Our approach is indirect, but it has proven to be effective. We propose rebuilding every inch of the South and West sides where violent crime is concentrated, where the overwhelming majority of innocent victims are harmed, and where the small minority of violent criminals roam free through more than one third of the city. The city will become less violent when the abandoned buildings and vacant lots, now numbering in the thousands, are occupied by scores of new affordable homes and decent affordable apartments. We intend to take back every square inch of the neighborhoods now dominated by benign neglect and sensational headlines about violent crime. The presence of hard-working homeowners and renters will do what no policing strategy or service program can ever do: It will create a new majority of peace-loving neighbors who will enforce different standards of behavior where chaos has held sway for so long.

This is not a theory. Our sister organization in East Brooklyn pioneered this approach beginning in 1983 in neighborhoods as violent, as challenged, and as written-off as Lawndale or Englewood are today. And before you mistakenly assume that New York had more money than Chicago, think again. In 1983, New York City was barely beginning to recover from near bankruptcy and was under the control of a Municipal Assistance Corporation that oversaw its budget. And yet, in spite of all of that, then Mayor Ed Koch made the unprecedented decision to commit city capital funds to the large scale affordable housing effort called the East Brooklyn Congregations/Industrial Areas Foundation “Nehemiah Plan.”

If you visit those neighborhoods today, like we have, you will meet homeowners — all African-American and Hispanic, most originally from the immediate area — who have lived happily in their brick townhomes for 35 years, raised their kids, paid off their mortgages, and retired with a pension and equity to spend on travel and ongoing education and recreation.

What’s stopping Chicago from adopting this indirect, but proven, approach?

The first impediment is a failed theory. The failed theory that has prevailed in Chicago is that higher-income individuals and families will either fully gentrify declining neighborhoods or need to be a significant percentage of the new people who buy or rent there. We’ll leave aside the transparent racial bias in this theory and just say the obvious: It has failed utterly to improve the south and west sides.

The second impediment is a tendency to try to please anyone and everyone. Instead of systematically rebuilding from solid anchors, block by block, the pattern has been to put a cute little project in every ward. That might please local political and foundation types, but it has done nothing to improve large swaths of the south and west side as a whole and has had zero impact on the levels of violence and crime. This is a transaction-driven approach, not a strategic and critical mass approach.

The third impediment has been not just money but, focused money. Rebuilding the South and West sides will take real, significant money. Only if people sense that they are buying or renting into a massive turnaround, not an isolated little development, will scores of thousands of bus drivers, teachers, retail workers, hospital employees and others decide to stay in the city or return from the distant suburbs. The city and the state must not only dramatically increase their funding but focus their funding — not scatter it around to silence critics who have no strategy for getting to critical mass for the working families of this city. The business community needs to kick in as well. A major developer told us recently that Chicago’s arrangement with major builders is ludicrously weak — not demanding a real percentage of affordable units in new buildings and not demanding actual payments into the ARO fund which is seen as a joke.

If you don’t believe us, we’ll take you to Brooklyn and show you what can be done here in Chicago; if only there is the will, the focus and the wallet to make it happen.

Richard Townsell is executive director of the Lawndale Christian Development Corporation. Amy Totsch is lead organizer for United Power for Action & Justice.