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Policy Framework
Over the past two decades, poverty has become increasingly concentrated in the nation’s inner cities, while many employment opportunities — especially entry-level jobs for people with limited education and skills — have relocated to the urban periphery. Roughly eight million residents in the urban communities where poverty is most entrenched do not have access to jobs that would give them a toehold on the economic ladder.
An innovative project targeted at poor urban communities, the Neighborhood Jobs Initiative (NJI) integrated employment services with personal and institutional networks and facilitated access to work supports in an effort to connect low-income people to jobs in or near the cities where they live. Operated from 1998 through 2001 by community-based organizations in neighborhoods across the country, this place-based program — designed as a companion to the Jobs-Plus Community Revitalization Initiative for Public Housing Families — was managed by MDRC and developed by The Rockefeller Foundation, the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development, the Chase Manhattan Foundation, the Urban Institute, and MDRC.
Agenda, Scope, and Goals
The theory behind NJI was that raising employment in a poor community to the level in the surrounding metropolitan region would lower social and psychological barriers to self-sufficiency and economic mobility. Based on this premise, NJI drew on promising approaches and ideas from the fields of community-building and community development while distinguishing itself from initiatives with similar goals through its focus on employment as a catalyst for neighborhood change.
Although the NJI neighborhoods were allowed to tailor their approaches to local circumstances, most of them:
- Adopted “best practices” in employment and training services
- Collaborated with other private nonprofit organizations and with public agencies engaged in workforce development
- Involved neighborhood residents in activities to promote and support work
- Improved access to financial and other work incentives
Design, Sites, and Data Sources
MDRC helped the community-based organizations that operated NJI work in partnership with other local institutions in providing employment-related services and assessed the feasibility of implementing a place-based employment initiative in a neighborhood (as opposed to a housing development or a public assistance delivery system).
High-poverty neighborhoods in these five cities took part in the project: Chicago, Fort Worth, Hartford, New York, and Washington.
Most of MDRC’s work on NJI entailed learning about the program’s implementation from and providing technical assistance to the initiative’s community-based operators.
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