Publications

A California Mayor’s Challenge Leads to an Innovative Resource-Pooling Strategy: “Sticking Together” By Anne Stuhldreher, Stanford Social Innovation Review, Fall 2004

Veteran antipoverty activist Maurice Lim Miller had never met Oakland Mayor Jerry Brown. So when Miller’s home phone rang late one night in 2000, he was surprised to find one of America’s best-known municipal leaders on the line. Brown was fuming. Oakland’s programs to help its poor become more economically self-sufficient weren’t working. A recent city department request for $10 million looked to him like “poverty pimping,” creating 125 jobs for City Hall bureaucrats but barely benefiting the youth it was supposed to help. Frustrated, Brown dialed information to find Miller, the longtime executive director of Asian Neighborhood Design (AND), founded to help improve housing standards in San Francisco’s overcrowded Chinatown and other Asian enclaves. Miller’s antipoverty strategies were so successful that President Bill Clinton praised them in his 1999 State of the Union address. The mayor issued a challenge: If Miller didn’t have to play by the existing rules, could he do better? Could he craft a strategy that would truly help people permanently exit poverty?

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It Takes an Affinity Group to Tackle poverty, by Michael Bernick, San Francisco Examiner, June 28, 2001. [PDF]

A main theme of Gov. Gray Davis’ anti-poverty efforts has been the use of California’s extra-governmental institutions: churches, neighborhood associations and volunteer networks. Now a provocative anti-poverty initiative, “200 Families Out of Poverty,” is emerging in Oakland that takes the neighborhood approach to another level, emphasizing the ability of low-income families to work together and pool resources, outside of government.

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East Bay Families Find Pathways Out Of Poverty From the East Bay Community Foundation’s Connections, Fall 2002, V6, N1

Over the past year a group of low-income West Oakland families have begun re-envisioning themselves and finding new pathways out of poverty.

Instead of individuals struggling to get above the poverty line, they see themselves as a strong, capable group with skills in the arts, teaching, counseling and holistic healing. Over the past year this new vision has turned into a business plan for a neighborhood cultural center where their strengths can be showcased and a better income can be earned.

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