Circles NWA is celebrating the graduation of their second cohort of community members tonight at Genesis church in Fayetteville. Kyle recently spoke with two of the driving forces behind the nonprofit that is seeking solutions to poverty and a lack of affordable housing.
The last time I spoke with Ana Hurley, the Big View Director for Circles NWA, it was right before a community-wide discussion about affordable housing in northwest Arkansas was going to take place at the Fayetteville Public Library. More than 300 people participated in person or online. The event was led by people who have first-hand experience with the housing shortage, identified as “circle leaders” by the organization…and in the audience, she said, people who can affect policy change.
“Also, we had realtors, developers, bankers, people who kind of have a stake in what happens next in the story,” Hurley said. “So we're really pleased with the diversity of people we had show up.”
The founder and executive director of Circles NWA, Christina Williams, said the group wants to enable different perspectives to examine issues such as affordable housing. She said they flip the conventional model often used to discuss such matters, giving the leader or expert role to people who are experiencing some of the most stress associated with such challenges
“Our program participants who are low income but are working struggling to make ends meet,” Williams said. “So especially now that housing is on the rise and so they have a unique perspective when it comes to housing. Being renters, being people that are struggling with you know, a few $100 increase per month is a lot for them. And so they had some unique stories to tell.”
She said the discussion earlier this spring at the Fayetteville library touched on several aspects of the region’s housing. Williams said the exchange centered on something she said has developed in northwest Arkansas, an intersection of a lack of availability of affordable housing and a lack of protections for renters in Arkansas.
“Intersection there is like this place of extreme stress for our circulators for people like them in the community, and especially how when you don't have those protections, people are really right for being taken advantage of,” Williams said. “And so we actually ended up talking a lot about the extreme imbalance in landlord-tenant laws in Arkansas.”
Circles NWA’s mission includes raising awareness about an imbalance between landlords and tenants in Arkansas law. Public events like the one at the library are one way to move the conversation forward. The 18-month cohort classes, like the one graduating this week, are another. Circle leaders are paired with volunteer allies. The program is designed to increase upward mobility for individuals and families by building relationships across socioeconomic lines. Christina Williams said she stays in touch with participants from the first cohort as they move to new jobs, complete levels of education, and, just as importantly, she said, develop as community leaders.
“That's something we really emphasize in circles,” Williams said. “They get 18 months of being a leader of their group with their allies, and then we give them opportunities like this housing event to step out and be a community leader. And so to see the growth in that—it's really a key part of our mission. You know, those who are closest to the problems we believe are also closest to the solutions.”
The third cohort of leaders and allies is already six months into their program, and a fourth is scheduled to launch in the fall. Ana Hurley, the Big View Director for Circles NWA, said both the work with the cohorts and the one-time events like last month’s public conversation about housing can, in tandem, move a region closer to more interest in tackling big issues like affordable housing head-on.
“Part of what we did at the library event,” Hurley said. “When it was ending, everybody had a puzzle piece, and if they were interested in sort of like staying part of this conversation, they could write their name on the puzzle piece that's actually going to be turned into a piece of artwork by one of our circle leaders that will be on display in the coming months. And that was to symbolize them being part of this community committment. So we're really hoping to build this community that is going to show up not just to learn about the issue but also when something comes up. Maybe there's a new tenants' rights policy that comes up to show support for that. Maybe there's an opportunity to support affordable housing zoning changes. So I hope that it really mobilizes the community and that we can see us just as the big NWA community all coming together to sort of see these changes for both the tenants' rights and the affordable housing.”
And executive director Christina Williams said big topics like housing and poverty have to be approached with a community-wide attentiveness. That’s what was symbolized with the puzzle pieces handed out at the public talk.
“Each person has a role to play in this,” Williams said. “And it can be small, it can be large, but even just the way we think about the housing crisis, the way we're talking about it to our neighbors, you know, we talked about the idea of NIMBY, not in my backyard, even just like articulating that sentiment can set us back as a community and so being aware, being willing to collaborate on what are solutions that are good for everyone, not everything that's first proposed is necessarily the best thing for our community. So you know, just the whole idea that we all have a piece of the puzzle that will put be put together to form some, I think real solutions that can help this community.”
Ozarks at Large transcripts are created on a rush deadline by reporters. This text may not be in its final form and may be updated or revised in the future. Accuracy and availability may vary. The authoritative record of KUAF programming is the audio record.
