Comments for Making Connections: MACDC's Blog

Comment on What’s a CDC? New Legislation Provides an Answer. by Bob Van Meter

Bob Van Meter — Wed, 25 Aug 2010 21:28:21 +0000

Congratulations to MACDC and to Governor Patrick and the legislature for getting this done. This is an important accomplishment for MACDC and I hope it can encourage more support for community development corporations as important community problem solving organizaitons, neighborhood level mediating organizations. It will be important to have some clear benefits attached to being certified by the state. I hope those benefits encompass and acknowledge and support the broad range of community development efforts that community development corporations undertake from providing foreclosure counselling to small business assistance to educating tenants and property owners about bed bugs to developing affordable housing and commercial revitalization efforts.

Comment on CDC Fiscal Health – where are we, where are we going? by Joseph Kriesberg

Joseph Kriesberg — Wed, 28 Apr 2010 17:31:45 +0000

Ed,

Thanks for your posting. MACDC certainly supports and encourages such partnerships.

Joe

Comment on CDC Fiscal Health – where are we, where are we going? by Ed Dann

Ed Dann — Tue, 27 Apr 2010 21:04:06 +0000

Phil,
From the private development and construction side of things we are seeing many non-profits and CDC’s struggling to get adequate funding for their projects. We have had the opportunity to partner with a number of CDC’s over the years and would welcome the opportunity to be one of those private partners you refer to if the project is deemed sustainable financially. We have the resources to make a difference in communities throughout the commonwealth and we are looking forward to working with organizations such as yours to increase the supply of affordable housing.
Ed Dann – Dellbrook/EAFish

Comment on CDC Fiscal Health – where are we, where are we going? by Phil Giffee

Phil Giffee — Tue, 02 Mar 2010 13:45:43 +0000

Joe,
Ironically, the need and support for affordable housing throughout the Commonwealth is indicated by the increasingly pressure-packed number of One Stop applications at a 4:1 ratio. In addition to altering or tinkering with the overhead/fee issue, which would definitely help individual non-profits, it seems clear to me the system needs to:
* grow the equity pie. Simplify the state credit, increase bonding sources by $10-20M+. Liquidity/guarantees – yes. Increase Fed credits? Continue Exchange.
* increase predevelopment financing sources, which would relieve lengthy and debilitating cash flow pressures. Some may have to partner with private partners or even CEDAC on this one, but it could be done.
Yes, I know these would be difficult, but carving up a small and shrinking pie is becoming a system-wide threat to the production of housing in our cities and towns.
- Phil/NOAH

Comment on CDC Fiscal Health – where are we, where are we going? by Matt

Matt — Mon, 01 Mar 2010 22:03:50 +0000

This is very useful information as we all plan for the future.
I am interested in hearing from any CDC’s currently going through a strategic planning process. Are you using this this information during the planning process?

Comment on Welcome to my new blog! by Joe Kriesberg

Joe Kriesberg — Wed, 03 Feb 2010 14:01:53 +0000

Thanks Suzanne and Andrew for your comments.

Like anything else, tension, conflict, and chaos need to be balanced with collaboration, cooperation and systems so I appreciate the questions and sentiments that both of your raise. My sense is that sometimes those of us in the community development and affordable housing fields sometimes fall into “group think” where we fail to challenge ourselves and each other. So yes everything need not devolve into “disagreement and failure” but in any healthy system there must be some of both or else we are not pushing ourselves. And affordable housing development must certainly be about “fairness and inclusion and balancing development with environmental preservation,” but we can’t wait for total community consensus before we take action or we might never get anywhere and old models of financing need to be reexamined in light of new realities.

Comment on Welcome to my new blog! by Andrew Baker

Andrew Baker — Fri, 22 Jan 2010 17:39:37 +0000

Keep blogging, Joe! The model of flatter structures and more controlled chaos as a recipe for innovation and a ‘learning culture’ is one that Thomas Friedman writes about a lot too, and holds up the Toyota ‘kaizen’ model as an example — taking complex problems finding many small solutions rather than one big complex answer. They seem to have done well with that, though the recent big Toyota recall might either cause some to wonder, or say they merely have a lot more ‘learning from failure’ to do. There’s a parallel discussion going on in education — whether to group by skill or have integrated classrooms taught by teachers skilled at differentiated instruction. My wife is an 8th grade English teacher and knows a lot about “controlled chaos”!

One question this discussion raises for me in the CDC context is — do the solutions that work for innovation (i.e. small business developemnt) also work for housing development? Capitalism needs freedom and even ‘creative destruction’, some argue. But affordable housing development is more about fairness and inclusion, and balancing development with environmental preservation.

Comment on Welcome to my new blog! by Suzanne Buglione, CommunityBuild

Suzanne Buglione, CommunityBuild — Fri, 22 Jan 2010 01:08:59 +0000

I agree, Joe, disruption and confusion are the experiences of many non-profits that I work with. This phenomena we are experiencing propels us into rapid and ongoing change. It requires us to develop a high tolerance of ambiguity, that can result in action that is grounded in reassessment, reorganization and re-invention. David Wilkinson’s book, The Ambiguity Advantage, describes for types of leadership: Technical (where leaders deal with ambiguity with denital, fueling their own uncertainty), Coopertaive (where leaders build teams to mitigate the ambiguity), Collaborative (where leaders practice a consensual examination approach focusing on team values and agreement), and Generative (where leaders use ambiguity to find opportunity, learning and innovation). If you want to know how well you tolerate ambiguity, complete this scale: http://docs.google.com/Doc?docid=0ATUB-kzeESsHZGM3djZnbV80OWM4YmQ4cWRu&hl=en

Our reality does not have to result in disagreement and failure – here I disagree with you a little, Joe. We shouldn’t be comfortable with these things. They are a call to a different kind of leadership. For many organizations it means taking a collective ‘time out’ to examine the current forces at play and how perceived threats or failure can be re-framed as opportunities. Identifying strengths and moving to build on them will reposition our organizations to be more sustainable. Not long ago, we did this as a practice every bunch of years as part of strategic planning but perhaps now we need to retreat and engage in this reflection more frequently.

Comment on Welcome to my new blog! by Allison Staton

Allison Staton — Thu, 21 Jan 2010 20:01:34 +0000

This is an exciting new part of MACDC and definitely requires the “chutzpah” you mention. Hopefully this blog will give us some of that mayhem we need.