Case Study: Racine Weed and Seed

For the past eleven years, the City of Racine has had the highest annual unemployment rate in the State of Wisconsin. The minority communities in Racine’s inner-city neighborhoods -- in particular the Northside and Southside Weed and Seed sites -- have had the highest unemployment rate in Racine County at 15%, approximately three times the state and national average.

The Racine Weed and Seed Steering Committee decided to participate in the IDA Demonstration Project to help build assets in these distressed communities. With technical assistance from the National Federation of Community Development Credit Unions (the Federation), the City of Racine and the Weed and Seed site designed an innovative IDA program to promote homeownership in these neighborhoods. In September 2006 the City received a federal AFI grant of $120,000 to serve as matching funds for 51 IDA accounts. The City committed $240,000 of its own resources to this project, which includes $60,000 for a Home Maintenance Escrow Account that provides $1,000 to each IDA account holder for post-purchase repairs and maintenance.

The Weed and Seed IDA program partners have bundled together a number of local, state and federal programs to help people become successful first-time homeowners. All account holders receive individual credit and housing counseling while saving for the purchase of their home. After closing on their homes, IDA participants are eligible for the Home Maintenance Escrow Account, as well as a Deferred Interest Home Improvement Loan program that allows very low income homeowners to use the appreciated value of their homes to make improvements and repairs that they otherwise could not afford.

The City has also tackled the risk of lead contamination, a concern in much of the stock of affordable housing which was built before 1978. The City and County recently received a $2,000,000 grant from “Cities United for Science Progress” (CUSP) Lead Safe…for Kids' Sake” to conduct educational outreach and provide lead abatement services for 200 homes in the City and another 200 in the County. The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) state that children from all social and economic levels can be affected by lead poisoning, but children living at or below the poverty line who live in older housing are at greatest risk.

The Federation also worked with the Weed and Seed site and the city to obtain designation by the federal Department of Housing and Urban Development (HUD) of “Revitalization Areas” within the Weed and Seed sites. In designated Revitalization Areas, HUD-owned properties can be sold at 50% discounts through programs such as “Officer Next Door,” “Teacher Next Door,” and “Firefighter Next Door,” which encourage public sector employees to purchase homes and help revitalize economically distressed neighborhoods. Weed and Seed sites hopes to use HUD’s Revitalization Area Program to leverage their existing partnerships to increase homeownership in their neighborhoods.

Participation by People with Disabilities

Of the 51 Weed and Seed IDAs funded for this program, 29 have already been opened, and six of these account holders are persons with disabilities. All of the individuals with disabilities are receiving either Social Security Disability Insurance (SSDI) or Supplemental Security Income (SSI), and all have Section 8 vouchers from HUD, which can be used by very low-income individuals towards the cost of renting or buying a home.

Racine Weed and Seed is committed to being fully accessible and responsive to everyone in their neighborhoods. The Weed and Seed Coordinator, Tanya Canady, readily visits people at home who are unable to reach the office by themselves, and has received technical assistance from the World Institute on Disability (WID) to better serve community members with disabilities. She has received numerous inquiries from persons with disabilities who are concerned that informal employment will not count as earned income, or that any amount of earned income will jeopardize their SSI or SSDI benefits. Thanks to the technical assistance from the World Institute on Disability, Ms. Canady is able to correct these misunderstandings and refer them to WID for further information.

Weed and Seed and Access to Assets

The Community Capacity Development Office (CCDO) has always been committed to making their asset-building initiatives accessible to diverse members of the Weed and Seed communities. For this reason the MoneySmart curriculum has been distributed to sites in multiple languages, and CCDO has focused on helping sites provide effective financial education in multilingual environments. MoneySmart is also one of the few national financial education curricula (along with the Federation’s Each One, Teach Many) that is available in alternative formats to be accessible to more people with disabilities.

CCDO is also discussing incorporating a training module from the National Disabilities Institute to help VITA sites provide better service to people with disabilities in their communities.

Anyone interested in learning more about Weed and Seed, or applying to have their community recognized as a Weed and Seed site, can get more information online at: http://www.ojp.usdoj.gov/ccdo/ws/welcome.html

More information about the Federation’s IDA Technical Assistance and other programs is available online at http://www.natfed.org/i4a/pages/index.cfm?pageid=1158