Report on Neighborhood Needs Assessment

Revised July 20, 1996

Committee: Kathleen Sydnor, Donna Dzierlenga, Priscilla Wright, Barbara Cowan, Ann Sieber, Laura Holliday, Bette Drexler

Goal of Committee

The goal of this committee was to learn about the neighborhood around the new meeting site. The committee sought to determine what needs the people of the neighborhood might have that are not currently met by existing institutions and agencies. A preliminary exploration by the committee suggests that opportunities for service are abundant.

A preliminary definition of "neighborhood" was arbitrarily defined as that area bordered by 11th Street to the south, Shepherd Drive on the east, 43rd Street on the north, and 290 on the west north of the 610 Loop, inside the Loop as it curves from east-west to north-south. Particular attention was paid to the area in closest proximity to the new meetinghouse, bordered by the 610 loop on the north, T.C. Jester on the west, 11th on the south, and Shepherd on the east. Much of this area is known as the neighborhood "Shady Acres."

Description of Methodology

The committee analyzed demographic data from the 1990 Census Report and from the 1994-1995 HISD School Profiles. In addition, the committee interviewed individuals representing institutions and service agencies including, but not limited to, the following: AA, Al-Anon, All Saint's Catholic Church, Third Presbyterian Church, Garden Oaks Baptist Church, Greater Mt. Zion Missionary Baptist Church, Holden Elementary, Interfaith Ministries, MANNA Assistance Office, Meals on Wheels, Neighborhood Centers, Inc., New Directions, Northwest YMCA, SEARCH Mobile Services, Shady Acres Civic Club, St. Rose of Lima Catholic Church, Texas Commerce Bank, United Way and Visions of Hope, Inc. There are other groups and individuals whom we are still trying to contact, such as Steve Klineberg and the Iglesia Bautista Libertad.

Overview of Committee Investigation

A good number of families in the area appear to live precariously. While there is some emergency assistance offered through various agencies with rent, utilities and food, there seems to be no agency that is working long-term with people to create a permanent remedy to their situation.
During the ten-year period from 1980 to 1990, the Hispanic population in our immediate area has grown from 25.7% to 41% of the total population (based on 1980 and 1990 Census data). Given the likelihood that the Hispanic population was underreported, it seems probable that the proportion of the current population that is Hispanic is considerably higher. (We know through our own land search that the Spanish-language Baptist Church at 21st and Bevis has undergone tremendous growth.)
In many ways, our immediate area is two parallel neighborhoods. The native English-speakers are older homeowners who have lived in the neighborhood for some time. The native Spanish-speakers are younger people with children who have moved to the area fairly recently. The two groups tend to live in separate spheres; even in times of difficulty, they do not seek assistance from each other or from the same social service providers.
There is a large elderly population in the area (14.7% was 65 or older in 1990) and there is need for additional services for seniors.
According to Stuart Bailey of SEARCH Mobile Assistance, there appears not to be a significant homeless population in the area.
In the larger neighborhood we targeted, HISD records show over half of the students are receiving free lunches. However, in the immediate neighborhood, Holden Elementary School data reports that 90% of the children are enrolled in the federally-supported free/reduced-fee lunch program.
There were no obvious child care facilities in our immediate neighborhood. The only centers mentioned were at the West End Multi-Service Center and the Northwest YMCA. Several of the large churches north of the Loop have pre-school programs. YMCA after-school programs are available at Garden Oaks, Oak Forest, Sinclair, and Stevens Elementaries. None is offered at Helms or Holden Elementary.

The committee has attempted to summarize its findings on the following social service categories:

Hunger
Education
English/Spanish as a Second Language
Senior Citizens
Financial Management Programs
Substance Abuse Programs
Miscellaneous Neighborhood Resources

Hunger

Hunger is a significant problem for our neighbors. According to emergency service providers, many of their clients are left without money to buy food after paying their rent and utilities. The hunger problem is currently being addressed in a variety of ways.

Federally-funded school lunch programs are assisting, particularly in our immediate neighborhood, where 90% of elementary children are enrolled in the program.
Meals on Wheels serves a hot, nutritious meal daily to 186 senior citizens in the Heights, and maintains a length waiting list of those needing service. (see additional information under Senior Citizens).
Noonday meals at senior centers operated by Neighborhood Centers, Inc., under contract with the Area Agency on Aging. None of these centers includes Shady Acres in their service areas. Meals are catered at most of the centers. Some centers have a kitchen which is food service certified by the Health Department (see additional information under Senior Citizens).
Food pantries, both independent and affiliated with Interfaith Ministries Hunger Coalition. The food pantries often run short of supplies, rarely have access to fresh fruits and vegetables, and are chronically in need of volunteers. Locating a food pantry, finding out when it is open, and determining who is eligible, can be a daunting task for a person in need of assistance. Given the patchwork of days and hours of service and the number of pantries in the area, the need seems to be for increased supplies of food, especially fruits and vegetables, and for regular volunteers. It was suggested that our assistance with existing pantries would be more beneficial to clients than an additional pantry because of the more simple logistics for them; additional hours at a place they already know would be easier for them to find. Several of the MANNA-affiliated churches without pantries have partnered with existing pantries at other MANNA churches.
Hunger Assistance Hotline offers referrals to the five food pantries housed at churches affiliated with the MANNA emergency aid program. Interfaith Ministries Hunger Coalition makes referrals to their affiliated pantries.
Community Gardens. One small (1000 sq. ft.) private garden, affiliated with the Interfaith Ministries Community Garden program, supplies produce to the pantries at St. Rose of Lima Catholic Church and St. Matthew's United Methodist Church. Another organization in Houston that can help plan community gardens is Urban Harvest, a non-profit network of organic market, therapeutic, and community gardens. These two agencies indicated that more community gardens are needed, and that they can be of assistance in planning gardens or edible landscaping.

Education

According to the HISD 1994-1995 School Profiles, over half of all students in the schools surrounding the new meetinghouse are considered at-risk. This means the student:

failed any section of the TAAS on most recent attempt, or
failed to meet promotion requirements for their grade level, or
failed two or more basic subjects the previous year, and is not expected to graduate within four years of entering ninth grade, or
is two or more years below grade level as measured on a standardized test of reading or math.

At Waltrip High School 56% of all students are considered at-risk. At Black Middle School, 48% of all students are considered at-risk. At Holden Elementary, 66% are considered at-risk, and 53% are considered to have limited English proficiency.

Most parents of students at Holden Elementary speak little or no English. The school administration does not speak Spanish. According to the school secretary at Holden, the school needs volunteers to read to children in English or Spanish.

United Way provides some social services to families with children attending Holden Elementary. They have helped with food, utilities, housing, placement in shelters, obtaining cards for medical care, referral to Red Cross for disaster assistance, etc. United Way also sponsors a food and toy drive at Thanksgiving and Christmas that benefits Holden Elementary students.

Each school has a list of corporate partners.

Each school has a specific School Board Member assigned to it.

English/Spanish as a Second Language

There is a large Hispanic population in the neighborhood of the new meetinghouse. While many children in area schools are proficient in English, their parents are not, and language remains a barrier. The clientele of the local service agencies appear to sort themselves along language boundaries. Many Spanish-speaking adults are intimidated by English-only institutions and complex bureaucracies. Spanish-speakers do not feel welcome in English-speaking environments. An adult ESL program has been started several times at Garden Oaks Baptist Church. Three or four adults enroll in the program, and then they drift away.

We attempted to contact the Spanish language church, Iglesia Bautista Libertad, to find out what, if any, ESL programs they might be offering in the neighborhood. We have not yet contacted them. If occurred to us that it might be more appropriate to be offering Spanish to English-speaking clientele than the other way around.

It also occurred to us that it would be neighborly to add Spanish signs to the property telling who we are, and perhaps to begin translating our meeting brochure.

Senior Citizens

Although only 11% of Houston residents inside the Loop were identified as 65 years or older in the 1990 Census, the Greater Heights area has a large concentration of senior citizens. In our immediate neighborhood, 14.7% of the residents were listed as 65 or over in 1990. In the Shady Acres area, many of the residents are long-term residents of the neighborhood who settled there with their young families and have grown old with the neighborhood. Several members of the committee noted that some of our elderly neighbors are having trouble keeping up with the physical demands of maintenance on their homes and yards.

Neighborhood Centers, Inc. Senior Centers. The Area Agency of Aging contracts with Neighborhood Centers, Inc. to operate community centers serving seniors. These centers sponsor a variety of recreational activities, exercise and dance programs, social activities, and field trips, as well as serving a noon meal. They often provide a venue for other social service providers, for example, health screening programs and legal aid programs. As far as can be determined, none of these centers include the area north of 11th Street and west of North Durham in their service area, although seniors in our neighborhood may be attending centers in adjoining areas.
Northwest YMCA offers activities similar to those at Senior Centers to its dues-paying senior members. The Y sponsors aerobics classes, monthly meetings, potlucks, field trips (transportation arranged through Precinct 4), and other activities.
AARP meets twice a month at the Candlelight Park Clubhouse.
Meals on Wheels. In our immediate neighborhood, Interfaith Ministries contracts with the Area Agency on Aging to provide Meals on Wheels. The program is operated from Bethel United Church of Christ and Garden Oaks Baptist Church. St. Rose of Lima Catholic Church contributes $1000/month to the program, as well as large numbers of volunteers. Additional funds are donated by the United Way and other agencies or groups. On the east side of the Heights, Third Presbyterian Church operates a privately-funded Meals on Wheels program serving about 30,000 meals/year, but they do not serve our immediate neighborhood. The volunteer who delivers this daily hot meal to a senior citizen may be the only regular visitor that the client receives.
The number of clients that can be served in a given area of the city is set by the 1990 Census. Since the population of elderly in the Heights has been increasing since 1990, there are many more requests for service than allowed under contract guidelines. Private donations allow additional clients to be served, but a long waiting list still exists in the Heights.
The administrators of the Interfaith Ministries Meals on Wheels program expect that funding will continue to be a serious problem. Area Agency on Aging funds have already been cut by 5% because of federal cutbacks. In addition to reliable and regular contributions of funds, Meals on Wheels needs volunteers to deliver meals in the poorer neighborhoods served (For additional information, see Meals on Wheels under Hunger).

Financial Management Programs

It was reported to the committee that a common difficulty among families in the neighborhood, especially ones having recently arrived from other countries, is theft of their entire savings from their homes. They often are hesitant to use a bank, either through fear or ignorance, and become prime targets for savvy local robbers. In addition, many of them have no experience with large financial institutions; there seems to be a great need for education in the field of financial management. Some elementary schools have implemented savings programs to encourage immigrant children to learn about financial institutions, but this does not help their parents.

Church-sponsored Credit Unions. Some of the churches we talked to are in the process of developing financial management education programs, or sponsoring their own credit unions. All Saints Catholic Church has had a credit union for more than 30 years to serve its members and employees.
Texas Commerce Bank is the most accessible to the neighborhood. They have a program called "Banking at Work" in which they send a representative out to a business to explain bank procedures and financial services, hoping they can recruit new, employed customers. They would be willing to present a similar program to a community group, or help develop a similar program, once we could define better our needs. They do have someone who does this in Spanish.

Substance Abuse Programs

Vision of Hope, Inc. is a resident facility for women seeking help for their substance abuse problems and their children. It is located in the immediate neighborhood of the new meetinghouse.
AA. While there are already numerous existing AA groups meeting in the area, there are two popular time slots for which there seem to be no AA meetings: 5:30 p.m. meeting time on any week day (an "after-work" meeting) and an 8:30 or 10:30 a.m. Saturday morning meeting time. There are three Al-Anon groups meeting in the area: The Heights Groups, The Northwest Unity Group (Oak Forest area), and the Grupo Central (Spanish-speaking, at Airline and North Main). The Heights and Oak Forest groups meet on Tuesday and Thursday nights. The Oak Forest group also offers an Alateen group on Thursday night. These meetings usually provide an area for child care on the premises.

Miscellaneous Neighborhood Resources

MANNA Assistance Office, at 3490 Ella Blvd., is financed by 12 sponsor churches (each member church pays $1/member/year). It works closely with Memorial Assistance Ministries. It offers emergency assistance for rent and utilities. It administers federal grants for transitional housing. It supplies office space to Hunger Assistance, an independent food pantry referral hotline.
MANNA Resale Shop. The resale shop located at MANNA Assistance Office is supposed to help fund MANNA, but it just raises enough to pay overhead. It is a community resource of used items, provided both at low cost and through assistance vouchers.
Clothing. Several centers for helping people in need of clothing were identified in the Greater Heights area, particularly some serving mostly Spanish-speakers.
Cottage industry. Along with the mix of light and medium industry that is interspersed in the neighborhood, there is a rich variety of cottage industries in the area. At least three craftsmen in leather work out of their homes in the immediate area. Although not a cottage industry, one of the prevailing industries in the area is landscape architects and nurseries.
Shady Acres Civic Club. Planning Committee has decided that the Meeting should join this organization.
Heights Ecumenical Association. New organization.
Numerous small churches are located in the neighborhood, many of which do not have facilities beyond those needed for worship.
Sculpture. The sculpture entitled Mindless Competition, by Houston artist Paul Kittelson, is on the south side of 24th Street between North Durham and Beall.
Lillie B. Wright and Nellie Bombey Park. In addition to the school yard at Holden Elementary, there is only one small city park in the immediate neighborhood west of North Durham between 22nd and 23rd Streets. It includes a playground and basketball courts.

Questions:

Could the Evangelical Friends Church help? Does the Spanish language congregation need a meeting place?
Does the Meeting want to add Spanish signs to the property and begin translating our meeting brochure into Spanish?
Would the Meeting want to report in the newsletter some of the opportunities for service in the new meetinghouse neighborhood so that members could be aware of them?
Does the Meeting want this committee, or some other group or person, to continue compiling information, names of contacts, and phone numbers as a helpful resource for networking or referrals?
In what form will we report our findings to the Meeting?
Is there other information this report brings to mind which would be helpful to the Design Committee?