Program areas at Villages Community Development Corp
We have enrolled 17 households into ourKeep It In the Family (KIITF)program,ensuring the preservation of intergenerational wealth.We are working closely with our neighborhood partners in order to make sure ourneighborhoods get the investment and services they deserve, such as getting DWSDout to repair storm drains and sink holes,and to get the City to help us eliminateblight.We are trying to bring as many different stakeholders together in order to create astronger sense of community, both to achieve our program goals and to help foster asense of connection between and within our neighborhoods. The second round of our housing stabilization program has been successful. Oneof the biggest takeaways we learned from our first round is that estate planning inthe neighborhoods was a sorely needed missing piece in keeping residents in theirhomes. The City of Detroit has funded its program, Tangled Title, to the tune of$7,000,000 in order to operationalize this program on a citywide basis. We havecontinued to work with our existing pool of 17 clients to help to continue to offercase management support in order to help them take advantage of furtherfunding opportunities, such as signing up existing clients for roof repairs, helpingwith property taxes, lead abatement, water affordability and more. In addition tobroadening the program to another round of clients, we have additionally cut inhalf the cycle time that it took us to help clients, from 18 months in some cases toeight months. In our continued efforts in getting the City of Detroit to invest more and betterquality services in our neighborhoods, we opted to give our neighborhoodorganizations the opportunity to make selections from our infrastructure guideinstead of VCDC staff picking for them. So far, North, East and West VillageAssociations have all made the same selections: blight reductions and waterinfrastructure upgrades. Jos. Berry Subdivision selected water infrastructureupgrades and tree services. The implementation of these projects has beenongoing throughout the course of this year, and by harnessing the power ofresident advocacy, we are optimistic that we can partner with the City to improvethe physical condition of our neighborhoods. We were lucky enough to be able to bring on Alexis Mann as our Program Manager. Alexis, asmall business owner and resident on the East Side, met Mac when she was starting up herown block club. She had operationalized a lot of the teachings that we have pioneered,getting new sidewalks, speed humps, tree services and demolitions on her block. Alexis hasenabled the organization to expand our engagement with our neighborhood partners. Inaddition to cutting in half the cycle time it takes us to assist our housing clients, she hasbeen able to liaise more with our neighborhood organizations.We have built our presence in the community in a number of ways. In addition to ourbiweekly newsletter, our social media channels,and our strategy briefing sessions we haveevery three months, we have also taken on canvassing of our most vulnerable residents inconjunction with Neighbor to Neighbor, a Rocket Community Fund venture geared towardspreventing property tax foreclosure. This program has been successful, and Alexis and herteam of canvassers have knocked on 650 doors.