South East Community Organization (SECO), Baltimore, MD
For several decades leading up to the 1950s, Southeast Baltimore was comprised of close-knit white ethnic neighborhoods whose residents maintained strong ties to their religious and cultural traditions. Local manufacturing industries offered numerous blue collar jobs and a measure of stability to its low-income residents. In the 1960s, however, dramatic social and economic changes threatened to weaken the fabric of Southeast Baltimore's working class communities. Plant closures, layoffs, and a general decline of the manufacturing sector was leading to great economic hardships among residents. Changes in the city's demographic composition began to incite fear among whites, who felt that incoming African Americans would cause further decline in their neighborhoods. While this fear was misguided, there was reason to be concerned that the city's political and business establishment focused too much attention on downtown redevelopment, and did little to stop the growing problems of housing abandonment and disinvestment in Southeast Baltimore.
A Community Galvanized
Galvanized by the desire to save their neighborhoods, Southeast Baltimore's residents began to organize around such issues as the need to improve schools, to fight absentee landlords and to change urban renewal policies that favored demolition over the rehabilitation of their homes. One of the final straws for the community was its discovery that the city was planning to construct a major interstate highway straight through several of its residential enclaves. Led by skilled neighborhood organizers such as Barbara Mikulski (who was eventually elected to Congress and now serves in the Senate), the community launched a major campaign that ultimately halted the project. Their ten year battle was won in part because they were able to convince the National Park Service to register the area as a historic district, and were therefore able to bring the Maryland State Roads Commission to court.
One of the outgrowths of this long-term process of neighborhood mobilization was the decision to create a permanent institution that would serve as a coordinating body for various neighborhood interests. In 1971, at a meeting of more than 1,000 residents and 70 civic and church-based organizations, the South East Community Organization (SECO) was born. Under the leadership of Joe McNeely, SECO's first executive director, the organization began to initiate numerous advocacy campaigns that attracted widespread media attention. By halting the closure of a chronic care ward in a city hospital, saving a local library and stopping the construction of a prison in the community, SECO proved that it was able to exercise impressive political muscle within the city's power structure.
A Democratic Decision-making Process
From its inception, SECO was run as a democratically-controlled organization that would enable community residents to participate in decisions that affected their lives. One of SECO's primary goals was to build the capacity of grassroots leaders to identify needs and take advantage of opportunities in their community. To fulfill this aspect of its mission, the organization was guided by a Congress of over 1,000 members who met annually to set priorities and plan initiatives. This Congress elected a smaller executive committee that met on a monthly basis to make programmatic decisions. As Betty Hyatt, one of the numerous long-time neighborhood residents who served on SECO's executive committee explains, "Everyone understood why we were coming together - to take power and to make some decisions for ourselves. We did not want to have to depend on City Council people to make decisions for us."
During its early years, SECO's priorities were to work with youth, particularly those who had problems with the law, and to address the growing problems of unemployment and housing deterioration. Its role as a strong community advocate drew attention from national activists such as Ralph Nader, who was widely known for his work on consumer issues, and Monsignor Geno Baroni, who was later to become Assistant Secretary for Community Development at the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development (HUD) under President Carter. With Msgr. Baroni's assistance, SECO was able to obtain its first grant of $10,000 from the National Center for Urban Ethnic Affairs.
Creating a Community Development Corporation
As part of its mission of creating a means for local residents to determine the direction of their neighborhoods, SECO initiated an intensive community planning process in 1974. What emerged from this process was the decision for SECO to take a direct role in improving the physical and economic conditions of Southeast Baltimore. As Robert Giloth, who served as SECO's executive director between 1988 and 1993, observes, "Organizing is the first step in the empowerment process. The issues lend themselves to a lot of civic attention quickly. Development is long-term. It delivers the goods that community organizing promised or fought for. At some point, if the community organizing group can't bring in the goods and services, people are going to lose interest."
SECO's first step in pursuit of a development agenda was to establish a Neighborhood Housing Services program, which provided more than $1.7 million in mortgage loans to over 200 families before it was eventually spun off as an independent operation. The next, more significant step to undertake development took place in 1974, when, with the approval of SECO's Congress and the financial backing of the Ford Foundation and National Center for Urban Ethnic Affairs, SECO's leaders decided to create a separate development entity, Southeast Development, Inc. (SDI).
The Organizing versus Development Dilemma
The first real crisis in SECO's history was a power struggle that took place just as the community development corporation (CDC) was being established. At heart, the issue was who had control over SECO's organizing agenda, and to what extent the decisions that emerged from the planning process would be honored. Ultimately, organizers who opposed decisions made by SECO's executive committee cast the debate in terms of a struggle between organizing and development. As was the case with other community-based organizations that had taken root in the 1960s and early 1970s, there was a concern that SDI's initiatives would require SECO to work with the very forces that they had been founded to oppose, including political, real estate and business interests. The battle for control over SECO's agenda continued to escalate throughout the planning of SDI, reaching a critical point when some of SECO's organizing staff tried to halt the formation of the CDC. In the end, however, the forces in support of a dual organizing and development mission prevailed, and the CDC was established. In an effort to allay some of the concerns about this new direction, SECO decided to maintain control over SDI's policies and programs. The two organizations would have overlapping boards and a common director, but their staffs were to be kept separate.
The Pursuit of a Development Strategy
The CDC initially followed a two-part development strategy - one aimed at improving housing conditions and the other aimed at revitalizing the economy in Southeast Baltimore. In keeping with the desire of neighborhood residents to preserve the historic character of the area's housing stock, which consisted mostly of 2 and 3-story row houses that were either abandoned or in great disrepair, the CDC decided to undertake housing rehabilitation. Financed by a Program Related Investment (PRI) from the Ford Foundation, SDI's first housing development program entailed buying, rehabilitating and then selling properties at affordable prices to area residents. The idea of this "land banking" scheme was to intervene in the housing market and to reverse the negative consequences of housing speculation. The program proved that it was possible to change the direction of neighborhood decline by increasing property values, yet ensuring that low- income residents had opportunities to become homeowners.
In the meantime, SDI pursued efforts to improve the economic conditions in Southeast Baltimore through commercial revitalization and job creation. In an area called Highlandtown, SECO and SDI collaborated on a project to resuscitate an aging commercial strip. SECO organized local merchants, while SDI secured financing to restore small markets in the commercial district. SDI was notably successful in attracting an $8 million investment of federal funds to improve sidewalks, streets and infrastructure in the area.
SECO/SDI's most lucrative economic development project turned out to be a supermarket, which the CDC developed and leased out to a local entrepreneur, Santoni's. Through an agreement with Santoni's to share a portion of profits from sales, SDI was eventually able to repay its initial loan from the Small Business Administration, and earned several years of revenues that helped support its other programs. SDI also launched a number of its own economic ventures. Among them was a metalworking collaborative and a sewing and clothes-making operation that employed senior citizens. Although these ventures did not prove to be economically profitable, and eventually had to be phased out for lack of funding, they did offer some benefits. They provided employment opportunities for local residents, and enabled elderly residents of the community to overcome their isolation and remain active.
Weathering Leadership Changes
The tension between organizing and development resurfaced once again towards the end of the 1970s, when Joe McNeely left his post at the head of SECO and SDI to become director of HUD's Office of Neighborhood Self-Help Development under President Carter. Between 1977 and 1979, it became increasingly difficult for the two organizations to reconcile their difference in philosophies, particularly because they were being led by two separate directors. The problems came to a head when one of SDI's housing rehabilitation programs was accused of causing the displacement of low-income Native American residents. In the end, the organizational issues were resolved by appointing Larry Pencak, a community organizer who worked on SECO's human service programs, to lead both SECO and SDI.
Building A Track Record
Under Pencak's leadership, SECO/SDI continued to work on development initiatives. With funds from HUD's Neighborhood Self-Help Development Program, they initiated a successful homeownership and rehabilitation program in the neighborhood of Madison, rehabilitating five vacant homes and assisting 53 households to buy homes within two years. SECO/SDI also began to branch out into a predominantly African-American neighborhood near Johns Hopkins Medical Center. Under contract with the city, SDI collaborated with Johns Hopkins and other neighborhood groups to create the Middle East Housing Center, which has rehabilitated and sold over 100 units of affordable housing to low and moderate-income families to date. In an area called Monument Street, SECO/SDI also mounted a successful commercial revitalization program that was modeled on its work in Highlandtown.
Despite its growing strength in development, SECO remained committed to providing human services. In order to reduce youth crime, its Youth Diversion Program provided counseling and recreational activities to young offenders. To deal with high rates of illiteracy in the area, SECO also initiated its Learning Is For Tomorrow (LIFT) program, which offers instruction in reading, math, and "life skills" such as problem-solving in family situations. Thanks to the success of these social service programs and its solid work in development, SECO built respect among city officials, including Baltimore's Mayor Kurt Schmoke, and other neighborhood-based groups throughout the city.
A Change in Tide
Like many other community development organizations across the country, SECO was hard hit by the drastic funding cuts during the Reagan administration years. Fortunately, in part because it was not dependent upon federal programs such as Title VII (which favored CDCs serving predominantly minority communities), it was able to weather this difficult period of funding in the 1980s. Unlike some other CDCs, it had already been forced to create strong ties with local government to sustain its programs.
Today, Southeast Baltimore has become increasingly diverse in terms of ethnicity, race, income and occupation. To respond to these changes, SECO has reached out to numerous other Baltimore organizations, and has continued to live up to its reputation as a strong advocate on neighborhood issues. In 1986, SECO worked with two other community groups to launch a major support and advocacy network for parents whose children have been exposed to lead. Recently, it has been collaborating on an effort to combat growing problems of ethnic violence, and has been working with a waterfront coalition to preserve the affordability and character of Southeast Baltimore in face of development pressure generated by the Inner Harbor. Other recent initiatives include a neighborhood recycling program and the purchase and renovation of the historic building in which it had rented space for over fifteen years. This building now serves as a complex for several nonprofit neighborhood organizations, including SECO.
Looking to the Future
SECO is nearing its twenty-fifth year of operation, and has much to reflect upon with pride. Although it has been unable to significantly alter major systemic problems such as unemployment, it has fulfilled many of the goals of a CDC. It has served as a forceful neighborhood advocate, it has made decent, affordable housing available to hundreds of low-income households in Southeast Baltimore, and it has built strong grassroots leadership that is capable of playing a meaningful role in the decision-making process. Recently, to reverse declining community participation in its programming (a problem that is common to many CDCs), SECO helped to initiate a neighborhood planning process in Southeast Baltimore. The product of this process is sure to be more than the Southeast Community Plan. It will be the ongoing empowerment of neighborhood residents who want to have a say in the future of their community.
South East Community Organization (SECO)
10 South Wolfe Street
Baltimore, MD 21231
(410) 327-1626