‘Neighborhood’ as an essential unit of change

Joan Nelson was the founding executive director of the Allen Neighborhood Center, on Lansing’s east side. She joins City Pulse this week as a contributor. Her column will appear in the first issue of the month.

Back in spring 2004, those of us working at the Allen Neighborhood Center had just completed a door-to-door survey that left us in a mild state of shock. We had included a question recommended by the U.S. Agriculture Department to determine “food insecurity.” We were startled to discover that the rate among our 100 low- to moderate-income survey participants was an alarming 29%.

Our immediate thought was to better promote the weekly food pantry that we had launched some years earlier. And then, we began a series of conversations with our neighbors.

Residents told us about theirs and their neighbors’ lack of access not just to food, but specifically to nutritionally dense, fresh, local produce. We talked about the negative health consequences of a compromised diet. They highlighted the limited number of grocery stores stores on the east side and that the 10% to 20% of residents who are carless relied on corner stores for (mostly processed) food.

One idea to emerge from these discussions was to establish a neighborhood-based farmers market. At that time, there were just two municipal farmers markets in the region: the old City Market downtown and Okemos Meridian Market, neither of which was particularly walkable or accessible to eastside residents. 

As a result, the Allen Neighborhood Center launched a 10-week pilot program with four farmers in late summer 2004. The neighborhood responded beyond our expectations, and by that fall, we were committed to slowly but steadily growing the Allen Farmers Market. We also began to feature musicians, (including Eastern High School jazz students), to draw patrons and create weekly “happenings” for neighbors.

Now, almost two decades later, the market is going strong, featuring 25 farmers and vendors who provide year-round access to local food for roughly 20,000 patrons annually and contribute to eastside identity, culture and connectivity.

The center’s health, housing, gardening and youth initiatives that followed all grew out of a similar process. It involved joining with neighbors and other stakeholders to assess a particular situation or challenge and invariably ask some version of the question, “What is the neighborhood piece of the solution?” 

In this way, neighborhood-crafted and neighborhood-driven projects became our standard approach to meeting neighbors’ needs. While health and human service organizations typically direct their programs toward individuals and families, the center’s approach was to identify ways in which the next largest social unit past family — neighborhood — can systematically and steadily create circumstances, projects and structures that will improve quality of life. Of course, neighborhoods can’t solve complex social problems alone — but this sector has an important and often overlooked role to play.

The Allen Neighborhood Center is certainly not the only neighborhood-based organization that relies on grass-roots engagement and planning to good effect; there are plenty of others everywhere! Nor is this a new approach. In our own community, there is a rich history of neighborhood-driven improvement that includes Lansing Model Cities (part of Lyndon Johnson’s “war on poverty”); Neighborhood Watch and Community Policing; and Community Health Summits.

In the coming months, I will be sharing stories of these three transformative initiatives, all of which involved a critical role for neighborhoods — and that, incidentally, were personally transformative for me. I do feel a little like Forrest Gump — happening to be in the vicinity of key events that are part of the history of a place. For instance, in 1971, my first job out of college was as a community organizer for Model Cities. A decade later, the first community police officer in Lansing was a regular visitor to my neighborhood business, Movement Arts. And, finally, I had the privilege of facilitating the Eastside Summit from 1997 to 2000, which then morphed into the Allen Neighborhood Center, where I remained until just a few months ago.

More important, each of these neighborhood-based initiatives had an enduring impact on quality of life in Lansing. Think solid waste pick-up, a robust bus service, a dispersed network of public health clinics, and the Eastside Neighborhood Organization — to name just a few outcomes of Model Cities and its 15 Model Neighborhoods.

A decade later, community policing with its support for cops as community organizers, resulted in over 100 Neighborhood Watch organizations in Lansing. While initially focused on crime prevention, gradually many of these neighborhood groups have embraced a broader agenda that includes park improvement, beautification, housing and more. 

And in the 1990s, when the Ingham County Health Department became that decade’s institutional backbone for neighborhood change, we saw neighbor-engaged health summits held on the east side, west side and south side, each addressing so-called social determinants of health — housing, education, access to health, etc. The Health Department followed with “cultural summits,” including an African-American Health Summit and the Mestizo-Anishinabek Health Summit. All five summits produced a comprehensive action plan and an organization to implement it. The eastside plan, “Growing in Community on Lansing’s Eastside,” became the Allen Neighborhood Center’s strategic plan for our first five years.

In the months ahead, look for more detail about these historic initiatives, the people involved, the social and physical infrastructure they created, and the firm expectation that they set for neighborhood input into any significant City of Lansing initiative.  

Working close to home on issues of importance can be a rewarding focus for people who see themselves as changemakers. Pick your issue — affordable and flexible housing, food systems, health access, youth development, senior support, or whatever else seems most pressing in your area — and then join with others to determine precisely what the neighborhood — and your — piece of the solution might be.