Leveraging Anchor Institutions to Foster Healthy Communities

Leveraging the capital and human resources and economic output of anchor institutions presents a significant opportunity to advance the Fourth Plan’s goals of equity, health, prosperity and sustainability by addressing some of the most persistent socioeconomic challenges that perpetuate poverty and inequality across our region: access to jobs, quality housing and healthy neighborhoods.

RPA’s research shows that 80 percent of a community’s health is shaped not by health care, but by socioeconomic and environmental factors strongly affected by planning and public policy. Creating a cohesive anchor strategy for the region together with partners on the ground in New York, New Jersey and Connecticut has the potential to become a powerful driver for improving community health and access to opportunity in underserved communities across our region.

This policy brief describes the mutual benefit accrued to both anchor institutions and their local communities when meaningful dialogue and strong partnerships are formed and sustained. It outlines a framework for collaboration between anchors, municipal government and local communities and provides an implementation strategy for institutionalizing this collaboration.

Anchor institutions are large nonprofit or public institutions that are rooted in place and, because of their ownership, customer base and missions, are unlikely to move to another location. These institutions have a vested stake in local communities by virtue of their land holdings, capital and physical investments and historic ties. Over time, many anchor institutions have grown to become the largest employers in their communities and have substantial economic footprints in terms of their hiring and purchasing power.

However, this economic footprint has not always translated to economic improvement for their surrounding communities. Many institutions have historically been inward facing, physically and operationally disconnected from their neighbors. Often they have thought of their business functions as separate from their missions rather than potential assets that could be leveraged for the mutual benefit of both the institution and the surrounding community. In many cases the neighborhoods surrounding anchor institutions face physical, economic, and social disinvestment, and residents and businesses have limited relationships with the institution. This disconnect is a missed opportunity for both anchors and neighborhoods.

Engaging large, mission-aligned employers with community and municipal leaders provides an alternative to traditional attraction-based approaches to economic development. It unlocks the creative problem solving potential of these institutions and their local government and civic leaders to address growing disparities in health and wellbeing, wealth and income, environmental quality, education, and other quality of life disparities between communities and populations that are often only a few miles apart. By supporting access to affordable housing, inclusive business ownership, and other wealth building opportunities, anchors can foster healthy communities, complementing their existing community benefit efforts and deepening the social and economic impact of their other investments.

The economic output and human capital resources of anchor institutions and their local communities represent critical and often untapped local assets that can be leveraged to sustainably and equitably address both community and anchor needs. There is significant opportunity to further engage anchor institutions around how their core business operations, capital investments, and other internal assets can be connected to their long-term strategic planning and overall missions to improve community well-being. By connecting the people, knowledge, physical spaces, and economies of anchors and local communities to one another, there is a clear opportunity to establish a mutually beneficial and self-sustaining local ecosystem.

Across the country, many anchor institutions are moving in this direction and working to shift their hiring, purchasing, and investment practices to better meet the needs of community members in their surrounding neighborhoods. By linking available jobs and existing procurement opportunities to nearby residents and businesses, they are strengthening the local economy and increasing the economic multiplier of limited dollars, a benefit for all parties.