Hi, my name is Nat Lange! I am a 3rd year Environmental Studies + Politics combined major. This semester I have been working at the Community Development Block Grant (CDBG) office with the City of Walla Walla. Every year, the US Department of Housing and Urban development grants cities across the country with funds to develop thriving urban communities for low- and moderate-income people and communities. Walla Walla started receiving an annual CDBG grant in 2013. Projects funded by CDBG in our community over the last ten years include a new playground at Fort Walla Walla, a picnic shelter at Washington Park, new LED alley lighting in several neighborhoods, rental home refurbishments, and sidewalk repairs. This semester, my job has been to assist CDBG Coordinator Lydia Caudill in developing a new Consolidated Plan for the next five years of the program. A Consolidated Plan outlines the priorities and goals for the next five years of the city’s CDBG program, and an annual Action Plan is developed at the beginning of every year for more specific actions the City will take to achieve the goals set in the five year plan.
Writing a new Consolidated Plan is a comprehensive process that forces a city to fully understand the housing and infrastructure issues faced by low- and moderate-income people in the community. Before developing any goals for the future, the CDBG office gathers data from the US Census, American Community Survey, and other local surveys. Most of the work I’ve been doing this semester has been sifting through this data to find important indicators and areas of growth. After this stage, we reach out to community stakeholders like mortgage lenders, large employers, broadband providers, and groups engaged in housing support like homeless shelters and churches. We also hold community hearings to solicit opinions from the rest of the community. Lydia also posts her email and phone number online for feedback, suggestions, and concerns if community members are unable to attend the public hearings. One of the big takeaways from this process is that for a city government to successfully address community needs, it has to do a huge amount of data acquisition, both through surveys and community outreach. The meat of development work is not done inside dramatic city council meetings full of people arguing, it happens over countless hours of spreadsheet work, detailed stakeholder meetings, and open community hearings at the library.
Experiences like Nat’s are made possible by the Whitman Community Fellow Program, which allows organizations of the Walla Walla Valley region to apply for the opportunity to create an unpaid, part-time fellowship addressing some of the area’s social, economic and cultural challenges. To learn how you could become involved, contact us at ccec_info@whitman.edu.