January 20, 2011

Community Development Training Institute

The Chandler NRSA has take a portion of our CDBG monies to create a plan for the Chandler Street Corridor utilizing a group of grad students from Clark calling themselves the Community Development Training Institute (CDTI).   Here is a link to a description of the work that they are doing.  

Just recently I posted a request wondering where the results of the HUD audit are???   The ironic thing is that CDTI's  other project  happens to have be with the City of Worcester to help them  "...to develop forms and checklists to ease compliance. Over the course of the year CDTI consultants will submit a preliminary report to identify and summarize all major issues of compliance derived from five cities HUD IG reports, an interim report to provide recommendations on processes found to be weak in other IG reports, and a final report with draft forms and checklists for ease of compliance with HUD regulations.""

It goes on to say "HUD IG audited 13 HOME programs in 2009 and the extent to which their findings differed from HUD’s guidance was alarming.""    This begs the question was Worcester one of the 13 "alarming" HOME programs audited in 2009?   If so can we see the results of this audit?

7 comments:

Sprout said...

I like the sound of the Clark group - that has potential!

Signman said...

Maybe we can get someone from the city council to request it.

Paulie's Point of View said...

we are tightening up the report a wee bit to be more reflective of the business community needs..streetscape a huge part of it..less resiential community involvement but only because so few in the neighborhood seem genuinely interested..we are staying away from social engineering and working with what we have control of...this being said there has been a representitive of the Buddhist community which is getting larger in the VOP at many of the meetings

Jahn said...

I read this post yesterday & wasnt going respond ........but......
Pualie beeat me to the punch with 2words that i was thinking of too...."social engineering" are 2 words that popped right out at me when I read teh CDTI mission statemnt or blog or what ever it was that i read.

It's great to see Paulie back and also great to see his brain thinks like mine too (on ocassion) :).

The other item that popped out at me was their survey(?) showing that VOP businessmen do no trust their neighbors and/or customers and the VOP residents do not trust the businessmen.

Immediately I thought of the 11 letter S word (s+++++++ing and then I thought of all the landlords who get stiffed on rent in that area.

My big issue here is why do we need to pay Clark students for their services?...esp. if there's is also academic credit to be had from thsi endeavor? I got no problem paying em for their paper clips and clip boards.........IMO anything more is out of line.

I suggest to you that this project will be more to do with sociology and less to do with economics. iN spite of this, if their sevices were free, I'd accept them, too.

I always postulated that most all of Clarks invovlement in Main South is to use the area as a social labratory as well as to get taxpayer money to fund a new boys club, extensive new low income housing, new facades, Crystal Park Makeover, and the like and Main South CDC is their partner in crime. The crime being money stolen from me via taxation to fund their immediate environs.

Jahn said...

I actually drove Chanlder st yesterday afternoon twice.

Could it use new facades... surely. Will it always be a poorer urban district....most likely.

I applaud everyones efforts and it's easy for me to criticize........but I just dont see how a signifcant # of transient shoppers are going to be drawn to that area? I mean we cant even get them downtown......if you guys are successful....what about parking???....

<<<<<<<<< expecting a verbal thrashing here.......... :) maybe I deserve it :(

Nick said...

Jahn's jealous that he's not getting paid for his comments! Invaluable though it may be, the body of work in question is so voluminous that any patron would be out of it quick, I fear.

This is good work, and it seems fine to me that it's business-oriented. Other areas of this city have seen business-led growth/renewal.

I think there's hope for Paulie's immediate hood (if not, say, Golden Pizza's hood) b/c Park north of Chandler is nice, as is Chandler west of Park. Not to say there aren't some great VOP places already (there are), but I think their traffic would increase if the area can shake association with the Vendome and Kirsch, and build off of the good things happening on Park and/or the nice area of Chandler just across Park.

Jahn said...

NICK OK LOL :)

<is looking for a clear concise Village of Piedmont report outta Clarkies....knot voluminous ON POINT & yew no what they say about verbosity :) thanx zero Social enginnerring.......we leave the engineering to WPI......not .....yew no what they say about verbosity :)

thanx

Alos did I rea d in teh report that somehow the Chandler dsitrict extents across Main . to southbridge St & maybe beyond to Kelley Square

And speakign of that general area.........a shout out to Erik K and his effort to save that Junction Block district old factory building........I love old rehabbed factories as long as they are not loaded down with low income tenants