Living Cities to Invest $80 for Poor in 5 Cities - Including Cleveland

By Haya El Nasser, USA TODAY

Imagine investing in cities but only if public, private and philanthropic groups work together on long-term strategies to help low-income residents.

Living Cities, a philanthropic collaborative of 22 of the world's largest foundations and financial institutions, will do that Thursday when it announces $80 million in grants, loans and investments.

Nineteen urban centers competed for the money, but five won for programs that challenge conventional wisdom: Baltimore, Cleveland, Detroit, Newark and Minneapolis-St. Paul.

"The underlying principle of our initiative is that to do this work, you have to have the public sector, the private sector, local philanthropies and the non-profit community all at the same table talking about solving the problem," says Ben Hecht, CEO of Living Cities. "None of those, on their own, will make a long-term change."

It's a bold initiative that requires disparate groups to work under one umbrella on many missions. Until now, grants focused on one goal, such as affordable housing or jobs or transportation.

Leaders of the effort hope that the funding — about $16 million per city — will generate more funding to keep the programs alive long after the grant money dries up.

"It's not about funding projects but about funding systems," Hecht says. "We hope it's going to be a model for other cities."

The winning cities' projects, to be unveiled at the Museum of African American History in Detroit:

•Baltimore. Coordinate a series of unrelated projects to create jobs and affordable housing and use the construction of a subway line to galvanize the efforts.

•Cleveland. Create a biotech corridor between the city and Youngstown, Ohio, by building laboratory space and continue the work of the Cleveland Foundation, which has been creating work cooperatives that give workers a piece of the business.

Hospitals and schools buy lettuce for patients and students and "they found out they buy lettuce that goes 2,500 miles to get to Cleveland," Hecht says. "If you grow this lettuce locally, they said we'll buy it locally."

•Detroit. The shrinking city has twice as much land as it uses. The aim is to concentrate population to revitalize neighborhoods. The focus is on the Woodward Corridor, home of Wayne State University, Detroit Medical Center and the Detroit Institute of Arts.

"How do you use those assets to connect to neighborhoods where there have been so few opportunities?" says Rip Rapson, president of the Kresge Foundation near Detroit and a Living Cities board member.

The goal is to link institutions and local workers and suppliers and attract people to live along the corridor.

•Newark. The New Jersey city that has battled corruption and crime wants to change its image to that of a healthy and safe place to live.

The Center for Collaborative Change, created two years ago, is working with corporations and medical centers to create housing and increase access to fresh foods in supermarkets and neighborhood corner stores.

•Twin Cities. Civic leaders in Minneapolis and St. Paul want to build a new economy along a transit line that will connect the two by 2014.

They're pushing for transit stops in poor areas it will run through to create jobs "so that they benefit from the line rather than having a transit line cutting through their neighborhoods," says John Couchman, vice president of grants and programs at the Saint Paul Foundation.