The Fix Isn't In

It's a barrier that few government programs, no matter their ambition, can overcome. In order to succeed, COO would have to change an entire culture.

"If I've got a 21-year-old, and he's been in that culture for 21 years, it's going to take more than 12 months to change him," says Patton. "You can't just throw him in a job and say, 'You did great.' You've gotta be with him, you've gotta call him, almost babying him until you wean him, because he's so dependent on the social system."

But Jones is the sole staff member of COO until the program expands this fall, and such one-on-one social work is beyond the program's scope. Because the initiative doesn't track individuals, even programs that initially seem successful may have little long-term effect.

This spring, Jones tried to recruit a team of locals to found a small business that would take over landscaping at Alice Griffith (ostensibly via a no-bid contract with the city). The Bayview Business Resource Center offered to train them, but after several weeks of false starts, the group gave up. In the meantime, Alice Griffith lawns sprout weeds, and piles of garbage bake in the sunlight on the street.

For COO to work, government and citizens must meet each other halfway, but the sides seem to be confused as to where that halfway point resides.

"It's a put-up-or-shut-up relationship," Jones told residents at a recent community meeting. "If you want a small business, we'll facilitate it. If not, don't say that you do."

Whoever bears responsibility for the results, what has happened inside Alice Griffith this year falls short of the mayor's statements. Until things change, exasperated residents will answer questions about COO and its director with a simple, curt response — of the sort several residents have offered during the past few months: "Man, fuck Dwayne."

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By now, Jones is used to the criticism, and so is MOCD director Fred Blackwell, who works closely with Jones on the COO program.

"We get cussed out, laughed at," says Blackwell. "Even city staffers — people who've been here for a long time, seen department heads come and go, seen mayors come and go — are highly skeptical. They wonder if [COO] is just a PR campaign for the mayor or something he's doing to pacify folks in these communities."

Criticism aside, the program has great potential, and has already seen some success. Rather than requiring residents to travel to service sites, for example, the Alice Griffith Opportunity Center has brought government and nonprofit programs directly to their neighborhood. The project's occupants praise the summer camp, the repaved streets, and the dozens of donated computers, handed out free of charge.

Jones has convinced local foundations — including the William and Flora Hewlett Foundation, the Evelyn and Walter Haas Jr. Fund, and the Annenberg Foundation — to synchronize their grants with city priorities: Of the estimated $4 million spent thus far, about $1 million was private money. The program will soon implement a projectwide "business plan," created by the San Francisco wing of the Bridgespan Group, the nonprofit spinoff of Boston-based consulting firm Bain.

Any government initiative, especially a long-term project, will have its share of setbacks. Jones and Blackwell don't expect widespread change until the program has been running, fully funded, for several years.

But this nuanced view is lost in Newsom's public events.

"We always have a back-and-forth on [the press conferences]," Blackwell says. "The mayor wants people to know about good things being done, but at the same time, Dwayne [Jones] and I are cautious about having press conferences, because we're aware of the level of cynicism out there, the feelings out there around that skepticism. So we've tried as much as we can to fly beneath the radar screen."

In the past year and a half, Newsom visited Alice Griffith to announce a "top-to-bottom overhaul" of the project, to launch Communities of Opportunity, to announce the Opportunity Center opening, and to announce the Wi-Fi network. He also held an Arbor Day press conference at Gilman Playground, just outside the development's gates. Next week the mayor and ultra-marathoner Dean Karnazes will participate in a joint promotion, the Communities of Opportunity/SF Connect 1st Annual Stadium to Stadium 5-Mile Run/Walk.

Newsom's presence draws much-needed attention to an underserved community, but these announcements and events do little for residents like Carmen Mack. In the year she's lived at Alice Griffith, burglars have broken into her home four times, once stealing her washing machine. She's spent months trying to get the Housing Authority to fix a leak that leaves a dark stain across her kitchen ceiling. Her neighbor Gloria Johnson, a great-grandmother, has spent years begging for the repair of a toilet leak, which leaves a stalactite of peeling ceiling material leaking onto her stove — despite what Jones calls a "solid and genuine partnership" between the Housing Authority and the mayor's office. (Jones is working on a nascent program to train and hire residents to do repairs.)