Middle Neighborhoods

MIDDLE NEIGHBORHOODS

The national Middle Neighborhoods Initiative brings attention to neighborhoods that are home to middle and working class families, and hover on the edge between growth and decline.

Modest investments in middle neighborhoods can sustain these communities as safe, affordable places that offer a high quality of life and access to opportunity.

NCST coordinates Middle Neighborhoods activities in partnership with NeighborWorks America, including conducting research on neighborhood dynamics and developing policy proposals for supporting and investing in middle neighborhoods.

Join us for our next webinar, or sign up to receive the monthly newsletter. Both highlight best practices from the practitioners, researchers, and policymakers who are influencing middle neighborhoods throughout America.

WEBINARS, BEST PRACTICES AND NEWSLETTERS

The Middle Neighborhoods Initiative offers free webinars on key topics to help strengthen and protect the middle neighborhoods in our communities.

July 30th - Block Makeovers as Catalysts for Change in Middle Neighborhoods

July 30, 1:30-3:00 pm Eastern

REGISTER HERE

Block makeovers – coordinated improvements to one block during a single, week-long event — can create powerful visual impact, build community, and trigger spinoff investment in similar projects throughout the neighborhood. Because the improvements are clustered, their individual impact is leveraged to create a ‘wow’ result, and with intentional strategy they can inspire others to:

make DIY improvements with access to tool lending libraries as available;
apply for bigger home repair and improvement loans and grants;
engage with neighbors to organize block cleanups and social events; and
learn new home maintenance skills, such as power washing, landscaping strategy and simple carpentry.

Successful block makeovers require thoughtful planning and coordination. Choosing the right block, soliciting the participation of property owners and residents, securing resources and volunteers, and managing the timeline of multiple projects are key to a smooth week. In this webinar, hear from three practitioners about their experience with block makeovers: why they do them, the results they’ve seen, and tips for event planning and execution.

Guest panelists:

Amber Lynch, AICP, Executive Director, Invest DSM

Justin Tirsun, VP of Neighborhood Investment and Community Engagement, Chattanooga Neighborhood Enterprise, Inc.

Amber Jones, Community Engagement Specialist, Community Action Partnership of North Alabama

Moderator:

Marcia Nedland, Organizer

Middle Neighborhoods Community of Practice

Previous Webinars

To support your work in Middle Neighborhoods access to previous webinars and related PowerPoint slide decks about Middle Neighborhoods can be found here

Best Practices

Take a look at some Best Practices that highlight the work of our partners and members

Newsletters

Our newsletters highlight the work and research that is being done to protect Middle Neighborhoods

COMMUNITY OF PRACTICE

The primary purpose of the Community of Practice (CoP) is to facilitate peer-to-peer learning and technical assistance opportunities among practitioners working to stabilize and strengthen middle neighborhoods. The CoP also provides input and support to researchers and policymakers support. The CoP’s work takes place primarily through newsletters, webinars, peer introductions, site visits, focus groups, and direct communication on the CoP listserv.

Grow and Support the Community of Practice

Join the Listserv	This is the most direct way for CoP members to interact with each other. Share your questions and successes.
Submit an article, news item, or resource idea	Send submissions for the newsletter to Marcia.
Host a Middle Neighborhoods 101 webinar	Host a webinar for your organization or community to help them learn more about middle neighborhoods and start a discussion on local opportunities. We will help you plan this event and deliver the webinar.
Submit an idea for a webinar	Send useful webinar topics to Marcia.
Host a convening	Host a virtual or in-person meeting with other CoP members in your region to discuss a particular issue, or create a regional action agenda. We can help you contact your peers and plan your convening.
Create an interest group	We can help you convene a group of CoP members by area of interest to brainstorm and solve related topics. Past convenings have included city government representatives.
Help build policy	Represent middle neighborhoods in local policy discussions. We can help with talking points
Propose and conduct a session on middle neighborhoods	Propose and conduct an in-person or virtual session on middle neighborhoods for conferences or local meetings for groups you participate in. We’ll help with the proposal, recruiting panelists, planning, etc.

Community of Practice Resources

Middle Neighborhoods members publish reports, research, policy briefs, and articles—and conduct webinars and events—to help equip communities around the country with the information they need to begin or refine interventions and investments in middle neighborhoods. Resource materials are available below.

Please feel free to link to any of these publications and share with others, but do not upload the publications to any other public website or forum without written permission of Middle Neighborhoods. For additional information or to request such permission, contact Marcia Nedland

Join the CoP Google group

Engagement Chat Recaps

During our quarterly Engagement Chats, participants talk about best practices for engaging with community members in middle neighborhoods and brainstorm useful problem solving strategies. Click here to explore some of the outcomes from those conversations

DEFINING MIDDLE NEIGHBORHOODS

Middle neighborhoods are a category of neighborhoods that are neither clearly healthy and thriving, nor overtly distressed. Millions of middle- and working-class families in cities and suburbs across the nation call middle neighborhoods home. But despite their prevalence, and the energy being poured into stabilizing and revitalizing them, there is not clear agreement on how to define middle neighborhoods. What exactly are middle neighborhoods? And how can we reliably identify middle neighborhoods in the communities where we live and work?

To shed light on how to define middle neighborhoods, the NCST has created a nationwide map that allows users to explore the communities where middle-income households live.

The map allows users to select among seven different definitions of middle neighborhoods, each of which identifies middle neighborhood census tracts within metropolitan areas based on their median household incomes. The seven definitions are:

City Test #1: Census tracts with median household incomes between 60 and 100 percent of the region’s largest city’s city-wide median household income
City Test #2: Tracts between 80 and 120 percent of city-wide median
National Test #1: Tracts between 60 and 100 percent of national median household income ($60,293 in 2018; $51,914 in 2010 )
National Test #2: Tracts between 80 and 120 percent of national median
Regional Test #1: Tracts between 60 and 100 percent of regional (MSA) median household income
Regional Test #2: Tracts between 80 and 120 percent of regional median
Regional Test #3: Tracts between 100 and 160 percent of regional median

We plan to update this map over time, and include data from earlier decades. If you have any suggestions, questions, or comments about the map, please reach out to the Middle Neighborhoods initiative. The current map is the release version 1.0.

Data sources: All income, social, and economic data from 2014-2018 and 2006-2010 American Community Survey (5-year ACS) Estimates. Each census tract was assigned to an MSA using FHFA’s 2020 Low-Income Areas file. City-wide incomes are based on the MSA’s Principal City identified in Census Bureau’s March 2020 Principal Cities of Metropolitan and Micropolitan Statistical Areas file. It is important to note that ACS home price and rent data is respondent estimated.