “We can put lots of money in, but ultimately over the long haul that’s not always possible and sustainable.”
One city initiative, called “Investing in Families,” is the successful iteration of that thinking. It’s an efficient three-in-one support system for families in the Jane-Finch area, offering job counselling, health and recreation services all in the same place. It won the city manager’s award for excellence this year.
The lesson learned from great ideas that come out of tough times? Money isn’t everything.
“It’s important, mind you,” Campbell qualifies.
Brillinger nods. “Very important.”
Original Article
Source: the star
Author: Jayme Poisson and Amy Dempsey
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