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The purpose of the citizen participation process was to ensure community-wide input into the Consolidated Plan as required by HUD s Office of Community Planning and Development. Citizens were invited to express their concerns relating to the general quality of their lives and to offer suggestions as to how the federal formula grant programs might be allocated within the community. Citizens were asked to consider the problem solving capacity of the Community Development Block Grant Program (CDBG); HOME Investment Partnership Program (HOME); Emergency Shelter Grants (ESG); and Housing Opportunities for Persons with AIDS (HOPWA). The citizen participation process emphasized the necessity of providing citizens multiple access points to the Consolidated Planning process in order to allow the expression of community concerns and to allow specific discussion on the issues and needs of special needs populations. Much like the Empowerment Zone planning process and community outreach effort, the Citizen Participation Plan of the Consolidated Planning process embraced the ideal that community involvement and participation are necessary ingredients to a plan if it is to meaningfully represent the views of its government, its service providers and most importantly, its citizens.
In keeping with this ideal, the citizen participation process incorporated the following activities:The information culled from these sources was combined with previous information gathered in preparation of the 1993 Comprehensive Housing Affordability Strategy (CHAS), the recent Residential Development Strategy (RDS) developed in consultation with the Board of Aldermen and the Empowerment Zone Application submitted in June 1994. This collection of information incorporates a wide range of needs and suggested solutions for enhancing the City's quality of life and promoting its revitalization.
The various outreach activities were organized to give all target groups and the general public easy access to the planning process. They offered all citizens an opportunity to participate and ensured that a diverse body of individuals, community leaders and service providers, with a history of commitment and experience in their neighborhoods, were included in the planning process.
Public meetings were held during the evening at places where neighborhood groups often meet: in a south City community school and in the Fire Department s training facility on the north side. These two town hall type meetings were publicized through the distribution of thousands of fliers sent to citizens and to people on mailing lists - developed as part of the Empowerment Zone process and secured from CDA and SLDC - who represent a diverse and varied universe of community groups and organizations, churches, community schools and City ConServ and Neighborhood Liaison Programs. Media alerts and calendar listings also were issued to local print and electronic media outlets.
Focus groups were organized with the assistance of a liaison from each special population. The groups for users and providers of services for people with HIV/AIDs and for the homeless utilized regularly scheduled monthly meetings. The other three focus groups - for people with disabilities; for people with mental illness; and for those living in subsidized/public housing - invited selected constituents together at a mutually agreeable time.
A Neighborhood Leaders Forum was held on a Saturday morning in a central facility on the campus of St. Louis University. It included invited guests representing neighborhood associations, housing corporations, neighborhood commercial districts, and nonprofit service agencies.
Each meeting used a facilitator to lead the meeting and a recorder to note the discussion. The 2-hour meetings followed a similar agenda which included time for a statement of purpose and summary of the four programs goals and anticipated grant amounts; input from participants; a summary of the discussion; and a wrap-up and explanation of the next steps in the planning process. Time also was made available for participants to complete the survey.
The meeting facilitator asked a series of questions to elicit information regarding the types of housing and housing support services which were available and helpful; barriers to affordable and accessible housing; and priorities for both federal housing/economic development funds and for related City resources. Each session ended with a basic question regarding how the City, citizens and organizations could work more effectively together to meet the community s needs.
To achieve consistency across the various outreach forums, similar questions were posed in each setting that reflected common themes and issues that have, from experience, been consistently a focus of interest and debate for many years. Creating a common discussion framework was a necessary requirement for being able to generalize the results of the various meetings. The results represent both common general themes reflecting Citywide or neighborhood concerns and those of specific needs populations. The following section, General Findings, summarizes the public meetings, the focus groups, the neighborhood leaders forum and the survey findings with an emphasis on the common themes and interests noted among the diversity of viewpoints represented.
The findings at the meetings provided valuable input for formulating the Consolidated Plan. In general, dialog across the various meetings reflected broader-based quality of life concerns of individual neighborhoods issues such as housing, public safety and beautification. Conversely, the advocates and service providers of special needs populations, the CAC and neighborhood leaders were concerned with more systemic issues, in large part reflecting their representation of a constituency or individual neighborhood. Although these groups had very specific concerns about specialized housing and supportive services, many of their suggestions and concerns were related to the current methods of allocating the resources of the four formula grant programs. In essence, neighborhood groups and other special need interests recognized many constraints, not the least of which is the competition for scare resources. As a result, much of their dialog was devoted to the future availability and accessibility to funding and to suggestions for reforming bureaucratic procedure at both the local, state and federal levels.
The sections that follow summarize the dialogues that occurred in the various meeting settings. The first section addresses the broader, quality of life concerns that were expressed in terms of housing stabilization and promoting a viable housing market. This is followed by a summary of housing and supportive service priorities as they relate to the population at-large, special needs populations and other community concerns such as commercial/retail development and infrastructure issues. The next section summarizes the programmatic and systemic issues that concerned many citizens and community leaders. A final section broadly summarizes the needs and concerns prioritized in the neighborhood survey.
Citizens and neighborhood leaders believe in the viability and preservation of their respective neighborhoods. In doing so, they express the most concern over a neighborhood's most fundamental unit, its housing. Housing issues tended to reflect the importance given to maintaining the quality of existing housing through rehabilitation and homeowner assistance and the creation of a range of housing alternatives for those residents with special needs. These concerns can be characterized as a strong desire to keep residents in their homes and apartments and to provide the specialized housing alternatives that maintain independence and keep special needs persons and their families together. This collection of housing concerns also have variations that reflect the differences that exist across the City's many and diverse neighborhoods. A summary of these concerns is as follows:
1. Concerns of the General Public
Input from citizens in the public meetings focused strongly on three major themes in regards to housing and how it relates to the quality of life in their respective neighborhoods. These themes could be described as (1) keeping people in their homes, (2) providing affordable housing for a range of population segments, such as the elderly, young families, large families, singles and female headed households and (3) emphasize the "middle" range of market rate housing. These themes are reflected in the summary of responses below (and do not reflect a ranking):
2. Concerns of Special Needs Populations
The concerns of special needs populations and their service providers also reflected common themes that demonstrated the complexity and multiplicity of problems that confront special needs populations. These groups included the homeless, the disabled, the mentally ill and those with HIV/AIDS. Their housing needs are often complicated by the necessity of combining housing with a range of support services. Common to each of these groups are the themes of (1) creating and promoting independent living arrangements, (2) assisting special needs individuals and their families to stay together and (3) providing a range of housing choices. A summary of the responses of special needs individuals and service providers is (in no rank order) provided below:
Citizens, neighborhood leaders and service providers also recognized and expressed many needs that are believed to be requisite if housing solutions are to be successful. The needs expressed varied from the public meetings and the smaller focus groups. In accordance with the theme of keeping persons in their homes, the general public and neighborhood leaders offered a wide range of solutions. Suggested service needs ranged from those directly related to the maintenance and management of housing, such as technical assistance for neighborhood organizations and property managers, to individual services such as job training, GED opportunities and life skills counseling. The requirements of special needs populations were numerous and varied depending upon the at-risk population and were often concerned with changing prevailing attitudes toward the respective groups. A summary of these results are below:
Citizens, neighborhood leaders and many service providers expressed concern over the distribution and allocation of funds for community development and special needs. These concerns in large part reflected the limited resources that are available from all levels of government. Given the enormity of social and community development problems and the ever-expanding number of organizations to address them, it is an unfortunate truth that some will receive funding and others will not. However, the concerns expressed are useful for helping to reexamine the process by which allocation decisions are made so that adjustments can be considered. Clearly the process is constrained by federal regulations, minimal state involvement in social and community development, local institutional arrangement and a paucity of available funding. Some of the most salient concerns were:
A survey was distributed to those participating in the numerous meeting settings and 134 persons responded, representing a fair cross-section of community wide interests. This survey was intended to solicit individual opinion and perceptions of neighborhood needs. Of the respondents, 40% lived in North City, 32% from the central/midtown area and 28% were from South City. The survey results are summarized as follows (See the Appendix for detailed results):
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