Following is a letter addressed to Visitacion Valley Task Force acting chair Joel Tate from San Francisco Urban Institute.

Dear Joel:
From my perspective one of the Valley's most pressing needs is for precise, detailed information about the Valley's residents: what they think, how they feel, and what they want. Just in terms of demographic information, data from the 1990 census is too old to be useful at this end of the decade. We do not know very much about those who have moved into the Valley since 1990.

The Valley also does not have detailed information about the needs of former residents who will soon return to the Valley as residents of the new Heritage Homes and Britton Street units. The Geneva Valley Development Corporation is in touch with all those returning residents and can gather information on their current situations, future plans, and needs, but, as far as I know, there is no plan to coordinate that information-gathering effort with any Valley-wide information-gathering project.

Also in the next several years the Valley will experience an influx of residents 65 years of age and older who will occupy units in a new senior housing complex on Raymond Street and additional residents in Sunnydale when the Housing Authority refurbishes those units. It would be useful for planning services and thinking about the Valley's future to develop a profile on who those new residents are likely to be and estimate their needs.

I would like to encourage (and contribute to) a comprehensive information-gathering project in Visitacion Valley. As I imagine it, the goal of such a project would be five fold:

1) To give the residents a very clear view of who lives in this neighborhood and what they need so they feel empowered to speak with a more unified voice to funders and service providers.

2) To give residents a clearer sense of who their neighbors are so they have a firmer foundation for cross-cultural dialogue of the kind that will soften the racial and cultural diversions that I still perceive within the neighborhood.

3) To increase the neighborhood's capacity to take care of itself by providing it with added tools and expertise to make the best decisions possible about its own future.

4) To enhance partnerships between the community, its funders (primarily city and federal agencies). it's allies and advocates, including the university and CBOs such as CAA.

5) To provide accurate information to those who fund services so that they can make well informed decisions about the mix and level of services most appropriate for the Valley and where those services should ideally be located.

I believe a survey process could be designed to meet all the objectives listed above. It would, in my view not look anything like an "academic study" in which survey researchers from outside the community come to collect information. Instead, it would be a process in which the neighborhood itself gathered the data. In that context university faculty, students and others might be useful in establishing guidelines for information gathering and analysis, but the process would be carried out primarily by community leaders and residents and would remain in their control.

Below is a sketch of how such a project might be structured. Since planning and implementing the project would require considerable effort, I believe it would require a funder. I assume most, if not all, the funding would be used to compensate those members of the community who take primary responsibility for planning and implementing the project. In my view it is crucial that the residents and community leaders who participate be compensated for work including planning the project.

STAGE I: Initial Design and Leadership Selection
Community leaders who wish to participate in the planning process along with whoever funds the project would choose a project design team comprised of community leaders and whatever consultants they believe are necessary. That design team would develop a detailed proposal and budget. Perhaps those who designed the project would also assume responsibility for implementing it. Certainly, early in the process a leadership group would need to be chosen for project implementation.

STAGE II: Initial Discussions
A. Project design leaders would meet with other community leaders and residents throughout the Valley to share the nature of the project and its goals, develop support, gather ideas for the most efficient ways to implement the project, and identify a larger group of residents and community leaders who could assume key roles in the implementation phases of the project.

B. Project leaders (now including a larger group of community participants) would meet with partners, funders and stakeholder. Partners and funders would include: The Mayor's Office of Children, Youth, and Their Families, the Mayor's Office of Community Development, the Department of Human Services, the Private Industry Council, the San Francisco Housing Authority, the Mayor's Office of Housing, the Department of Public Health, the Commission on Aging, and the Department of Housing and Urban Development. If appropriate, private foundations who are supporting service providers in Visitacion Valley might be included. In these meetings, project leaders would share information, define the ways in which partners and funders would benefit from the project, seek advice, seek support, including supplementary funding and staff help on other forms of support. It is also important that those agencies who fund services in Visitacion Valley agree to use the survey data and follow-up recommendations of project leaders to help shape their funding decisions. Such buy-in by traditional agency funders is crucial, since the survey process and analysis must lead to real changes in the allocation of resources. Otherwise, the project is likely to look more like an "academic" exercise and an opportunity for the community to identify and articulate its needs and interests.

C. Project leaders (including community participants) would meet with neighborhood stakeholders, including service providers, churches, schools, and other organizations with a stake in the neighborhood's well being. Primary goals would be to inform the stakeholders of the project, seek advice and buy-in.

D. Project leaders would meet with whatever group of technical advisors they wish to consult with about the survey process. If the university is involved, this is an area where I would expect faculty and students could help, not only in designing the survey instruments and process, but in working along side the community leaders to gather data and analyze it.

E. With respect to the kinds of data that might be gathered, I might add that there is a growing body of evidence to suggest that a neighborhood's image of itself can be enhanced by surveys that focus on community assets as well as community needs. Focusing only on needs can heighten residents' awareness of the neighborhood's limitations without providing information about its strengths and existing resources. In that sense, it would be more accurate to describe the survey process as a ritual of celebration and fostering of community spirit than a research project.

STAGE III: Project Review and Redesign
Based on initial conversations, project leaders will re-examine the project and adjust its design.

STAGE IV: Survey Implementation and Analysis
Surveying will include focus groups, informal assessments, door-to-door canvassing, whatever mechanisms the project leaders believe will serve the goals of the project. While the survey process should be sufficiently formal to produce reliable information, the process should be designed to enrich the participants and augment their sense of community and mutual exploration. Surveying should be done in as many languages and dialects as necessary to ensure that all residents who wish to participate can be surveyed successfully. If the surveyors include students, faculty or other participants outside the community, survey teams should always include and be governed by their understanding of their neighborhood. The surveying may best be done in miniature survey areas, essentially block by block.

Data analysis should be a participatory process. Those who wish to participate in the analytic process will be encouraged to do so, and the nature of the analysis should be made as transparent as possible to all interested participants. Where computer tools such as GIS mapping and statistical software are used, an effort will be made to train residents to understand the process, participate in the analysis and use the tools. Such informal training, if appropriate, may be followed up with more formal classes on survey research taught in neighborhood locations as part of larger education, training and employment programs. Wherever necessary, the efficiency of data gathering and analysis will be subordinated to opportunities for intra-community dialogue, education, training, empowerment, community building, and information sharing among partners, funders, stakeholders, and community participants.

STAGE V: Post Survey Follow-up
Groups of project leaders, community leaders and technical assistants will create a summary of the information and analysis to be shared with partners, funders, stakeholders, and other interested parties. Wherever appropriate the information and analysis will be accompanying by specific recommendations for changes in funding levels, mix of services, or  other choices made by funders with input from the neighborhood.

Project leaders must make a concerted effort to see that recommendations accompanying the survey results lead to changes in the allocation of funds by city agencies. To the extent that city agencies and other funders committed themselves to the project at the beginning, they should be prepared to respond at the end. Project leaders must be able to refer to clear and explicit agreements forged at the beginning of the project to ensure that recommendations that flow from the project will weigh heavily in the decisions made by funders when the results are known.

Within the neighborhood, the information and analysis would be shared in group settings--some mono-cultural, some poly-cultural--as a means of stimulating debate about a range of issues related to services, short and long-range community goals, inter-group communication, leadership, shared decision-making, and so on. Some of these issues are currently debated in meetings of the Visitacion Valley Task Force and many ad hoc meetings on housing and services; but the discussions are, in my experience, sporadic and do not always include complete cross-section of the community. If the survey and follow-up processes are successful as an empowerment exercise, they will help establish in the community many of the skills and techniques for on-going self-review and amplify the neighborhood's capacity for inter-community communication, decision making, and equal-status partnership with its funders.

Gilbert Robinson, Professor
Associate Director
San Francisco Urban Institute

Support for Change of Police Boundaries

Following is a letter sent to San Francisco Police Chief Fred Lau from the Visitacion Valley Task Force requesting support for a change of boundaries for the Ingleside Police District which affects Visitacion Valley, and for additional police to patrol within the proposed new area.

Dear Police Chief Lau:

According to the Visitacion Valley Task Force neighborhood survey, safety is the number one issue in the Valley for all our residents.
Therefore, on behalf of the Visitacion Valley Task Force, I would like to commend Captain Rick Bruce of the Ingleside Police Station and Captain Sylvia Harper of the Bayview Station for their outstanding efforts to address the issue of safety in our community by proposing an extension of the Ingleside District boundaries to East Bayshore and North Mansell. Such an extension of boundaries would put Visitacion Valley primarily within one police precinct which would make the residents in our community feel safer and make it easier to know which police station to call in case of emergency.

Thus, the Visitacion Valley Task Force urges the Police Commission to support the above-noted extension of the ingleside District boundaries and to provide additional police, including bilingual officers, to patrol these extended boundaries. Such visible police support would make our community stronger, safer and more united.

We look forward to continue working with both Captain Bruce and Captain Harper and their dedicated officers.

Respectfully,
Joel Tate
Task Force Acting Chair