Harlem Children’s Zone: The Choice Neighborhoods Model
By Caitlin Jones
3 min read
Tax Credit Advisor, September 2009: Out on the campaign trail early in 2007, before receiving the Democratic presidential nomination, Barack Obama held out a program in upper Manhattan, the Harlem Children’s Zone (HCZ), as a model for improving struggling neighborhoods in America’s cities. As a one-time community organizer on Chicago’s South Side, the Harlem program was an eye-opener for the candidate, a brand new, comprehensive initiative that didn’t so much try to tackle a problem as tackle a neighborhood.
The Harlem Children’s Zone is a holistic program of education, social science, and community building. It provides residents within a 100-block area of North Harlem with what 57-year-old President and CEO Geoffrey Canada calls a “conveyor belt” of programs that serve infants through adults. These include a baby program, a pre-school program, a charter school program called the Promise Academy, an asthma initiative, and an after-school program called Beacon community centers.
The program’s original goal was to do “whatever it takes” to help a child. Canada’s philosophy is to start working with children as early as possible, and surround them from infancy with a critical mass of college-oriented peers and supportive adults who know what it takes to succeed as a counterweight to “the street” that glorifies misogyny and anti-social behavior.
The program began originally in the 1970s, after a decade of riots and in a neighborhood satiated with drugs, as Rheedlen, the city’s first truancy prevention program. The original idea was to keep students occupied after school and interacting with people who have experienced success.
But when Geoffrey Canada jumped on board as administrator, he had a much bigger vision that included education, health care, and building pride throughout the community. In 1997, the program’s name was changed to the Harlem Children’s Zone, and its size gradually grew from one block to 24, then to 60, to 100 today. The program has an annual operating budget of more than $60 million à the largest portion is contributed by New York-headquartered businesses.
The recent problems among Wall Street companies and the resulting consolidation of firms threatens the financial well-being of the HCZ operation.
On the other hand, President Obama, along with Shaun Donovan, Secretary of the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development and former New York City housing commissioner, has begun to focus on making such a program a national neighborhood priority. The intent is to expand the current HUD HOPE VI public housing revitalization program to adopt the HCZ approach to community development, and utilize the $250 million federal Fiscal Year 2010 appropriation proposed for the HOPE VI program for an expanded federal program renamed as the Choice Neighborhoods Initiative.
