Bates Area Civic Association

Please see this post by Angie Rogers on behalf of LAYC:

There have been a number of posts to the listservs and blogs that serve the neighborhoods surrounding the J. F. Cook School, which is set to be redeveloped by YouthBuild Public Charter School and Latin American Youth Center. I have been working with the YouthBuild and LAYC teams on the plans for Cook, and want to respond to some of the concerns/issues that have been raised.

It has been said before, but probably deserves repeating: YouthBuild and LAYC have been strong stakeholders in their existing neighborhoods, and plan to bring that to the Cook School neighborhood as well. The area around the current sites in Ward 1 used to have heavy drug dealing traffic years ago, but as we renovated our facilities, reclaimed nuisance properties and worked with the police, it decreased considerably. We would like to be an active voice and partner in the same way in the Cook School neighborhood, using the experience we’ve gained from practicing community policing with officers in Ward 1 and the strong relationships we have with the MPD leadership.

Not only do we think we can be an asset to the community surrounding Cook, we think our kids can be as well, and we would like for the neighborhood to begin viewing them as having something to offer, as opposed to potential nuisances. All YouthBuild and LAYC youth work and/or go to school; and as part of the programs we run, they all spend a significant amount of time each year doing community service. In other words, we’re not just teaching them skills so that they can get jobs and take care of themselves; we’re also teaching them to take care of the community around them.

The Cook School is, indeed, the first time this model (education/job training + housing) is being tried in DC, but we’re pretty excited about that. The model that we hope to bring to Cook is based on Common Ground’s Chelsea Foyer development in New York. The Foyer model was designed to combat the overwhelming incidence of homelessness among kids aging out of foster care. More than five years in and they have seen some pretty impressive results: 77 percent of young people secure stable housing upon leaving the program and 75 percent are employed, compared to the 2 percent who are stable at intake. Many are the first persons in their families to break the cycle of depending on public assistance.

We understand that some are upset/concerned about the process by which YouthBuild and LAYC’s redevelopment plan was selected by the city, wanted to see the Cook space dedicated to arts/culture, and are concerned that not using the Cook space for some sort of economic development enterprise further threatens the future of development and public safety in the area. That we have proceeded with a development plan that includes a school and permanently affordable housing has been characterized as disregard for these concerns. It has always been YouthBuild and LAYC’s understanding that the RFP to which we responded was a reflection of the community’s input about the Cook School site. Besides the fact that our proposal was based on bringing the innovative Foyer model to DC, our entire design and fundraising process integrally links the school and housing portions of the project. Still, we wish to be responsive to the desire for arts/culture uses on the site, and for a use that promotes both further economic development and public safety in the area. Cook will have community spaces in which we are open to installing some sort of arts/culture use. I’ve already mentioned how the organizations can be helpful in promoting public safety, not the least of which is reclaiming the currently vacant and blighted property and turning it into an attractive, environmentally friendly structure on the block.

Finally, I want to emphasize that community collaboration is part of what makes YouthBuild and LAYC’s programs successful, so outreach is important to us. To that end, YouthBuild and LAYC have spent a significant amount of time reaching out to the community surrounding Cook. We have presented to and/or attended numerous ANC and neighborhood association meetings; we’ve met individually with ANC members, neighborhood associations’ leaders, etc.; we volunteered at a neighborhood clean-up day and participated in a security walk with the Police Department to see neighborhood hot spots; we’ve gone door to door on several occasions to distribute information to residences and businesses throughout the community ; and we’ve held several community meetings in the Cook neighborhood in addition to an open house at the current Ward 1 sites. We hope to continue our conversation with Cook neighbors this Wednesday, December 8th at 7 pm at Big Bear Café. Hopefully we can talk concretely about building in some of the arts/culture and public safety elements that neighbors want to see.

Please continue to reach out. And email us at project with questions/concerns.

Angie Rodgers