After participating in the very first Inside Policy call on Housing, Neighborhood Revitalization, and the HUD budget, Caroline Saxton, president of the Legacy Foundation in Lake County, Indiana, was moved to action. With cuts to public housing in the offing and the Community Development Block Grant, HOME, and Choice Neighborhoods programs under threat of wholesale elimination, Saxton wondered what these cuts would mean for the already struggling communities of Gary, Hammond, and East Chicago, which fall within the Legacy Foundation’s service area. Spurred to find answers, Saxton set in motion a process that would lead to the creation of a community impact statement, and the first steps in an advocacy campaign to raise awareness of vital community development programs. Here’s what she did:

1.) Saxton’s first step was to convene the area’s major stakeholders, including fellow funders and representatives from all city and county departments that received formula funding from HUD. Because many of these departments worked closely on community revitalization with the Environmental Protection Agency, which was also facing steep cuts and the threat of closure of the Chicago EPA office, representatives from EPA as well as Save the Dunes, a local environmental group, were also invited.

2.) At the meeting, each representative discussed how proposed cuts would affect the organizations they supported and impact the daily lives of residents who benefited from HUD programs. Between the cities and county, Lake County stood to lose more than $10 million in HUD funding alone.

3.) To formalize their analyses, meeting participants agreed to document the effects of cuts and submit them in writing to the Legacy Foundation. The foundation received more than 30 individual statements.

4.) Saxton and the Legacy Foundation’s vice president, Kelly Anoe, compiled data from the documents into a comprehensive community impact statement detailing the organizational and human toll that proposed cuts would have on Lake County. The statement was formatted as a letter to Indiana’s U.S. senators and Lake County’s congressional representative, and packaged with individual statements as supporting documents. The letter and package will be delivered to the elected officials in person in a pre-arranged meeting.

5.) In addition, the Legacy Foundation is meeting with the publisher of the local newspaper to share the community impact statement and seek coverage of relevant policy issues on an ongoing basis.

6.) The Legacy Foundation will also share the community impact statement with the non-profit agencies that will be affected by the cuts, and will put together a list of representatives at non-profit agencies who can field press questions.
For more information on Legacy’s policy action process, contact Carolyn Saxton or Kelly Anoe at csaxton@legacyfoundation.org or kanoe@legacyfoundation.org.

Fair Share is an occasional column devoted to sharing innovative projects and promising practices from the OIC network. If you have ideas for a topic, or a story to share, contact Alicia at alicia@www.fundersnetwork.org.

Alicia Kitsuse
Program Director for Older Industrial Cities
alicia@www.fundersnetwork.org, (305) 667-6350