Funding Challenges Property managers cite two challenges to creating successful learning opportunities for tenants: funding and participation.
“Funding is usually what holds good programs back,” Lowrey says. “It’s not so much the amount of money a program can get, but how consistent it is. Not knowing from one quarter to the next if you’ll be able to sustain programs makes it hard to figure out how to serve your community.”
Partnerships and grant funding earmarked for economically disadvantaged communities are the key to keeping programming costs low.
“Participation from local community service organizations, area businesses, agencies, and the government has allowed our residents to obtain services free of charge through in-kind services, donations, referrals and volunteerism, says Jeff Huggett, project partner for Dominium.
Learning Links Centers expanded that approach, creating the Education Advantage Foundation, a nonprofit that provides educational opportunities to at-risk kids in low- to moderate-income neighborhoods in the Los Angeles area. “EAF secures computers, books, and all the infrastructure as well as paying for utilities,” Killinger explains. The foundation also provides scholarship assistance for residents.
If You Build It…. Good results can only be achieved if tenants participate in the programs.
“Many successful programs are based on the idea that if you can raise the educational level of the parents, you can raise it in the kids,” Lowrey says. But getting parents involved can be a challenge.
“Recognize that the people you are trying to help have probably had a lot of so-called ‘help’ in the past and that much of it probably hasn’t helped,” Lowrey continues. “You’ve got to be patient and give people time to get to know you and to see that you are sincere in bringing them a different—and better—experience.”
Learning Links’ Pino agrees. “We built trust by addressing the whole issue of family education, not just focusing on the kids.” That got a few families interested. “When the others start seeing them getting better—reading, using the computer—they come around.”
Dominium’s Park Haven serves at least one member of all 176 tenant families and also invites other members of the community to participate in programs. All told, the center serves 400 people.
“Ultimately, this is an investment in the property that helps it run more smoothly by improving the residents’ quality of life,” Huggett says. “The broader community benefits as well, because the property becomes a much better neighbor.”
–Margot Carmichael Lester is a free-lance writer in Carrboro, N.C.