Street Crime: UPTOWN'S SURPRISE FORMULA FOR SAFE STREETS
Chicago, I.L.

Uptown is one of America's most ethnically diverse communities on the north side of Chicago, where the local elementary school has children of 36 different nationalities speaking 24 different languages. In a tough city, Uptown is a tough-looking area where poverty lives down the block from affluence. Normally, such wide ethnic and economic disparities are a formula for high crime rates. But Uptown has a surprisingly low crime rate, roughly half the average in Chicago. Uptown's secret, according to a decades-long study of 343 Chicago neighborhoods, is a strong close-knit community developed from a dense network of social organizations and a tradition of grassroots activism across ethnic lines.

The People's Music School is a microcosm of Uptown's ethnically diverse population and a model of how different ethnic groups can get along. The People's Music School was founded 25 years ago with a simple mission: to provide free music lessons to anyone who wants to learn, regardless of their ability to pay. The school's policy of openness to all comers brings together more than 300 students of various ages, ethnic backgrounds, economic levels, and musical experience to focus on one common passion: music. Its founder and director, Rita Simó, is a master of weaving together the different strands of Uptown's social community in choirs, performing ensembles and music classes.

Rita Simó is founder and director of The People's Music School. A piano prodigy, Simó was born and raised in the Dominican Republic, came to the U.S. on a scholarship to the Julliard School in New York City and completed her doctorate in Music Arts at Boston University. A year later, she fulfilled her dream and founded The People's Music School. "I had this idea about having a free school so that people that want to learn but don't have any money could do it," she says. "Most of my friends said you're crazy, you don't do that. But here in Uptown there were enough crazies that they all thought that this was a good idea. And so Uptown was the perfect place because we have blacks and Latinos and whites and Orientals and we're all in the same boat." — Simo has received numerous awards for community service.

Sara Jane Knoy, director of the Organization for the Northeast, is a "life-long organizer." Knoy was formerly a regional director of Greenpeace in the Great Lakes area and worked for a union prior to being recruited to head ONE three years ago. About Uptown Knoy observes, "This community is unique because it's stayed diverse for 30 years, economically, racially, culturally, ethnically. And the Organization of the NorthEast has been around for 25 years. Our mission has always been to bring people together to build and maintain a successful community."

Lakefront SRO is a non-profit organization committed to maintaining and developing low cost single-room-occupancy (SRO) housing for the formerly homeless. Since 1989, Lakefront has refurbished 615 apartments in six Uptown buildings and recently opened its first unit on Chicago's South Side. The buildings are integrated into the community and sit side-by-side with co-ops, private homes, middle-class apartments. Lakefront also provides on-site social services for its residents to help with problems such as unemployment, substance abuse and mental illness. In 1998, the retention rate for Lakefront buildings was over 80%.

Jean Butzen, President of Lakefront SRO since 1986, sees crime reduction as a direct result of working with the homeless and drug addicts "because once a person doesn't need that substance any more, then their need to steal and to create crime in a community completely goes away." Butzen grew up in Chicago, received her B.A. in Political Science from Antioch College in Ohio, and previously served as Lead Organizer for the Logan Square Neighborhood Association. At Lakefront SRO, she has supervised the development of almost 700 housing units, overseen fundraising for a $4.5 million budget and managed a staff of over 130.

Ronald Bennett spent ten years "living in hell" as a homeless drug addict in Chicago, surviving in soup kitchens and men's shelters and getting cash for drugs however he could. Through the grapevine, Bennett eventually heard that Uptown was a place where the homeless could find help to him off drugs and off the street. Bennett signed up with Lakefront SRO, and five years after moving into one of Lakefront's affordable, subsidized apartments, he has kicked his drug habit, completed college, and paid his debts. He currently works three jobs, including one as a full-time technical troubleshooter for Lucent Technologies.

Project on Human Development in Chicago Neighborhoods is a long-term study of the causes of violence in 343 Chicago neighborhoods. The project, which involves scientists and social scientists from various disciplines and institutions across the country, is one of the most comprehensive efforts to study the origins and the natural history of social competence and antisocial behavior ever launched. The study, as one scholar put it, found that "socially cohesive neighborhoods are able to reduce crime and reduce violence in ways that go way beyond the class and race composition of those neighborhoods." The project's primary sponsors are the John D. and Catherine T. MacArthur Foundation, the National Institute of Justice, and the National Institute of Mental Health

Dr. Felton Earls, Director of the Project on Human Development in Chicago Neighborhoods, is Professor of Human Behavior and Development at the Harvard School of Public Health. Along with the project's Scientific Directors Robert Sampson, PhD, Professor of Sociology at the University of Chicago and Stephen Raudenbush, EdD, Professor of Education at Michigan State University, Dr. Earls co-authored a 1997 study published in Science. That article first presented the findings that social cohesion was perhaps the most important determinant for reducing crime in the urban neighborhoods of Chicago. "Our study," says Earls, "looks at positive features of urban environments, especially in relationship to kids, and has forced us to look at communities through a more positive point of view. What we're seeing in places like Uptown and other places is, is a remarkable renaissance of urban life in America."

Street Crime: TAKING BACK BLUE HILLS
Kansas City

Blue Hills, a middle class residential area near the heart of Kansas City, Missouri, was devastated by drug dealers and gunfire in the early 1990s. Residents were intimidated. Some fled and property values plummeted. The sense of community disintegrated. But galvanized by the dumping of a murder victim on the steps of a parochial school, the long-time residents in Blue Hills began breaking out of their isolation and organized to take Blue Hills back from criminal elements, literally block by block. As the residents reknitted the fabric of community, they also worked closely with the special community police units and the community prosecutors financed in Kansas City by a special COMBAT tax, voted by Jackson County citizens to fund multi-faceted campaigns against drug dealing and street crime.

The Blue Hills Neighborhood Association, largely defunct and inactive in the early 1990s, was one of several key groups that brought Blue Hills residents together and enabled them to organize to begin driving drug dealers and stray crime out of their community. Two of the early sparkplugs in reviving the Blue Hills Neighborhood Association were former President Robert Anderson and his wife, Lillian Anderson. Working with community police and in tandem with other groups, the Neighborhood Association was instrumental in shutting down the Chateau Lounge, a local nightspot, and forcing codes inspections of houses used by drug dealers. One of its most active sub-groups is the 100 Men of Blue Hills, a group that not only speaks out against drug dealers but escorts children to school in the mornings and mounts security patrols at night.

Sister Helen Flemington, pastoral administrator of the St. Therese Church in the Blue Hills area of Kansas City, and the Church Community Organization have drawn in church members, police, prosecutors, and residents from Blue Hills and other areas of Kansas City, to tackle tough neighborhood problems. Sister Helen and her church served as matchmaker in the community's effort to combat drug dens and blight. With crime on the decline by 25%, her group is free to address other important local quality of life issues.

The Kansas City Neighborhood Alliance stepped into the Blue Hills area with its Project Neighborhood Initiative with the objective of transforming abandoned properties and upgrading the general housing stock and the property values in the community. Using private money, mostly from foundations, KCNA has rescued scores of dilapidated houses from the wrecking ball. KCNA hired local contractors to rehabilitate those homes so they could be sold at affordable prices, often to first-time homeowners.

Larry Washington, a former Blue Hills resident who reported that drug dealers tried to intimidate him by threatening to kill his dog, currently leads KCNA's Project Neighborhood Initiative. That program buys up houses taken over from drug dealers or simply abandoned in the Blue Hills area and rehabilitates them for resale. Washington reports a general upgrade of the housing in Blue Hills, many first-time buyers, and rising property values. To help new homeowners develop the skills to maintain their property, KCNA offers classes and organizes clean up days for residents to help each other improve their properties.