Creating a growing international network and voice for low-income community-based women's groups providing support, technical services and role models in building living environments
by Rochelle Wyner
When their landlord knocked on the door and told them they had one month to vacate the premises, the National Congress of Neighborhood Women bought their own brick building nearby for $32,000. The mortgage payments were less than their monthly rent had been. Thus, early on, they had learned a lesson about the importance of controlling their own space.
National Congress of Neighborhood Women (NCNW) opened its first office 13 years ago in a storefront in the Greenpoint/Williamsburg section of Brooklyn. Their mission was to revitalize their neighbourhood, a mixed residential and industrial area of New York City. They also sought to improve their lives and expand opportunities for themselves and their neighbours in education and job training. They wanted recognition for the strengths and accomplishments of grassroots women. The women's movement was too middle-class for them; the neighbourhood movement too male dominated. They would start their own movement - a national group, grounded in a local community.
Jan Peterson, the original organizer of NCNW, and now its Executive Director, recalls: "We can say the same about who we are now and who we were then: women who are on block associations, ladies auxiliaries, FT As, political clubs, church and civic organizations - women at the local level, who were holding poor neighbourhoods together."
These women who first joined together to help their immediate community have become one link in what is now a growing international network and voice for low-income community based women's groups providing support, technical assistance and role models. They represent the old and the young, urban and rural populations. Black, Hispanic, Chicana, Native American.
most movements for better housing were started by women. Yet when funding came in... women were excluded from the planning design and implementation...
NCNW's first hands-on experience with housing for women resulted from battered women coming into the office who needed a safe place to escape to with their children. NCNW located a small maternity hospital in Sunset Park, Brooklyn, and, working with the Mayor's Task Force on Rape and the Brooklyn YWCA, arranged for its purchase for $5,000. Women*s Survival Space was NCNW's first partnership project with grassroots women actively involved, and it was the first women's shelter in New York City! Although NCNW no longer runs it, the shelter is still in operation.
In 1978, with a grant from the US Department of Housing and Urban Development (HUD), NCNW surveyed a representative sampling of 30 neighbourhood organizations to analyze the role of women within these groups. They found that most movements for better housing were started by women. Yet when funding came in from either public or private sources, women were excluded from the planning, design and implementation of the programs.
The next year NCNW brought together representatives of 40 urban and rural neighbourhood groups from across the US for a conference entitled "Neighborhood Women Putting It Together." Women spoke about their neighbourhood and leadership needs; housing, its design and operation, was a major topic. The conference participants called for changes - larger kitchens. more closets and storage space, laundry rooms, daycare facilities and on-site social service and recreational programs. They also called for buildings designed with more public spaces for community use. And they urged that women, the majority of tenants in public housing, be included in the planning of public housing, recommending that HUD train women to take active part in these areas.
During this and subsequ-'-nt conferences, many successful and innovative housing models planned and created by and for low- income women were identified including Cochran Gardens Tenant Management in St. Louis; Operation Life in Las Vegas; Woodland Community Land Trust , Clairfield, Tennessee; Syracuse Neighborhood Women, Syracuse, New York; Center for the Pacific- Asian Family, Inc., Los Angeles; the Southern Mutual Self-Help, Jeanerette, Louisiana.
Bertha Gilkey, a single mother, pioneered Cochran Gardens in St. Louis as first model for tenant management of public housing. Gilkey demonstrated that even deteriorating buildings could be turned around and well managed by residents trained to enforce high standards developed by the tenants themselves.
All the buildings at Cochran were renovated; design changes were made to reduce management problems; townhouses, playgrounds and a community centre were built. Also central to Cochran's success was the development of business which created jobs and income for the tenant-management corporation while providing needed services such as a tenant-owned and managed health clinic, catering company and building maintenance operation.
Even deteriorating buildings could be turned around and well managed by residents trained to enforce high standards developed by the tenants themselves
About the same time, at its home base in Brooklyn, the NCNW Task Force on Housing proposed that several small buildings in the abandoned Greenpoint Hospital complex be used to house groups at high risk of becoming homeless. The feminist architectural firm of Adam/Marks designed intergenerational housing plans which would serve single female parents and women over 50. The project is still in the development process.
As Chair of the NCNW National Steering Committee, Bertha Gilkey held a training session on public housing in 1984 at Cochran Gardens for 50 grassroots leaders. This training model has since been used successfully with tenants in several cities. Rosemary Jackson, president of the NCNW board of directors, enlisted the support of New Jersey officials last year to begin tenant management training in several ailing public housing projects.
Source: Women and Environments Fall 1987