Rebuilding No Matter What

Wayne Meyer is being honored as a Champion of Change for the leadership he demonstrated in his involvement in response and recovery efforts following Hurricane Sandy.

When I became President at New Jersey Community Capital in 2009, New Jersey was already waist-deep in a crisis. 

The state was among the hardest hit by the wave of foreclosures that has crossed the nation, and its low-income communities bore the brunt of it.  In its largest city of Newark, over 60 percent of homeowners with a mortgage were underwater as of September 2012, and 18 percent of its housing units are now vacant.  A drive through Newark—or Paterson or Trenton or south Jersey City—still reveals blocks strewn with foreclosed and abandoned homes.

NJCC is the largest Community Development Financial Institution (CDFI) in New Jersey, and our unique blend of financial capacity (over $225 million in assets under management) and commitment to social change has allowed us to become leaders in the foreclosure crisis recovery.  Over the last four years, our team has pioneered innovative models to reclaim and rebuild vacant properties, to provide long-term financing for affordable housing redevelopment, and to employ principal reductions to rescue distressed homeowners.  These strategies will provide new opportunities to hundreds of hard-hit families and will help return their neighborhoods to stability.

Without really realizing it, we were also preparing ourselves for our next great challenge.

In October of 2012, another crisis struck New Jersey.  Hurricane Sandy devastated shore communities, displacing families and businesses and leaving over $36 billion in damages.  The disaster required a response that was at once immediate and durable, and our experience in the trenches of the foreclosure crisis was what equipped us to provide such a response.  We quickly arranged meetings with investors, public officials, and community partners and asked:  what are the gaps that need to be filled without delay?  Who is available to help?  How can we support those in need as efficiently and responsibly as possible?

Within a month, we had raised $3 million dollars and launched our REBUILD New Jersey fund to provide disaster loans to impacted small businesses.  Some of these loans repaired damages or restored lost inventory, while others helped cover income lost during the weeks of power outages and closures.  With each loan, we not only helped the owners and employees maintain their livelihoods; we also helped to turn another light on in Asbury Park or Jersey City, sending another symbol to the surrounding communities that the road to recovery was underway.

That road is still a long one, however, and we remain equipped to move the recovery forward in new ways.  In the coming months and years, we will use the housing strategies we honed via the foreclosure recovery to rebuild homes damaged in Sandy.  Our real estate acquisition arm, CAPC, will seek to purchase pools of properties for restoration.   Our low-cost loans will finance community builders in shore areas as they provide new housing.  And through our mortgage resolution program, ReStart, we will seek to buy and resolve nonperforming mortgages in impacted areas.

These strategies require the partnership of private companies, local nonprofits and civic groups, and all levels of government.  As a CDFI, we have the capacity, relationships, and mission to bring these groups together for the cause of rebuilding post-crisis communities, whether they are recovering from a financial crisis or a natural one.

On behalf of the team at NJCC and our partners in this challenging work, we are honored to be chosen a White House Champion of Change and grateful that our work is being recognized.

Wayne Meyer is President of New Jersey Community Capital (NJCC).

Communication in Crisis

Justin Auciello is being honored as a Champion of Change for the leadership he demonstrated in his involvement in response and recovery efforts following Hurricane Sandy. 

It is a tremendous honor to be recognized as a White House Champion of Change. Altruism is a trait that is deeply ingrained in my personality, and I firmly believe that I was born to serve my community and inspire others to do the same.

Since childhood, I have always been fascinated by news. I have vivid memories of hearing the fire siren sound in my town, hopping on my bike, and chasing down the fire trucks. I would find out what was happening and return home to tell my parents. I always wanted to "be in the know." Along with news, other passions have always included community service and understanding how communities function. It is thus no surprise that I pursued city planning and journalism as a career, as both are interconnected and allow me to inform and assist communities -- both physically and virtually. Naturally, with the advent of social media in the beginning of the 21st century, the nature of news began to change.

When I first got involved with social media in 2003, I saw unlimited potential in interaction, news gathering, and community building, as ordinary people now had the ability to gather and report news. I call it "the democratization of media." Creating Jersey Shore Hurricane News (JSHN) on August 23, 2011 was a natural extension of my years of citizen journalism. In my own barrier island community of South Seaside Park NJ, panic over Hurricane Irene's potentially destructive impacts was beginning to simmer, and I knew that people were feeling this same anxiety throughout New Jersey. I felt a calling to create a "pop-up" news outlet on Facebook in an effort to supply reliable, real-time news as well as serving as a platform for collaborative bottom-up reporting from ordinary citizen contributors. Social media carries so much value during breaking news situations, especially since many people are without power and rely on their smartphones. Its value also resides in its ability to deliver news almost instantly. I saw this as a prime opportunity to democratize media in New Jersey: empower citizens and give them the tools to be on-the-ground journalists.

My vision was to provide a ground swell of accurate information from both personal reporting and newsgathering from all angles -- potential weather impacts, evacuation orders, shelter information, etc. I also wanted JSHN to be a place where people could ask questions and provide ground-truth reports from their locations, a technique known as "crowdsourcing." But understanding the dangers of reporting erroneous information, I knew that I had to be especially careful with tips, by vetting and confirmation information through a variety of journalistic mechanisms.

New Jersey was largely spared from catastrophic impacts from Hurricane Irene. However, with information supplied before, during, and after the storm, JSHN's value was proven. After Irene, JSHN evolved into a real-time news, traffic, and weather platform, with the citizen contributor continuing to be the major source of information.

During Superstorm Sandy, JSHN relayed critical information and squashed rumors in real-time with information gleaned from emergency management officials and a variety of sources, which was then shared by contributors and spread virally throughout the social media world. Since the "contributor culture" was already firmly embedded within the JSHN ethos before Sandy, the citizen reporters were armed with the ability to report what was happening around them during Sandy, supplying valuable news reports that were subsequently vetted through a variety of means before publishing. In addition, people used to service to find water, ice, generators, supplies, etc and in some cases, request rescue from flood waters (the New Jersey Office of Emergency Management was monitoring and dispatched crews to many locations). In the days and weeks after landfall, JSHN became a major humanitarian hub, providing an organized outlet for the dissemination of a variety of recovery news and information -- once again mainly provided by the ordinary citizen. People were even finding photos and other items that had been washed away by the storm surge and posting on JSHN, with many reunited with their possessions through simply power in numbers. Many were inspired and gained hope when JSHN published positive news in the days and weeks after the storm. Today, recovery reporting continues, along with general news. JSHN continues to be a trusted outlet where people continually collaborate and contribute information.

I am proud of how New Jersey residents reported and organized itself during a time of tremendous stress before, during, and after Superstorm Sandy. If used properly, social media can be an incredibly powerful tool that can help countless people remain informed and safe. I remain committed to serving my state by employing innovative news practices and inspiring others to do the same. After all, I am just an ordinary citizen, as is everyone who supplies information. With just a bit of experience and knowledge, you can also serve your community by leveraging the power of social media.

Justin Auciello, 33, is the founder of Jersey Shore Hurricane News, a bottom-up, two-way social media-based news outlet that provides New Jersey residents with news, traffic, and weather reports and serves as a community forum. Auciello holds a bachelor's degree in Government and Politics from the University of Maryland-College Park and a master's degree in City and Regional Planning from Rutgers University's Edward J. Bloustein School of Planning and Public Policy. 

Caught Between Systems: Helping Immigrant Children with Incarcerated, Deported, and Detained Parents

Yali Lincroft is being honored as a Champion of Change for her dedication to the well-being of children of incarcerated parents.

My involvement with helping children of incarcerated parents began in the summer of 2004 when I was first hired by the Annie E. Casey Foundation to examine the issues surrounding immigrant and refugee families in the child welfare system. The report I eventually wrote and published for the Casey Foundation in 2006, “Undercounted, Underserved: Immigrants and Refugees in the Child Welfare System,” documented the increasing trend of children with incarcerated/detained immigrant parents in the child welfare system. And, my research talking with researchers and policymakers, frontline child welfare workers, attorneys, adoptive parents, foster youth, and the detained parents themselves gave me insights into current practices and policies throughout the U.S. In particular, the stories from children whose worlds were turned upside down because of the deportation of their parents, mothers and fathers who risked everything to be reunited with their children, or undocumented foster youth who but didn’t apply for eligible relief options because their attorney or social worker didn’t know about these options have haunted me ever since. 

According to the U.S. Department of Homeland Security, nearly 205,000 parents of U.S. citizen children were deported in the 26 months between July 1, 2010, and September 31, 2012. When parents are detained or deported, often with little warning or preparation time, their children are often left without consistent and permanent caregivers. Currently, there is an estimated 5,100 children nationwide in the child welfare system because their parents are under immigration custody or have been deported. This number is expected to rise to 15,000 in the next five years. Many of these parents will never have a realistic opportunity to be reunified with their children because parents who are deported or in immigration detainment are frequently unable to access services or meet requirements set out by dependency courts to regain custody. Though immigrant relatives may be willing to take custody of a child when the parent is in this situation, they are often turned down by the child welfare system because of their immigration status. As a result, children can be permanently separated from their families. All too often, we hear of heart-breaking stories, like young children who lost their bilingual language ability because they were in English-speaking foster care and now couldn’t communicate with their parents or relatives.

Working with First Focus and SPARC, a project designed to help state child welfare advocates make an even bigger impact, I have been focused on addressing this awkward intersection of immigration, child welfare, and the criminal justice system through state and federal legislation. On September 30, 2012, California Governor Brown signed “The Reuniting Immigrant Families Act” (SB1064 – de León), which became the first act in the country to address family separation issues as a consequence of the current immigration enforcement system. The bill extended the family reunification period for deportees, established working agreements with foreign consulates around child custody cases, provided screening and assessment for eligible immigration relief options, and allowed family members, regardless of their immigration status, the ability to take custody of a child left behind in the deportation process. This bill is being replicated legislatively in Arizona, Illinois, and New York and administratively in many more states. Several pieces of federal legislation addressing this issue have been introduced in partnership with First Focus by Senator Franken, Representative Roybal-Allard, and Representative O-Rourke. Most recently, the massive “Border Security, Economic Opportunity, and Immigration Modernization Act” introduced by the Senate Gang of 8 includes several important modifications impacting state child welfare plans to promote the reunification of detained or removed parents with their children in the child welfare system.

America has the opportunity to fix our immigration system by passing comprehensive immigration reform. It is important in these discussions that the thousands of children and families who have been adversely impacted by this broken system and involved in the child welfare system are taken into consideration during this rare opportunity of reform.

Yali Lincroft is a Policy Consultant for First Focus and a Program Officer with the Walter S. Johnson Foundation. She is also a founding member of the Migration and Child Welfare National Network (MCWNN), a coalition focused on helping immigrant families in the child welfare system. MCWNN is housed at the Jane Addams College of Social Work at the University of Illinois at Chicago.