racism-free

This morning I attended the Summit on Racism event at DeVos Place. They unveiled their new logo and message to begin creating a movement for a racism-free community. It was a really an inspiring event, but unfortunately ended with the news that Gene Proctor passed away last night. Gene was one of the "godfathers" of the christian community development movement in Grand Rapids, and until very recently, was still involved in almost any initiative of substance in the city that focused on poverty or reconciliation. Aside from being an astounding community loss, it also is a personal loss for me.

One of the first jobs I had out of college was as the Executive Director of a small nonprofit called Urban Produce. Gene was one of the founders of this organization as of Camp Tall Turf, where I now serve as board chair. He sat on my board for several years, and most of the initiatives I'm involved in now have Gene's name in their history some where.

Although our conversations were few, and he was backing out of responsibilities for much of the time I knew him, his influence on me was profound. He was one of those people that could shape the tone of a meeting by just sitting there, smiling. He brought levity and insight to the group, and I think his love for acting and theater translated into how he spoke with people. Everyone I know always felt welcomed and encouraged by knowing Gene. Regardless of who you were talking to, when you mentioned Gene's name, they listened harder or became more energized. For me, he was also the first black man I knew that was in a position of power and influence. That's a product of my sheltered upbringing, not a statement about the quality of leadership in our community. The beauty of watching Gene work was that he could go out to a rich, white guy's office, put them on the spot, get them to donate a wad of money, and they would thank him for it on the way out the door. It was an art!

Gene was a role model for so many people, regardless of their upbringing, race or culture. People found common ground in Gene, and he bridged so many cultures and allowed people to connect with each other in meaningful ways. He was the best of what Grand Rapids has to offer, and he will be missed.

mapping

I spent some time doing a quick mapping project for an area of my neighborhood that has consistently experienced high crime and poor housing conditions. It is only about a 4 block area but is responsible for about 20% of neighborhood crime. Some of this is due to a party store that sits dead center in the area and serves as a gathering point for people. You can see from the map that this is the epicenter of much of the crime.


So I took several data sets to create the map. It's exciting to me to start to see some local area maps with data at this level in a community. For several years I've been in groups talking about neighborhood data and indicators, but the problem always comes down to missing data or that we have data but it isn't meaningful to a group. I think through these series of maps, I've created a picture of a small community that is meaningful and could encourage some dialogue, action and accountability.

I know the image below isn't the best resolution, but I do that for your own safety. If you saw this map in all its glory, your head would explode trying to process the complex layers, graduated colors and symbols, and perfectly symmetrical north arrow. The basic gist is that your looking at a 4 block area with individual parcels or homes, the green to red scale is number of housing code violations (red bad) the smaller to bigger circles are number of crime offenses (big red or green circle is bad) and the purple crosshatched squares on the map are absentee landlords (purple may be bad depending on the landlord).

So the data I'm pulling together comes from three sources (it's about who you know, not what you know): the City Assessor's Office (taxpayer info March 2007) Neighborhood Improvement (housing code violations, 2006) and Grand Rapids Police Dept. (crime offenses April 06-Feb. 07). By using GIS to layer the data you can start to see trends of high crime areas with absentee landlords that aren't maintaining their properties. It makes sense to me that this would be the first tier. Communicate with the absentee landlords that have more than 1 code violation and more than 1 crime offense at their address in 2006. A second tier would look at homeowners that have the same and then third would be to go after more isolated cases. I'm meeting with the neighborhood association later this week to discuss some of this and see if there might be a plan of action.

Anyway, I wanted to share the idea here because I'm pretty excited about having this type of information at such a focused scale.

coming off a big weekend

The weekend started up with a trip with the boys to see "300". We had a couple beers with the guys and then stood in line for about 1/2 hour at the IMAX. We ended up a little close to the giant screen, but for a movie like this it really didn't matter. The critics are saying it is "like watching a big video game", which was fine by me. Morgan was in rare form, trying to start up blood chants at inappropriate times. SPARTA!

Saturday was mostly a day at home and then monster poker in the evening. Boelkins celebrated a birthday in style by hosting a 10 person game. I ended up placing 5th and Nora was tied for 2nd. Not a bad outing. Morgans must have partied too hard on Friday night because they crashed out 9th and 10th. The big man Phil won it all and heads into March Madness full of confidence. Brackets are out and due on Thursday. I think I will have Levi do my picks this year - he knows the teams about as well as I do at this point. I hear the middle seeds are all pretty even so Levi has as good a shot as any.

Finally, Sunday rolled around and we spent a couple hours in the afternoon looking at color options for the cohousing unit. We are finishing up our interior upgrades and option picks this week and then choosing more specific colors and materials in a couple weeks. I think we are going really "green" for most of it. Some of the features: ivory bamboo flooring which is a renewable grass, high efficiency Energy Star appliances throughout, Marmolium floor in the bathroom which uses natural oils instead of petroleum products, recycled carpet on the second floor and wood & fiberglass framed windows. They blew in the foam insulation and are finishing up the drywall in the first unit. We had a guy come out to test the efficiency of the unit, and we got a 99.5 out of 100. He said that our units heating bills will be 1/2 to 1/3 less than those of a Federal Energy Star Rated home. 1/2 = Awesome

first steps: 10.5 months