Rise Announces 2016 Collaborative Grant Recipients

/in /by

Rise Community Development announces the recipients of its 2016 Regional Neighborhood Support Collaborative Grants.  The Collaborative Grant Program focuses on providing financial resources coupled with technical assistance to build the capacity and sustainability of non-profit community-based development organizations in the St. Louis metropolitan area. Participation in the program is by invitation only.  Since 1998, the program has made over $2.9 million in operating support grants to 21 local organizations.  In turn, these organizations have successfully developed over 1,400 homes and apartments, representing $278 million of new capital investments in St. Louis area neighborhoods.

The seven grant recipients are:

  1. DeSales Community Housing Corporation for continuation of its South Jefferson Collaborative community health initiative
  2. Northside Community Housing, Inc. for continuation of its community garden program
  3. LinkSTL and Grace Hill for a collaborative resident needs assessment, service referral and financial counseling program in the Old North St. Louis, Hyde Park and College Hill neighborhoods
  4. Lemay Housing Partnership to increase the capacity for its community newspaper
  5. Tower Grove Neighborhoods Community Development Corp.to grow its landlord training, tenant screening, and nuisance property abatement program
  6. Dutchtown South Community Corporation for its Friends of Pocket Park community engagement and park planning program
  7. Park Central Development Corporation for the development of community-driven neighborhood assessments and action plans

The total amount in grants awarded by Rise is $72,860.

Rise Collaborative Grant award winners will  be recognized at the 4th Annual Community Builders Network Awards Reception on Thursday, March 31, 2016, at T-Rex, – 911 Washington Avenue St. Louis, MO 63101.  The doors will open at 5:30 and the program will begin at 5:45. To learn more about the event and to register, click here.

To view the press release PDF, click here.

Rise Seeks Paid Interns for Rising Stars Program

/in /by

Rise is seeking participants for its Rising Stars program.

Rising Stars is a program for exceptional university students or recent graduates interested in careers in community economic development in the St. Louis metropolitan area. Rise Community Development (Rise) provides education, supervision; professional developments plans and otherwise prepare the Rising Stars for placement in real-world environments. Ultimately, our goal is to develop an emerging group of community development practitioners, “Rising Stars,” who can be placed in positions at local community development non-profit organizations, bank community development corporations and/or public sector planning and community development offices. Each Rising Star selected for participation in this six-month career building program will receive a $5,000 stipend for the time they spend on program activities. The program schedule is to be announced but will be in sync with school semesters.

Eligibility:

  • Eligible applicants must be enrolled in a graduate school program at a local university in 2016, be a fourth-year or equivalent undergraduate student in 2016, or must be a 2015 graduate of a local university with an undergraduate or graduate degree.
  • We are particularly interested in applications from real estate, urban planning, architecture, law, business and/or social work program students.
  • Students must be willing to commit to 400 – 500 hours to program activities over the six month program time period.
  • Interested applicants must submit an applicant questionnaire by February 1, 2015, at 1 PM.

If your application is accepted you will be contacted by Rise for an interview.  All others will be notified by e-mail.

Please e-mail applications to Brian Hurd, Technical Assitance Project Manager, at [email protected] 

To download the Applicant Questionnaire, click here.

Rise Partners to Develop East Fox Homes

/in /by

Rise, working with Messiah Lutheran Church/Caring Ministries and several affiliated not-for-profits is undertaking the historic rehabilitation of twelve multi-family buildings in the Tower Grove East and Fox Park neighborhoods. The development involves the complete historic rehabilitation of forty-five apartments housed in twelve historic buildings located in the Tower Grove East, Fox Park, and DeSales historic districts. The properties are currently a hindrance to neighborhood stabilization and security. Several of the properties, if neglected much longer, would likely need to be demolished, creating a void in a neighborhood working toward growth. Rise and Messiah Lutheran Church want to take buildings that are currently a detriment to the surrounding neighborhood and turn them into a neighborhood asset.

The two and four-family buildings, and one nine-unit apartment building currently vacant and deteriorating, are all located in an area generally bounded by Arsenal Street on the south, Compton Avenue on the west, Jefferson Avenue on the east and Russell Avenue on the north.

Rise and its partners propose to provide safe, convenient and welcoming homes for families in the process of establishing new lives in the community and Fox Park and Tower Grove East are perfectly poised to make the proposed development a success.

Messiah Lutheran Church has enjoyed the recent emergence of an ethnically Nepalese population in its congregation that came to St. Louis  as refugees from Bhutan. In the process of “adopting” this new population the church’s congregants have become acutely aware of the needs of their new friends and neighbors. Often characterized by single households made up of extended families, these families are often under-housed, rent burdened and living in substandard housing.  Still assimilating, they have been frequent victims of street crime in the neighborhoods where they initially settled.  On many occasions, these families, most of whom have no automobiles or a single car for an extended family, have expressed a desire to live in a more stable neighborhood and closer to the church and the resources it provides.

In December of 2014, the Missouri Housing Development Commission (MHDC) awarded funding to the East Fox Homes development. In the intervening months between application and award of MHDC resources, Rise submitted an application for additional funding from the St. Louis Community Development Administration and was subsequently awarded $400,000 in Community Development Block Grant funds. The development team is working toward closing on all the financing sources and starting construction in the spring.

Eleanor Tutt Departs Rise

/in /by

Eleanor Tutt, our highly valued Data Management Coordinator, will be departing from Rise as of December 31, 2015. Eleanor started with Rise in February of 2007.

Eleanor has been responsible for analyzing Rise’s geospatial databases, collecting and publishing neighborhood indicator data (including housing, demographic, social, and economic data), and creating Geographic Information System (GIS) maps for Rise planning and development projects.  She provided capacity-building technical assistance services to neighborhood organizations, helping them access information, introducing them to data interpretation best practices, and assisting them in the development of their own maps and databases.

On any given day Eleanor could be working on anything from the Off the Charts! 2: Data and the Arts for Social Change with the Regional Arts Commission (RAC), to setting up an interactive online dashboard related to problem properties for Dutchtown South Community Corporation, to updating and working on the Neighborhood Data Gateway (a source for data on St. Louis assets and opportunities managed and maintained by Rise), to representing St. Louis on the Executive Committee of the National Neighborhood Indicators Partnership (NNIP). Whew!  That’s a lot for anyone on any day to be working on and that is just to name a few of Eleanor’s projects.

Recently, Eleanor has been working on an initiative of Living Cities, Code for America and the National Neighborhood Indicators Partnership, supported by the MacArthur Foundation, to harness civic data and technology to improve the lives of low-income residents.

Under this initiative, Rise, Open Data STL, and St. Louis County are collaborating to implement technology solutions that will bring transparency and an improved experience to the local courts system.  In the process, the partners will also work to strengthen collaboration at the local level between residents, civic technologists, neighborhood data practitioners, and government officials. One example of this “ecosystem building” work was the hands-on Civic Tech and Community Development workshop Eleanor facilitated this fall for Rise’s Community Development Corporation partners.

Knowing Eleanor, she will continue to focus her passion for data democratization, map making, and community development to serve the public and make a positive impact on our neighborhoods.  We will miss her and all the value and passion she has brought to Rise, and we look forward to seeing what she does next. Good Luck, Eleanor!

Rise held a going away party for Eleanor (which also served as a welcome party for our new Data Management Coordinator, John Cruz) on December 16, 2015. Please take a look: