Greater New Haven needs to be a place of opportunity for all residents

More than 500 community residents recently gathered at The Community Foundation’s annual meeting to hear Amy Liu, director of the Brookings Institution’s Metropolitan Policy Program, describe what our community can do to promote more inclusive growth in Greater New Haven.

This interest in inclusive growth is a reflection of our times. Expanded economic output and low unemployment speak to a U.S. economy that is performing well overall, but that is leaving too many people behind.

While neither inclusion nor growth is a new challenge in our community, today they are both increasingly urgent. In this time of widening inequality and deepening inequity in the United States, the work of inclusion has never been more important in Greater New Haven than it is today. The same can be said for the work of economic growth. Connecticut is now paying a huge price for being one of the slowest-growing states in the country. At The Community Foundation, we see this through the lens of the state budget crisis and its devastating impact on our local nonprofit organizations and the people they serve.

Our challenge is clear. According to Brookings, during the decade from 2006 to 2016, the New Haven-Milford metropolitan area ranked 74th among the nation’s 100 largest metro areas in economic growth, 74nd also in prosperity as measured by the wealth and income produced by our economy, and 61st in inclusion as measured by how broadly the benefits of growth and prosperity are shared. Unfortunately, the trend lines are not positive, as Greater New Haven’s rankings over the fiveyear period from 2011-16 are even lower.

To achieve inclusive growth, our community needs to prioritize innovation, invest in skills and training, and strengthen transportation connections to regional employment centers. But inclusive growth is not about programs; it’s really about a new way of thinking. Our community needs to think of growth and inclusion as mutually reinforcing. We need to adopt new measures of economic success that include broadbased opportunity. And we need to create a new dialogue in our region about shared opportunity by bringing together the growth advocates and the inclusion advocates.

Inclusive growth in Greater New Haven will also depend on changes to state policies. To accomplish this, we are working with other Connecticut community foundations to create and advance what we will call the Connecticut Urban Opportunity Agenda.

Since 2010, through New Haven Promise, our community has made a major investment in the post-secondary education of our most accomplished young people. Many of these young people are now out of college and more are graduating each spring, and many of them are eager to build their lives here and to contribute as productive and engaged citizens to the community that has so generously supported them. Retaining this talent — so critical to our future — will depend on making Greater New Haven a place of opportunity through inclusive growth.

Now more than ever, Greater New Haven needs to be a place of opportunity for all of our residents.