Winter 2000 — Volume 1 Issue 2

Many scholars and housing activists view market forces and housing affordability as mutually antagonistic: Either a community remains affordable for its low-income residents, or it attracts capital investment, development, and growth. If there is a way out of this fundamental contradiction, Boston's Dudley Street Neighborhood Initiative (DSNI) has found it.

One of the city's poorest neighborhoods for many years, the Dudley Street neighborhood is a multi-ethnic, 1.5-square mile area southeast of downtown Boston. Not only has it dealt with the usual problems of inner-city disinvestment, but it is also burdened with the aftermath of landlords resorting to arson to collect insurance from worthless real estate. The accumulation of empty lots — 20 percent of the neighborhood — became dumping grounds where illegal garbage transfer stations operated in broad daylight.

But mounting activism in the 1970s and 1980s forged a community identity as residents mobilized. Organizers secured the support of local foundations to commission a neighborhood survey and develop a strategic plan, with the goal of building both affordable and market-rate housing, commercial developments, and recreation facilities on the neighborhood's vacant land.

Over the next decade, the strong organizing base of the DSNI created a unique, resident-driven model of planning. This is in stark contrast to the conventional path through which city government develops a master plan before seeking community input. The DSNI is recognized as an example of bottom-up mobilizing that succeeded in getting attention from local and state government, local and national foundations, and a federal government that has grown enamored with local self-help "best practices."

DSNI became the first nonprofit in the country to be granted eminent domain authority over abandoned land within its boundaries. Since then, it has transformed more than 500 of the 1,300 vacant parcels into affordable housing facilities with playgrounds, gardens, and community facilities.

"That legal structure that allowed us to do this is not our real power," said John Barros, executive director of DSNI. "Our real power base is the influence we have as representatives of the collective opinion of a community, and that is what allows us to move on behalf of the public good."

The ability to represent the entire community has created the mechanism for DSNI to operate as a partner with city agencies on issues of economic development in a way that no single individual can.

Barros said that because DSNI is an organizing and planning community-based organization rather than a community development corporation (CDC), it is not seen as having a development agenda that would create a conflict of interest with the city's neighborhood development department. "We are actually the entity in the community that organizes and plans for the development that the CDCs are doing. I don't think a CDC can run that process," he said. "We have been able to show that we can bring the community together to create a master plan for this area's build-out and to set guidelines that the city will follow."

The vision for DSNI was to create an "urban village" with mixed-rate housing. But the organization realized that retaining tight community control over development would not be enough to prevent the kind of gentrification that displaces residents. To address this, they created a community land trust called Dudley Neighbors, Inc., that uses a 99-year ground lease to keep the land available for affordable housing by restricting resale prices. Of the 500 housing units DSNI has built, about 170 of them belong to the land trust.

"When you buy into these land trust homes, you are buying not with the expectation of making a profit-although you do get the benefits of homeownership including tax benefits-but it is for you to live in a community versus just buying an asset," Barros said.

While the resale price increase of these trust homes is capped at .05 percent per year, the stability of the neighborhood and improved services is driving up the market rate of nearby housing. People are able to buy trust-land homes in the low $100,000s, while other housing in the same area of Boston costs triple and quadruple that range. Although none of the units are rental, the next phase of development under consideration now is a rent-controlled development on trust land that could ease the tight rental market in the area.

The economic revitalization that has taken hold of Dudley has changed the landscape, the income mix of residents, the quality of housing, the type of neighborhood-serving businesses, and the quality of life in terms of crime and community. "If you go by indicators of a changing community, then it's been gentrified. But it's been gentrified within, mostly. And it has created wealth of community for residents."

Barros agreed with the characterization of Dudley Street Triangle as a "just right" neighborhood. "I agree with the notion that it is a neighborhood that is very attractive to live in and yet affordable at the same time. It has a convenient location, lots of services, a sense of social capital, or collective efficacy, where people work together to solve problems. There is a real sense of unity here, so people feel good about living here."

He also recognizes the precariousness of its "just right" status. "There are a number of forces that can derail, really quickly, this neighborhood's" careful development plans, Barros said. "Some of our attractiveness is also a burden."

The appetite of the private market is the strongest force that threatens Dudley's "just right" status, he said. "In this booming real estate market, we've got developers coming in here all the time. So there is the pressure from the private market that is on a timeline that they need in order to be profitable. But the process of engaging residents to make sure development meets all the community guidelines often causes delays that jeopardize their profitability," Barros said.

To deal with that, DSNI has a memorandum of understanding with the city to "strongly consider" the rulings of a resident-led Sustainable Development Committee that reviews development plans to ensure they meet community guidelines. The city has never contradicted the committee's ruling, Barros said.

"Residents have become so savvy in terms of development and quality of housing. The design and review process has made the quality of housing get better and better. And they have become efficient with the process, so when private developers come in here they realize they must go through that, and the process is put into their pro formas."

Commuter traffic that threatens to congest Dudley's streets and parking lots is another problem that DSNI has to deal with that could affect the neighborhood's market value. Because of its proximity to downtown and Fenway Park, Dudley gets commuters cutting through its streets, causing traffic and parking congestion. "Part of the way we deal with problems like these is to engage residents to get a body of different groups talking. But when we talk about issues, we want relevant information versus what we think off the cuff, so we commission studies. That's what we are doing right now on the traffic issue. We need information to form an accurate picture and find some solutions or alternatives. Then we need to raise the awareness of the complexity of the traffic situation and how it relates to economic development and quality of life issues," he said.

While the private market is impeded by these deliberative processes, the economic condition of the community in the long run benefits, he said. And so does the city. "The city gets a stronger neighborhood that is better for its residents, that actually does a lot of work the city can't do because it doesn't have the capacity to be on every corner," Barros said.

The neighborhood improvement shows in the increasing price of housing, in the decreasing rates of crime, and by the vocal expressions of how residents feel about living in the neighborhood.

"Our confidence in remaining 'just right' is a cautious confidence," Barros said. "We don't get caught up looking at economic development outside of environmental justice. We don't look at economic development outside of human development, or think of transportation outside of this social capital. We know that if you know your neighbors, you won't fly down your street at 80 miles an hour. We don't get monolithic about the way we see things."

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Prepared by Catherine Toups, Fannie Mae Foundation, with excerpts from "Ten 'Just Right' Urban Markets for Affordable Homeownership."