Update on the 7th Ward and my work so far

So due to a lack of funding, nothing has been built yet in the 7th Ward and the lots there that NHS owns have not been kept in repair. As I've written before, the Neighborhood Center there is very young in terms of its presence in the community, and NHS's other services are virtually nonexistent.

I just came from a planning meeting for the in 7th Ward in particular, attended by people from both the Community Building Initiative (running the property campaign and neighborhood centers) and the Design/Build folks (who actually design houses and run the construction management services), so the strategy is fresh in my mind. To inform 7th Ward folk about NHS services provided through the main office, there's going to be a letter campaign just to introduce NHS services to the community (no threats of code enforcement this time), followed up by door-to-door surveying of need. I have already written drafts of both the letter and the survey. This will hopefully identify neighbors who will be good candidates for city funding for home repair that NHS hopefully will receive soon (*crosses fingers*).

Additionally, Design/Build people are going to attend the next couple monthly community meetings in the 7th ward to talk about services and ask for input on designs--hopefully construction can start soon. At the very least, once they sell a house they've built (supposed to close at the end of the month) they'll be able to pay for regular lawn maintenance at the vacant lots they own. There's going to be a few civic action campaigns in the near future, too, one of which is scheduled to start next month--a campaign to re-open the Circle Food grocery store, since there otherwise is no grocery store in the neighborhood. There are so many ideas floating around, I'm excited to see them hit the ground.

My role in all of this has been... everywhere! As I said, I have written drafts of the aforementioned letter and door-to-door survey, as well as a few fliers and other surveys (MS Word, Publisher and Excell are becoming my best friends!). I've also been working to update a new online database system they have to keep track of contacts and properties (SalesForce), which will hopefully be really useful in the future but at the present is pretty confusing--a mix of Excell spreadsheets and handwritten notes, some of which are uploaded, some are not....ugh! And I sent a bunch of invitations to the Circle Food Store Campaign Kick-off event next month that I'm excited to attend myself.

Separate from the 7th Ward stuff, I'm starting to work on a way to advertise houses that are for sale in the Freret/Milan communities--ultimately we want to hang a bulletin board in the Freret Neighborhood Center with listings, since they get a decent amount of traffic, but first we need descriptions of the homes and contact info for the owners. I've also been trying to keep up on reading about all these issues--the history of community developing corporations, gentrification, etc. etc. There's so much to think about!!!