Neighboring Podcast

Part 2 of a 5 part series where we interview each of the 5 neighborhoods we’ve invited into a comprehensive research projects NeighborLink is facilitating in 2019. Our desire is to learn what makes a healthy neighborhood, healthy. Each of the 5 Fort Wayne neighborhoods have unique socio-economics, demographics, geographic influences, and levels of neighbor engagement at the association level.

Lyndsay and Charlie, two residents of the Williams Woodland Neighborhood, join us for a conversation about their neighborhood. They spend time describing their neighborhood, some of the projects they’ve been able to accomplish successfully, and a lot of reasons what they think adds to the health of WWPN. One thing is for sure, WWPN has strong social connection among neighbors, which impacts their ability to accomplish as much as they do. 

I’m particularly biased about WWPN because my family lives there and we love being in this neighborhood. We decided to move into WWPN about 11 years ago after determining that proximity matters, and if we’re going to be intentional with integrating our desires for being active in the community we serve in more fully, then we should really consider where we live. We didn’t do this alone or even necessarily choose WWPN on our own, we did this with another family. We knew that at least we’d have some friends in this new neighborhood. What we quickly found out as we were looking for the right house to buy in the first year, that there was a thriving neighborhood full of people that wanted to more people to join them. We met so many neighbors while we looked for a house and felt relationally connected without even living there. We HAD to buy a house there and we couldn’t imagine living anywhere else.

As you’ll hear in the podcast, that’s true for Lyndsay and Raul as well as Charlie and Nancy. You can’t be out on the sidewalk during good weather days looking at homes to buy in the afternoon or evening without being approached by a number of neighbors eager to introduce themselves, tell you about the neighborhood, and encourage you to buy that place you’re looking at. That’s truly special and not all neighborhoods have that. As Charlie and Lyndsay discuss, this spirit in WWPN goes back 30-40 years as the generation before us made intentional decisions to live there and begin this culture of social connectivity, neighborhood pride, and creating strong initiatives to create the space they wanted to live in. Many of those neighbors that moved in a generation ago are still there and as active as ever right alongside all the young families that have moved in. For several family units, the kids of the generation before are now raising their own families in WWPN.

An additional thing that WWPN has that a lot of other neighborhoods don’t is an annual holiday home tour event that draws people from all over Fort Wayne to tour its historic homes. This event generates a sizable revenue in which the association uses to fund events, incentivize homeowners to make beautification improvements, and common area improvements such as historic street signs and the flower baskets that hang from them during spring and summer. A historic neighborhood generating revenue through an event is not a new concept and not exclusive to the neighborhoods that we research, but it very uncommon in general and does have an impact on various aspect of neighborhood health. Any time there are resources to be spend on behalf of the neighborhoods, neighbors are going to show up to share their opinions on what they should be spent on.

Williams Woodland is a small historically designated neighborhood located just about a mile south of downtown Fort Wayne. WWPN was an early suburb that developed in the late 1800s to the 1910s with some infill that happened over the decades following. The homes range from smaller bungalow style to traditional four square homes to grand victorian homes surpassing 5,000 sq ft. There were measures taken 20-30 years ago to change zoning to reduce the number of rental properties although many still exist. There is a wide range of ages of neighbors and is becoming a go-to neighborhood for younger families looking to raise their families in the central core. With the hotter real estate market in our area, move-in ready homes are usually sold before they even hit the market and the ones on the fringes are being picked up by neighbors with the income to invest in preserving the home to make sure its ready to last another 100 years.

My wife and I really love our neighborhood and couldn’t imagine living anywhere else. It has been interesting to watch the neighborhood develop over the past decade and see our property values go up significantly in the past two years. We aren’t sure we could afford to buy here if we hadn’t moved in when we did, which creates a lot of conversations on the impact of generification and how we as neighbors are or aren’t contributing to that. It will be interesting to see what happens in the next 5-10 years and see if WWPN expands beyond its current smaller bounders in an effort to support neighborhood growth to the north or south of us as the demand for downtown housing continues to increase.

Part 1 of a 5 part series where we interview each of the 5 neighborhoods we’ve invited into a comprehensive research projects NeighborLink is facilitating in 2019. Our desire is to learn what makes a healthy neighborhood, healthy. Each of the 5 Fort Wayne neighborhoods have unique socio-economics, demographics, geographic influences, and levels of neighbor engagement at the association level.

Kay and Bailey, two residents of the North Highlands Neighborhood, join us for a conversation about their neighborhood. They spend time describing their neighborhood, some of the projects they’ve been able to accomplish successfully, a new event that went extremely well in 2018 at a brand new park they helped make happen, and some of the challenges of getting neighbors connecting, informed, and active.

Kay is a long-time resident of over 30 years and has been the active president for a long-time. Kay and others have advocated for and helped make some of the most comprehensive infrastructure projects happen in their neighborhood that we’ve not seen in other neighborhoods. Between street and sidewalk improvements, safety measures with the police, and the conversion of an old school into a public park. They have a lot to teach other neighborhoods about how to work with local government in order to improve your neighborhood.

Bailey and her young family moved into North Highlands less than a decade ago and have been getting more actively involved in the past few years in a more organic and neighbor-to-neighbor way. Bailey works hard to facilitate the social connectivity of the neighbors through more engaging conversations on modern communication platforms, asking for help with even the smallest of needs such as whether anyone had any tomatoes left from fall harvest rather than running to the store, and making sure neighbors know who to reach out to if there are issues. Bailey is growing in her leadership and desires to help create the neighborhood that her family and neighbors want to have.

North Highlands is a relatively smaller neighborhood located just about a mile north of downtown Fort Wayne. The homes are of average size between 1200-2200 square feet and remind you of a very early suburb in terms of street layout and common age of housing stock. They have the highest median income of any of the 5 neighborhoods we’ve researched and have the least amount of racial diversity. Residents tend to be a bit older as it’s a great starter neighborhood for younger families and a great place to downsize and retire. The smaller housing sizes make it hard for growing families to stay in their homes without feeling the size of their home closing in. North Highlands is a very popular downtown collar neighborhood and has homes turn over relatively quickly when on the market. NeighborLink volunteers helped over 100 homeowners in the zip code of North Highlands in 2018 and spend quite a bit of time in this area.

We’re looking forward to our next phase of the project, which includes a two-hour workshop with neighbors.

I’ve been actively wrestling with the tension between the intersections of life, vocation, and purpose for the past 15 years. The traditional ideas of where you draw strong lines between work, life, and your personal pursuits in order to find “balance” have never really made a lot of sense to me, especially in the past decade. It became expected that work push into personal life when we all started getting laptops and cell phones. Life presses into work when you’ve got kids, an old house, or a family member’s funeral. And, no one should stay working a job that doesn’t contribute to your mental and spiritual well being. We can’t all have “idilic” jobs, but we certainly can begin to find environments where work, life, and personal pursuits can be better integrated.

When I met Sam 18 months or so ago, I saw another young professional working in a mission-based organization that was organically connecting all those dots. She was working a job she loved and brought professional fulfillment. She was integrating her husband, Lee, and her social network into her job through events and functions. And, because she has a more outgoing and inclusive spirit, was inviting others on the fringe of her social network into her social life. I noticed this last summer when Sam, Lee, and their circle of friends would make plans to go to a local park on a Saturday evening to play soccer, hangout, picnic together, and put it out via their social media that anyone is welcome to join them. Sam talks about that being just an organic part of their lives rather than a deeply intentional act, but that it is the spirit that has come from regular intentional acts over time.

When Sam and I discussed this before sitting down for this podcast, the conversation quickly led to the role of personal development. That in order to become the people that we want to be or create the environments that we want to be a part of, that it is vital to choose learnings, experiences, and accountability to become better versions of ourselves. If we want to be better employees, friends, athletes, neighbors, or grow in our versions of spirituality, then we have to choose it. Some times those are hard things or we have to make it harder to truly grow from them, but they’re always worth the effort. Sam is a really fast runner and even as an adult uses goal setting in her running to grow her character that has impact in other areas of life. Personal development is so important.

I’m really encouraged by Sam, her husband Lee, and several others that I know are part of Sam’s social networks that are choosing lifestyles and jobs that require them to integrate life, purpose, and vocation rather than attempting to keep them separate. I’ve been learning that true fulfillment and happiness are coming from this integration both personally and within my family and it seems to be the best way to live.

Sam would attest that boundaries are still required and while integration leads to health in some ways, it can also push in where we need to say no. The “right way” is a personal decision that comes from being more mindful and present where you’re at, wherever that may be, and from a position of investing in your personal development. You can never go wrong from working on yourself. It’s the only thing you can control in life.

This! This Story! This is one of my greatest hopes for those that volunteer at NeighborLink and for those asking for help. Authentic connections between individuals that move from a transactional experience towards a relational one. That’s it. Where it goes or how long it lasts is not as big of a deal as the fact that it has the opportunity to happen. We simply want neighbors to connect and get to know one another to form a mutually beneficial connection.

Mary chose to get involved at NeighborLink, looked through the projects with help of her friend and NL staff member, Lyndsy, chose a project, and happened to connect to Mrs Kolde, who needed some housekeeping help. Mary says in the podcast that the first time helping Mrs Kolde lasted for several hours as she cleaned and Mrs Kolde shared parts of her story. That conversation has led to dozens of mutually engaging connections since. Mrs Kolde is as interested in getting to know Mary as Mary is Mrs Kolde. They share a love for beautiful environments, telling descriptive stories, experiencing the world around them, and helping others. Mrs Kolde has a long history of being active in her neighborhood, various organizations, and she still shovels snow as far as she can in either direction of her home as she physically can at over 80 years old. Mary certainly helps Mrs Kolde with some tangible needs like housekeeping, but I’m sure Mary would share how Mrs Kolde helps her with her things as well.

I can’t urge you to listen to this podcast enough. We have dozens of other stories of how volunteerism has led to relationships like this one. Not all relationships last, nor should they, but they should be attempted. Any connection works like any other relational connection. Life happens for both parties involved, the relationship gets disrupted, or becomes out of balance. However, what’s important from this story to me is how open Mary was to intentionally connecting with the person she set out to help. Mary was certainly going to get to know the person she was going to help while she served. It just happened in this case that Mrs Kolde met her with similar enthusiasm. In the brief hour we spent together, it was remarkable how kindred their spirits seemed to be from what I could pick up on. Is this relationship perfect, not sure, but I suspect that it’s as perfect as any friendship is or could be. They all take work and a mutual desire to work out. But, it’s exciting to me to see happen. This kind of connection gives us energy at NL because it’s bringing life to both people.

One last thing that I loved about this story is the connection between Lyndsy and Mary. Mary and Lynsdy share about it in the podcast, and I think it’s also an important part. Mary talks about seeing the energy Lyndsy gets from being a part of helping others through their ongoing conversations as being a motivator for choosing to volunteer at NeighborLink. It was a reminder for me to be aware of what’s getting my friends attention and what’s bringing them joy. Maybe the way to find joy in my life is by joining them in what’s bringing their joy. Maybe you could take that lesson as well and invite yourself to join your friends in their efforts as a pathway to finding your own way.

There are far too many interesting people that we get the privilege to meet at NeighborLink. I wouldn’t have imagined meeting someone like Mrs Kolde any other way nor Mary. Both incredible women living ordinary lives with great intention to be the best neighbor they can be. Your neighbors are incredible, get to know them any way you can.

I’ve had more conversations with Tim Hallman on the role of the “Church” or Christians in neighborhood and community development than I think anyone else (besides my wife). These aren’t depressing, negative, no-hope kind of conversations that are all too easy to slip into when you’re talking about things you feel like you’re not making much ground on. They’re the hopeful, strategic, affirming kind of conversations that always end up with us seeing something new in our work that leaves us encouraged and optimistic that we’re making progress.

This is a testament to Tim’s character and his love for others. He doesn’t let us stay where we’re at and reminds us that God is already at work and we’re just trying to find out where, and join Him. What I appreciate the most about Tim’s is his humble acknowledgement that this is his journey just as much as it is anyone else’s. So, Tim and I have been on a shared journey for the past decade as we do our best to help be connectors of people for the sake of loving each other through interdependent relationships that teach us about God’s love for us. Usually that means we’re serving, repairing, talking, and anything else that requires us to actively participate in making things new or better.

Tim pastored Anchor Community Church for almost 20 years before becoming the Christian Emphasis Director at the YMCA of Greater Fort Wayne. Anchor is a small congregation in the heart of a downtown Fort Wayne collar neighborhood that has been on the cusp of either slipping deeper in poverty or rising into an upper middle class neighborhood for a long time. Tim’s vision was to create a church that was more of a reflection of the neighborhood rather than a place that is primarily made up of people that commute in and out. As that began to take place, it started to get uncomfortable for many as transformation often does, and the church began to change as did everyone in it. During Tim’s time at Anchor, it made significant strides to be a diverse community of believers and become the reflection of the neighborhood that he desired. Tim shares more about his experiences with this shift in the podcast.

Tim responded to the Lord’s calling a few years ago to pursue a new career and allow him to go deeper into this realm of being the connector, pastor, friend that we all need and to help lead this loving our neighbor journey. Tim is now at the YMCA, leading the staff in spiritual development initiatives as well as being tasked with the monumental and really exciting effort of being the connector between YMCA members and the community. With over 40,000 members in the greater Fort Wayne area, the potential impact of more aware, engaged, and developing “neighbors” on the communities they live in is endless. Tim is organizing all kinds of service opportunities for YMCA members with the goals of increasing volunteerism, personal and spiritual development, and greater relational connectivity between members. We talk at length about this new role and the opportunities that exist here.

Tim and I could talk for hours and I hope we can do another podcast together. There are so many questions and areas of local church missionality that we could cover and process together. The types of conversations Tim and I are having, we know others are having as well. If we want to be good neighbors for the sake of becoming better neighbors, then we need to keep having these kinds of conversations that take the emphasis off of “fixing things” and on just being present and open.