Fairway Frank’s Ideas for Our Inner-cities

There are four things necessary for every area in the world to build and maintain a vibrant environment/society; 1) family structure, 2) supporting neighbors, 3) safety, and 4) economic opportunity.

Our inner-cities are suffering from not having enough of these four essentials. We must all take responsibility for this problem. We have all looked the other way and allowed the current situation in the inner-cities to fester. After all, most of us avoid these areas because they are just too dangerous. Most people do not feel responsible for the current condition because they believe that they have nothing to do with the problem. But, yes, we are responsible. We allow our government to continually do the same thing over and over with no results in improving the situation in the inner-cities.

We should all be thinking of ways to improve the situation and request our elected officials to take in our ideas, work with the people in the inner-cities, and develop a new way. We should demand that a new way be implemented. Otherwise, our government will continue doing things that cost a lot of money but do nothing for the people they claim to be helping. In that spirit, the following are my ideas for consideration.

Most economists and even politicians believe that some fiscal stimulus is needed to kick-start our flailing economy. This is an opportunity that an inner-city redevelopment planner should seize. I am a business man and believe that sustainable plans should be implemented. That means that they can be self-sustaining once the government kick-start funding has disappeared.

Project Number 1, Rebuild Homes: Inner-cities are plagued with abandoned homes that cause problems. A rebuilding plan would purchase abandoned homes (usually at sheriff’s sales for pennies on the dollar) and then rebuild them for a profit. The profits would be used to purchase more homes and repeat the rebuilding process. This would help the neighborhood. But more can be done with this project. The individual homes being rebuilt should be managed by a construction management company with professional tradesmen that work alongside people from the local area. This would provide jobs and job training for inner-city residents. Simultaneous with rebuilding these homes, our existing government sponsored training programs should provide evening, classroom training for the apprentices working on the home rebuilding.

To attract businesses to this project, some of the profits would have to be retained by the construction management company. However, there are ways to make the profits large enough to attract businesses and to also follow through on the plan of recycling some of the profits to purchasing additional abandoned homes. One idea is to allow the involved business to hire people currently receiving public assistance for tax-exempt, low wages (e.g.: $10 per hour). The apprentices should be allowed to continue to receive their public assistance for as long as they work on the abandoned home rebuilding project. This should really excite people to get a job, learn a skill and eventually move on to an even higher paying job when they have the required skills.  The businesses are getting cheap labor at $10 per hour with tax exemptions. That is, the employer has to pay no payroll taxes (Social Security, Medicare, unemployment taxes) on qualifying employees.

Project Number 2, Build Community Centers: If project number 1 is strategically planned, a cluster of abandoned homes could be purchased and instead of rebuilding individual homes, a community center could be built. Even if a cluster is not a continuous row of homes, an existing neighbor may be willing to relocate to a newly rebuilt home (at no cost) to provide the area required for a community center. Ideally, community centers should be located close to a vibrant church that serves the community. Once built, community centers would be staffed by people from the neighborhood. Services that are lacking in the community would be provided in the community center; mostly by volunteer neighbors. Those services will be determined by each area’s need but could include: life skill training for all ages, homework help, job training, assistance with social services, children’s play areas/gymnasiums, and other items that I am sure are needed but for which I have no knowledge. These community centers should foster community by having neighbors helping neighbors. Parents could take turns watching everyone’s children to allow for work, job training or errands. Grandparents could give parenting classes and help with children’s homework. Neighbors with specific skills could provide the aforementioned job training. Big Brother and Big Sister organizations could help too.

Community centers need to be built to have low operating costs. For example, they should all be super insulated, and be powered by on-site solar panels. Property taxes should be waived for community centers. Maybe some of the Solyndra solar panels we paid for in the last stimulus plan could be installed here. That last sentence was a bit of levity, but solar power is an economically viable means to help sustain community centers. To help keep costs down, job training could also be provided by local businesses that need skilled labor but have a difficult time finding it. I know for a fact that in the Philadelphia area, welders cannot be found. The company that purchased the Philadelphia Navy Yard established a training center to train welders and other tradesmen.

Local governments should look at their existing functions and staffing and determine which, if any, could be relocated to community centers. Moving services closer to where people live is always a good idea. Moving jobs from city hall to a neighborhood is also a good idea.

Other means of keeping costs down is to involve local businesses. Comcast (or whoever is the area’s dominant service provider) should provide free internet service, the local water company (except if it is a small privately owned water company) should provide free water and sewer, the local library should establish a kiosk presence with weekly drop-off and pick-up service. Finally, neighbors should take turns mowing the lawn and performing other routine maintenance. A point scheme could be developed to have neighbors barter their labor for other services (such as baby sitting, job training, etc.). People need to be provided free job training, but it is also a good idea to let them know that it is not really free and provide ways that they can repay (and help the community). Ditto for all the other services they provide and receive at the community center.

Having a local business sponsor each community center should also be considered. Most large companies have community volunteer programs and this would be an ideal way of giving back. The sponsor could and should have bragging rights if it has uplifted an entire neighborhood's social-economic status (which can be measured in terms of income per household and intact families).

Involving a local church with a community center is a means of leveraging some of the existing strengths within our inner-city communities. The community center would amplify the churches ability to help their community. The local church should be willing to manage the operation free of charge. If it is not, find another church. I believe in the separation of church and state, but the church can balance between the two lines.

Project Number 3, Start New Businesses: Anyone (local residents preferred) that wants to start a business should be given access to a low-cost, rebuilt building (by expanding Project Number 1 to include rebuilding abandoned businesses). Lending programs should be established to target such businesses with preferential lending terms. Again, local residents could be hired with favorable terms to both the new business and the employee (keep receiving public assistance and wages are tax exempt for both employee and employer for a year). Restaurants, grocery stores, delivery services, day care, clothing stores, department stores and more are all needed in our inner-cities.

Local residents that have developed their job skills should be given some of the construction management contracts of the rebuilding projects discussed above. Again, preferential lending programs can help. These new construction contractors should be taught how to bid on private industry jobs and helped with financing in that area also.

Project Number 4, Bring in Big Businesses: We should encourage large corporations to build manufacturing plants in our inner-cities. For example, Apple should be allowed to bring their hundreds of billions of dollars back to the United States with no taxes due if they use the money to build manufacturing facilities in an economically depressed area. To really sweeten the deal, they should also be given tax credits for every dollar they spend on such an endeavor to reduce future income taxes. With today’s robotic technologies, there is no reason to rely on cheap overseas labor. Build a robotic factory in the inner-city and we will help pay for it. Tax incentives for employing local residents should also be provided. Even if every employee Apple hires is from outside the local neighborhood, those employees will still buy lunch, get haircuts, and have their cars repaired at a local business.

Project Number 5, Safety: No community can thrive if people are afraid to go outside of their home. For this reason, law and order that best suits each locality must be established. That means that the community must be involved in how police conduct their business. Each locality must determine if and how stop and frisk should be used. The New York use of stop and frisk may have gotten out of hand in that it was overused to the point that every young black man was subjected to being stopped. There are better ways of implementing stop and frisk. One is to establish a known association with criminals. If you regularly associate with criminals, the police know. They should document that they suspect criminal association because of one, two and three…. Then they should have the right to randomly stop and frisk the individual. Our inner-city residents want law and order but they also want respect. The two are not mutually exclusive. In fact, they are mutually dependent on one another. By the way, the residents know who the criminals are too and they want them gone.

Whatever the right solution is, the police have to work it out with representatives of the local community. All the locally elected officials should be involved and they should hold town hall meetings to solicit input into how the residents want policing conducted and they should provide leadership on what should and should not be done.

A safe community also encourages people from outside the community to visit the businesses inside the community and to start businesses inside the community. This further adds to jobs and economic growth in the area.

The above ideas go to building economic centers in our inner-cities, training and employing inner-city residents, building communities of support, and establishing a safe environment. It is beyond my skill set to address the problem of the break down in family structure. However, it is my hope that the establishment of a vibrant community will have a positive effect on families. One of the services that I listed in my community center discussion was life skill training for all ages. If people know that there is a simple secret to success and provided with the help they need to implement that simple secret, the world would be a better place. The secret is this: finish high school and get a job before you get married and get married before you have a child. Statistics show that 95% of people that follow this simple rule do not live in poverty.

Okay, I am open to any other ideas. If you do not want to share them with me, share them somewhere so that our government can find them and consider using them. To make things better, we must change what we do. What we have been doing since forever, has never worked.