REPLACEDLINK

"A conservative is a liberal who's been to prison."

I look back on my experience as a VISTA volunteer as an exciting, interesting time trying to improve the lives of a few poor people. Based on my experience as a volunteer and later as a VISTA Recruiter, however, I have come to the conclusion that VISTA is a very poor anti-poverty program. It may have some benefit as an education in civics or a make-work program for the unemployed, but a close, honest look at the program reveals it to be ineffective.

I joined VISTA in 1988. I left college with a desire to "help people." I didn't want to get a conventional job. I was more motivated by late-night TV commercials showing starving African children. I wanted to give those poor folks a steaming bowl- of oatmeal and have them hug me in gratitude.

I found a program in western Massachusetts that helped people build houses and granted small business loans They also dabbled in regional planning, tenant organizing, and innovative ways of building housing (solar heating, having tenants buy their public housing units).REPLACEDLINK Their mission statement was "to build affordable housing and create jobs while preserving rural culture and geography."

I was very excited to go there. I wanted to pound nails, to do something concrete for people, to help alleviate some of the suffering and unfairness of the world. It was simple: I had energy and time and there were homeless and poor families without homes. We were a perfect match.

In my two years there I never touched a hammer. And I still question whether I did any good.

There were five other VISTAs at the project. Two older volunteers answered the phones and typed up correspondences. They also collected rent checks from tenants of a boarding house we ran. Another volunteer was an eighteen-year-old who kept the mailing list up to date and fixed the computers. Another volunteer worked to get funding to help buy a building and turn it into a co-op for low-income people. My job, initially, was to find and interview local families struggling to afford a place to live. I would then try to get articles about these people published in the local paper to build public sentiment for more funding of affordable housing. The total grant given to the organization was $65,000. (VISTA Volunteers cost, on average, $13,000 a year.)

My supervisor was an energetic man who was willing to try anything to give more economic power to low-income people. He was very concerned with organizing political support and trying to get people to the next meeting. He genuinely cared for us and tried to give us work that we were capable of and interested in.

My VISTA work became more interesting over time. It is still the focus of my resume.

In my research, I had found a fair number of "moderate income families" (making between $30,000 and $45,000) a year who did not make enough or did not have a down payment to buy a house. The organization I worked for did not have a way - or did not want to- build a large number of homes affordable to these folks. But a private developer (incidentally also the "King of Retread Tires") came to us with a novel idea.

In the climate of the recession, he could find carpenters to work for less money, buy large tracts of land, and build modest homes very quickly. And, since he could build these homes for much less than they would otherwise be worth, families would not have to come up with a down payment. The difference between the selling price and what the houses were worth would be regarded as the down payment.

We started with six homes and eventually built 22. My job was to attract low-income families and get them financing. I was very proud of my efforts and the program received a lot of attention, including an article in the Boston Globe.

As my familiarity with banking regulations grew, I was able to run another program granting small business loans. With the help of a consultant, we tested a small business lending model used a lot in the third world - "peer lending."

Some poor people run very small, informal businesses like doing laundry, making clothes, or backyard car repair. But banks usually don't grant loans to them because the amounts are too small and frequently their credit is poor.

We ran a program, however, that put businesses in groups of five that would meet weekly to support and advise each other. We would give an initial loan of $500 to each member with the understanding that no member would get a subsequent loan until everyone in the group paid their loan back. The idea was to create a situation where the success of each loan recipient was contingent upon the ability of the group to support each other and "guarantee" the loan.

We made 19 loans to businesses like an Army/Navy surplus store, small restaurant, and a furniture reupholsterer When I left VISTA all loans were current.

After I finished my term with VISTA, I would tell perspective employers about the concrete successes that I was involved in. At job interviews, I touted VISTA as a wonderfully productive experience. But privately I harbored feelings of doubt and disgust at what I knew actually happened... the value of these programs was more dubious.

I was initially proud of the construction of all of the new houses. The organization I worked for was only able to build six houses in its previous eight years. I, as a young VISTA, helped build 22. But on closer analysis, there was only one family of those 22 who would have been unable to buy a house in the near future. Most were very young families (below 28) who had jobs paying cumulatively over $33,000, but had not saved much money. If they started saving, they could have afforded a house in a year or two. Meanwhile, we removed them from the conventional housing market, denying realtors potential future business... Realtors who - through taxes- paid my salary.

I did not build houses for anyone who couldn't already change their behavior and get one themselves. I question whether the one exception (a couple of factory workers) make the entire investment of funds in VISTA and the subtraction of future business for the realtors worthwhile.

The loan fund fared worse. After I left, and the loan amounts started to rise, most of the loans failed. People realized that they was no penalty for just taking the money and running... and that's what they did.

Upon researching the backgrounds of the loan recipients, I found that most were not poor. Very few of the real poor had small businesses, and those that did were not interested in getting a loan, much less being financially tied to four others.

Instead, we gave loans to losing businesses that were dying a natural death and to progressively minded people who were attracted to the idea of working with others "Sixties style." They may have had a spouse with a job or didn't need the money. They wanted to be a part of this interesting thing. We also attracted people who sold aloe vera juice in a pyramid scheme. They were looking for customers in the group. We even attracted a guy who upholstered furniture but refused to do the cushions.

These were failing businesses, but you would never know it from our brochure. We had tested an exciting new model of economic development that will help the poor pull themselves up by their own bootstraps. These businesses would grow and provide jobs. We were able to expand the program... if we only had more money. ("Won't you please make a tax-deductible donation to...").

The programs I worked on as a VISTA sounded great. But upon closer inspection they were ineffective.

As a VISTA Recruiter, I became interested in seeing if my situation was unique. Over the last three years, I have worked with over 180 VISTA projects. I can count less than five where the efforts of the VISTAs were integral to the success of a program that improved the lot of low-income families. One such project used VISTA Volunteers as translators for recent Asian immigrants; another had VISTAs build houses and raise money in post-hurricane Miami. These projects enjoyed a combination of good leadership, motivated clientele, a supportive community. The VISTA Volunteers were given specific, concrete assignments that contributed to the success of the programs. But they are in the minority.

Most VISTA Volunteers do clerical work in organizations whose impact is questionable. Anyone who visits projects knows that VISTAs end up doing a lot of clerical work, hoping to contribute in some way to the workings of the non-profit. Since the host organizations are essentially receiving free labor, their expectations and demands of the volunteer are usually fairly modest. It is common to see volunteers not working very hard or whose year of work can be summarized as "spoke to several community groups." Much to my chagrin, these are the very same criticisms conservatives have of national service as a "make-work program."

The way in which decisions are made to grant VISTAs to organizations also contributes to this problem. Rather than research where VISTAs can have the most impact, grants are given based on trying to obtain the broadest possible collection of politically popular programs (e.g., health care, illiteracy) while maintaining an even geographic distribution by state and between rural and urban areas. An organization that fulfills these requirements and creates job descriptions with acceptable activities will eventually get funded. In addition, increases in the number of volunteers serving on projects are not based on the need for more manpower, but rather the need for VISTA to get more bodies in the field. Many small projects are too cumbersome to manage so states develop larger projects - whether or not they are more effective. I've witnessed many occasions where project directors were asked to increase their numbers and find something for these people to do. VISTA program development is driven by politics rather than program effectiveness.

Changing the lives of the poor is hard enough without trying to do it with people making $6,000 a year. Funneling this money via poor programming and subjecting it to the politics of a government bureaucracy only increases the odds of failure. As we look to "put 20,000 volunteers into the field in 1995" (as President Clinton has said), I argue that we are going to waste a lot of money, create a lot of make-work, and contribute to the current state of cynicism regarding poverty programs.

I think we need to be more honest about what national service programs can accomplish and what their failings are. If we are going to spend taxpayers' dollars and/or take funds that could be used for other things like building roads and providing scholarship money, we need to be able to demonstrate the efficacy of our programs. Otherwise we are helping perpetuate the ills of our society.

Most people I speak with, however, assume that there is an intuitive logic to how successful national service programs can be. We have a large number of people (young, old, unemployed) whose energy could be channeled into constructive projects. These folks could repair those dilapidated houses on the bad side of town or teach people how to read or teach kids to stay off of drugs. A close, first-hand look at existing national service programs like VISTA, however, shows that their efforts more frequently support lethargic, ineffective programs that have little left to show for their efforts.

The other VISTAs at my organization provide good examples. The two who did clerical work barely seemed to work a twenty-hour week. In planning their work, it was not so much a matter of what we need them to do, but what can we find them to do.

The VISTA in charge of the mailing list eventually developed such bad working relationships with the other staff people that he finished his -unremarkable- year and left. He was an example of what I later learned was "hiring from the heart," organizations giving out VISTA jobs to low-income residents because they needed a job, not because they had anything to contribute.

The VISTA who organized a tenant-owned cooperative still travels back to western Massachusetts to solve emerging problems in the cooperative. The tenants seem unable or uninterested in managing the property. The project itself was very expensive and continues to struggle. They have a difficult time finding new tenants who meet income guidelines and are interested in this special arrangement.

Very little of this, of course, appeared in the organization's brochures or VISTA reports.

I left VISTA to become a recruiter in the hopes that my project was the exception. I planned to travel around to different projects and focus on working with ones that were successful. Unfortunately, my experience is that my project was probably one of the better VISTA projects. In fact, most projects have volunteers involved in superfluous activities within organizations that don't seem to effectively help the poor.

After seeing all of these weak projects, I have become quite cynical about the effectiveness of social programs in general. It seems that, unless you have a very motivated population or very generous financial support or an obvious villain that generates community participation (like an unwanted incinerator), most programs are failing, But unlike businesses, non-profits who fail can point to the difficulties of the job and the necessity that it be addressed. "If we only had more money...."

For me, VISTA was a great experience. But it has left me questioning the justification for spending more money on national service programs.

I challenge any former VISTA Volunteer to tell me that they tangibly improved the lives of poor people, that they were an integral part of effectively helping a significantly large number of people in a cost effective way. I think it would be far wiser to simply hand the money directly to poor people.

It seems to me that former volunteers come to terms with these issues in one of four ways. Some say that money spent on VISTA is surely less of a waste than $400 toilet seats in the Pentagon. It may not be effective, but so what. Others think that if one or two VISTAs out of 100 are doing well, isn't that enough? A third group claims that, if the program were run better, we would see better results. And the fourth group says, "So what, I've got a government job now as a result of my VISTA experience and does it really matter what happened?"

To the first group, I would say that I don't think any waste of money is acceptable. Saying that waste in social program is more benign than waste in the Pentagon is more an expression of one's political leanings that than a judgment of the efficacy of the program.

To the second group, I would suggest that one or two out of a hundred is poor results. The salaries of those 98 failures could have been used to fund scholarships or reduce the deficit. I am confident that those organizations which are so successful could raise funds from local charities to accomplish the activities undertaken by the VISTAs.

The third group, I think, represents a sentiment of the current administration. They want to disassociate themselves from the failed programs of the past and launch "Americorps." Of course it's too early to judge the success of the program. But early policy decisions made by the new administration and structural problems inherent to federally funded service programs make me doubt that things have been corrected.

President Clinton has promised to have 20,000 volunteers in the field by 1995 doing a variety of things to meet "unmet human needs". As I have witnessed the development of these programs, it seems that there is an urgency to fulfilling the 20,000 quota. Note they are not researching where service volunteers can have the best impact; they are primarily interested in getting bodies in the field. I imagine that there will be a lot of idle volunteers, volunteers doing make-work, and volunteers doing clerical tasks, mostly so that this number will be met.

In addition, a federally run service program will also be affected by the political process. Projects will be given to those communities with influential Congressman, being sure to have a distribution that covers rural areas, urban areas, Indian Reservations, all states, a variety of projects. Evaluating the efficacy of the individual program is of lesser concern. (If we found that volunteers are most effective as classroom aides, would we channel the bulk of our funds there?)

The last group is the one with whom I currently work. We are employed to administer the program and paid decent wages. We are able to describe our romantic-sounding jobs at cocktail parties and be perceived as making sacrifices for the good of the poor. Yet, if we are honest, we know that these things are not very effective. We just have well-paying secure jobs running them, and we're not going to say a cross word about them.

To these hypocrites, like me, I have nothing to say but that we are making a living at the expense of productive Americans. That feeds the anger and mistrust that Americans have for government. We should be honest and walk away.

On the other hand, some people in the service movement feel that providing concrete benefits to the poor is important, but a very tall order. One should recognize, instead, the value in giving volunteers the opportunity to exercise their desire to serve as a way to improve a community's general cohesiveness and spirit. That is to say, changing the lives of the poor is indeed difficult but there are people who have a genuine desire to try to help. This program at least gives the opportunity (at fairly low expense) to try. Most of them may fail, but some may not. Their very efforts however, may make our communities feel a little less lonely, less hopeless. Of course, any bureaucracy, any large scale endeavor will have it's failings. That is a fact of life. It is our job to do the best we can in an imperfect world.

As the community activist Saul Alinsky said, "Those who fear corruption fear life."