Case Study 31.2 — Building Places and Power

A composite, illustrative case on place-based sustainability and the places-and-power dual goal. The Northside Coalition is a composite; the dynamics are real. Verify specifics with your funders.

Why this case: the hard sustainability question

Case Study 31.1 showed with versus about. This case takes up the chapter's hardest practical question — sustainability where there's no tax base — and the deeper theme it points to: building both places and power. The Northside Community Coalition has won its first revitalization funding (Case Study 31.1). Now it faces the question every community-development effort faces: what happens after the grant? — and in a disinvested neighborhood, the usual answers don't apply.

The sustainability trap

A funder asks the Northside Coalition the standard sustainability question: how will the work continue after the grant? The naïve answer — "we'll become financially self-sufficient" — is, for Northside, unrealistic and almost contradictory (Section 31.5). Northside is disinvested; its weak local economy is the problem being addressed. There's no strong tax base, limited local wealth, and few earned-revenue opportunities — if the community had the resources to sustain the work itself, it might not need the development. Promising self-sufficiency would be dishonest, and a savvy funder would see through it.

The realistic, honest sustainability case

So the coalition reconceives sustainability (Section 31.5), making an honest case built on what's actually achievable:

  • Building capacity and power. The most durable outcome isn't financial self-sufficiency but the community's strengthened capacity and power: developed resident leaders, strengthened community organizations (RYCC, Lighthouse, the resident association), and organized residents who will continue advocating for and shaping Northside's future. This capacity persists and keeps working for the community after any single grant.
  • Leveraging ongoing public sources. Place-based public funding (CDBG and others) is often ongoing, so part of the sustainability plan is the community's strengthened capacity to continue securing public resources — the organized, capable community is better positioned to keep accessing the funding streams that exist.
  • Building lasting assets. The coalition builds assets that generate ongoing value and stay in the community — perhaps a community land trust that holds property permanently affordable (resisting the displacement residents feared), or a community-owned space that earns some revenue.
  • Honest acknowledgment. The coalition is candid that addressing deep, structural disinvestment requires sustained investment, not a quick exit to self-sufficiency — and frames the work as building the community's capacity to make the most of that sustained support, rather than promising an unrealistic end to needing it.

This honest, capacity-focused sustainability case is more credible to a sophisticated funder than an unrealistic self-sufficiency promise.

Places and power, together

Underlying this is the chapter's deepest theme (Section 31.6): Northside's work builds both places and power. The tangible outcomes are real and countable — affordable housing units preserved, local jobs created, a community space built. But these are achieved through a process that builds the community's lasting power: the residents who led the housing effort are now organized to lead the next one; the coalition built to create jobs is now a durable community institution; Northside has more capacity to shape its own future than before.

The coalition's proposal captures both: the places outcomes the funder can count (housing, jobs, the community space) and the power outcomes that make the work last (leaders developed, organizations strengthened, residents organized). And it shows they reinforce each other — the power built in creating the places is what will sustain and extend them. This is the resolution of the tension community-development organizations feel between funders' demand for countable outcomes and the harder-to-measure work of building community power: show how they connect, present both, and demonstrate that the tangible work builds the lasting capacity.

What this case teaches

  1. Self-sufficiency is the wrong sustainability frame where there's no tax base. The community's economic weakness is the problem; building capacity and power is the realistic, honest answer.
  2. Honest sustainability beats unrealistic promises. A capacity-focused, candid case (including acknowledging needed sustained investment) is more credible than a false self-sufficiency claim.
  3. Build places AND power. Tangible, countable outcomes and the community's lasting capacity to shape its future — and show they reinforce each other.
  4. The process is part of the outcome. Authoring and leading the work (the "with" of Case Study 31.1) is itself how the community's power gets built.

🔄 Retrieve: Without rereading, explain (a) why financial self-sufficiency is an unrealistic sustainability frame for Northside, and (b) what "building places and power" means and why the two connect. (Answers above.)