As 2024 comes to a close, so does a yearlong season of reflection, recommitment and reimagining after the first decade of the National Initiative on Mixed Income Communities (NIMC). As the NIMC team has spent the past year deeply engaged in reflecting on the growth and lessons of its first ten years, there are few names that have come up more frequently than Taryn Gress – NIMC’s co-founder and longtime strategic director.
Gress is now the Director of Impact at Cleveland’s Neighborhood Connections program, planning and evaluating key initiatives with grassroots leaders, and she recently took the time to reconnect with her fellow co-founder Mark Joseph to offer a first-hand account of the memories, challenges, and growth that took place during their time together since the program’s earliest days.
MJ: You were there at the very beginning of it all, what are your memories of the early days of designing and launching NIMC?
TG: At the beginning of NIMC, I remember you had a strong vision for what it could be and you could clearly see the need for a center that focused on intentional mixed-income redevelopments that would have networking, resource information, research, evaluation and communication capabilities. At the time, there was no robust research foundation for students, researchers, practitioners or funders to fully understand the scope and impact of mixed-income housing redevelopments on the people involved, the neighborhoods where they took place, the broader communities, or future policies in affordable housing.
We sought out and received a lot of good advice from researchers, funders and practitioners in the field like Paul Brophy who could also see the need for a central resource on research and information on mixed-income communities.
In the early days I was alone in an office at the Mandel School with no other staff or students. In our second year I moved to the Mandel Center to be with the Poverty Center and had more colleagues and students to interact with.
MJ: Can you share with our readers some of the key roles and projects that you worked on during your time with NIMC?
You often referred to me as the “glue keeping the pieces of NIMC together, or the ultimate team player.” I was a key connector for the team, the projects, and the knowledge about where we started and where we might go as a center. My initial role was to develop and launch our website, communications, mixed-income library, mixed-income database, advisory committee, and hire and supervise our first student researchers.
As our program expanded, thanks to seed funding from the Annie E. Casey Foundation, so did my research and consultation roles. This ranged from supporting collaboration with the Cuyahoga Metropolitan Housing Authority in Cleveland’s Central and Buckeye-Woodhill neighborhoods to working with the nonprofit affordable housing partner The Community Builders. I also supported evaluation and strategic planning with local nonprofits Neighborhood Leadership Development Program, Cleveland Neighborhood Progress, Slavic Village Development and University Settlement. And at a national level, I worked with the Annie E. Casey Foundation in East Baltimore, the Partnership for HOPE SF in San Francisco, the City of Cambridge, Massachusetts on an inclusionary housing study, and with the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development on a HOPE VI study, two Choice Neighborhoods Initiative evaluations and a Jobs-Plus evaluation. The reach of our work also included the development and implementation of community network building strategies with our colleagues at Trusted Space Partners, and additional partnerships to support scans of the field of mixed-income developments on the topics of social dynamics, resident services, and youth outcomes, including a scan and comparison of Canadian mixed-income developments with Housing Partnership Canada.
MJ: From your perspective, how would you describe NIMC's trajectory over the years - what do you see as the most interesting or important evolutions over that period?
TG: NIMC began by drawing the landscape of mixed-income developments so that we and others had a good place to start to research and understand practices in mixed-income developments. It became clear early on that although mixed-income transformations effectively redeveloped housing and improved neighborhood conditions, the people who lived there originally and those who continued to live in the communities that were redeveloped, did not fully benefit from the transformations. We often talked about our hope that the original residents in a community would be the biggest beneficiaries from its redevelopment and transformation.
Your original research with your collaborators in Chicago showed some of the early harms to original residents qualitatively and then when we looked at the HOPE VI data on relocation and moves made by residents away from the original properties it was clear many residents did not return. We began to question whether residents were really supposed to be the primary beneficiaries, or if mixed-income is primarily a market-driven strategy to reduce public and affordable housing and redevelop and gentrify neighborhoods. We knew from our own experiences and the experiences of others like Frankie Blackburn and Bill Traynor that the operating culture of mixed-income and mixed-race developments were not leading to the cultivation of aspirational places to live. They were still largely dominated by the fear and the racism that led to the isolation of public housing in the first place.
This led to a shift in our narrative – talking more about inclusive and equitable communities where everyone feels they belong and can thrive. These communities could exist within mixed-income developments or in neighborhoods with a mix of housing affordability. We began to have some clarity that inclusive and positive social dynamics need to be intentionally designed and nurtured. They will not happen on their own.
And in recent years, we’ve had more discussions around antiracism and examining our own racial biases and prejudices and how racism shows up in the work and with the teams we work with. Those discussions led to commitments to conduct our work differently to reduce harms and to be a consistent presence and representation of what it means to live out the values of inclusion, equity and belonging – a commitment that is now leading the work being imagined for the next decade of NIMC.
MJ: What are some of the most important lessons you learned from your time with NIMC? What have you carried with you into your current role?
TG: I learned so much while at NIMC, and I was there at such a formative time in my life and my career – it’s hard to narrow it down to just a few things!
At NIMC we cultivated a culture of learning. We read and discussed challenging topics together and openly questioned how our own identities, values and beliefs show up in our collective effort to create a more just and equitable world. I built the habit of consistently learning and seeking resources to understand that I continue today.
Two major policies, HOPE VI and the Choice Neighborhoods Initiative, have guided much of the mixed-income development in our country. Understanding how a policy is created, intended to function, and then how it actually functions on the ground has been invaluable. It's also been disappointing. I am now able to apply that knowledge to understanding the potential and real impact of other federal, state and local policies.
I learned the power of community network building in communities and in affordable housing. Frankie Blackburn often said in our strategy sessions that we cannot program our way out of poverty. That is a phrase I often think about as I continue implementing community network building strategies in Cleveland as an alternative to social or even public services meeting the needs and opportunities of residents.
MJ: Can you share a favorite memory or two from your time with NIMC?
TG: I have some lovely memories of the first visits you and I took to San Francisco – it was an incredible opportunity to see how a city-wide initiative was being implemented and to be exposed to a range of partners and communities.
At the time, you remarked on how young the leaders were. Are they still young? Or are those young people still the leaders and now "old" at the age of 45?
Just this week, as I was helping a student plan a site visit to Detroit for a group of community members, I was reflecting on our trip to NYC. Like many experiences at NIMC, it did not all go smoothly – for one building visit we ended up in Brooklyn instead of Manhattan! Planning and implementing this site visit helped me gain experience, and what I learned helped improve on my planning the next time.
A lot of the work I did at NIMC was completely new to me and it ranged from the tiny details to the strategic – I gained confidence to take on all kinds of work that I've never done before.
I also loved our cute little team of Biwen Liu, Emily Miller and me! It's been awesome to have so many others join the fun, but we were a great team.
MJ: Looking back and looking ahead, what are you most proud of when you see eleven years of the center that you helped launch?
I am really proud of all the people who have worked with NIMC – students, Case Western Reserve University staff, NIMC staff, partners, professors, clients, residents – and our collective impact. This conversation has helped me realize all that we’ve accomplished together and our positive impact on the world.
MJ: Looking at NIMC with a critical insider/outsider's eye, what feedback and encouragement would you give us about areas for improvement, ways we can be more effective?
The work NIMC does is so necessary and the people involved are truly committed and special, anything NIMC does will be impactful. The center should focus on the things that it does really well and that have the potential for the highest positive impact on the people involved in the work.
All this work we are trying to do is somewhat challenging in one way or another, but limiting the “nonsense challenges” will leave more energy for the good challenges. I know this is easier said than done. And I look forward to seeing how the work evolves, just the other day I learned about this set of equity tools from an organization called Network Weaver. Their interdependence frameworkhttps://www.equitablesystems.org/tools-and-frameworks/interdependence-framework/ is quite aligned with what I've heard you all saying about NIMC's next steps.