With Kevin Shelly no longer at the Courier-Post, his Camden demolition story has not been getting as much play. It’s a shame, because the demolitions are a key issues for residents of the city who already live here — a welcome departure from political investment that seems obsessed with providing services (jobs, houses, entertainment) that will attract others to the city. But the demolition process is also an example of something else going on in the city — the use of the city’s struggles to consolidate power rather than empowering local residents and organizations.
As Allison Steele reports, control over the demolition process has been shifted to the county after the city’s debacle over the bidding process. There is still no contractor for the majority of the demolitions; all this for a program that the city originally announced would be completed in 2014.
On one hand, this seems good. The city clearly was botching the process. But I worry that sending power away from Camden city seems like the go-to answer to all Camden’s ills. The police department is run by the county, the school district is run by the state, and now the demolition process is run by the county. In all three cases, the justification has been that these public entities could be run better at a different level.
Such a strategy is short-sighted. It deserves serious moral scrutiny as well — I saw Journey for Justice leader Jitu Brown speak in Camden last week and draw moral comparison to colonialism (here’s a link of a similar argument made at the Network for Public Education Conference). Continually shifting power away from the city begs the question — is this done for the city’s good? Or for the sake of power and control? And what happens if these two things overlap?
In the case of demolitions, the city, and now the county, has steadfastly refused to work with other non-profits already doing work in the area of blight. Non-profits such as Heart of Camden and St. Joseph Carpenter’s Society have a history of rehabbing blighted homes. The Camden Community Development Association (CCDA) piloted a “Decorative Board Up” program in which it securely boards up existing blighted houses but also uses artist renditions to help them keep value in the neighborhood. It’s one of my favorite programs in the city.
Photo by Curt Macysyn via the Courier-Post
The city (and now the county) has missed a huge opportunity here. The demolition strategy focused on a large issue, houses so badly damaged that they are a danger to other houses around them. That’s a worthy issue. But it also leaves Camden with hundreds more empty lots, and little infrastructure for growth in those places. Look around Camden — we have no lack of empty lots.
A broader scope, and a more comprehensive blight vision, could have incorporated other strategies. Homes with the ability to be rehabbed could have been developed by non-profits such as Sacred Heart and St. Joseph’s Carpenter Society. Homes that needed to be secured could have been secured and beautified by CCDA. These projects were shovel-ready by non-profits that have already piloted this work successfully — they were ready and willing. Plus, working with local non-profits builds local capacity and leadership in organizations that are here in the city. Of course, these projects are (largely) more expensive than demolitions on their own, and some homes would still have had to be demolished, but these other priorities are important enough to merit some expense.
These are the types of opportunities in which I wish we saw the city and county engaging. Opportunities to build local leadership, to support dedicated organizations, and to improve policy. By turning control over to the county, the city has missed its opportunity to strengthen the fiber of the city — and in doing so, it is undermining the city’s ability to grow leadership opportunities outside the county political pipeline. If the long-term goal is one of control of the city, then continuing to outsource to the county and state makes sense. But if the goal is to grow a diverse and capable pipeline of leaders from within the city to lead the next generation, such a strategy is terribly short-sighted.
And this is my worry with so many projects to “help” Camden. The NAACP is collecting data to document the drop in minority and local policemen om county-run Metro Police force. We’re closing traditional neighborhood schools with some of our highest percentage of African-American teachers and replacing them with schools whose model depends on recent college graduates with little knowledge of Camden. Now we’ve developed a demolition process that ignores the decades of work done by key local non-profits and places more power in the hands of the county. The demolition process had a chance to be the rare Camden program that both addressed a community need, and empowered local organizations in a way that could help develop capacity and future leaders. It’s sad to see that opportunity missed.
Tags: demolitions, local leadership
