Spring 2004

The New Planner

Copyright by American Planning Association

Working and Learning in the Streets of Hope:

A Research Assistantship with Nueva Esperanza in Holyoke, Massachusetts

By Chris Holme

In my first few weeks at graduate school, I stumbled into an assistantship that changed my life. Perhaps I was already headed towards a career in housing and community development, with my interest in social equity and my attraction to cultural and ethnic diversity. But it was by no means a guarantee that these interests would develop at this time, especially with the rural location of the University of Massachusetts at Amherst and its mostly white suburban student populace. Also, my department's strength was in environmental planning, not housing, and the one professor who did know something about housing went on sabbatical not long after I arrived on campus. But it all worked out, thanks to my masonry skills, some bad directions, and an office with absolutely no windows.

The director of the university's department told me a few weeks into the first semester that he had a position for me as a research assistant with the economic development office of a neighboring mill town, Holyoke. I contacted the office, established an interview time, and took down directions.

As I drove across the Connecticut River and into the heart of downtown Holyoke a few days later, I was reminded of the city of my childhood, Toledo, Ohio. There were vacant lots the size of football fields, with young trees lining empty streets. Three and four story brick buildings were the dominant building type — old brick buildings (circa 1910, I later learned) with a plentitude of architectural details in brownstone, marble, and intricate corbelling. Many of them were boarded up, and many stood next to empty lots where clearly there had been more like them. There were also industries scattered throughout the area — giant old mill buildings, smaller metal working shops, and some newer metal and warehouse-type buildings.

I saw much more of this part of town than my prospective employers had intended. They had failed to mention a turn halfway through their directions, and so, as the time for my interview drew near, I was instead waiting for the light to change at a corner where a building with a small greenhouse advertised community gardening, small business development, and environmental education. The apparently new building, the small plaza still in construction outside the greenhouse, and the community-oriented services described on the sign impressed me, and I resolved to find out more when I had the time.

I found the location of my interview only a few minutes late, after further reconnaissance of the downtown. The director of the program then informed me that my job would be to conduct a survey of the businesses in the downtown quarter, including the ethnicity of the owners. He said that many Holyoke business owners were concerned that Puerto Ricans were taking over the downtown, and that the data would be useful, for example, in showing those business people that perhaps only a small percentage of downtown businesses were owned by Puerto Ricans. This approach of mollifying the racist concerns of those in the business class struck a hollow note for me, as did the director's emphasis that his primary duty was to increase the tax base of the community. The director also apologized in genuine embarrassment about the state of vacant apartment buildings he had assumed I had passed on my way to his office, oblivious to the fact that I had seen much more of the neighborhood.

As I left the office, I realized that there were no windows anywhere in the entire office. If the ideological conflicts weren't enough to help me decide, the office space sealed the deal — I wasn't working in this office if I could help it!

I returned to the greenhouse on the corner in the run-down part of town later that afternoon, and introduced myself to the director of Nuestras Raices ("Our Roots"), Daniel Ross. I told him that I was from the university and seeking a way to work on behalf of the community. In fact, I found myself useful immediately — a couple of young men were struggling with how to arrange some large stones around the fountain-pool in front of the greenhouse. Because I had spent the previous four years working as a mason, I couldn't resist helping them. Afterwards, Daniel told me that I should contact the housing director of Nueva Esperanza ("New Hope"), which was just down the street.

When I spoke with Housing Director John Linehan, a dual degree graduate (Landscape Architecture and Regional Planning) from my department, I assured him that not only was I interested in conducting research regarding the need for affordable housing in the city of Holyoke, but also that I had considerable first-hand experience with building construction, particularly with brickwork. This clinched the deal, and so my diverse research assistantship with Nueva Esperanza began.

Nueva Esperanza is a community development corporation that was born, like a phoenix, out of flames. In the early 1980s, Holyoke was averaging nearly one arson per week. Oftentimes, property owners were setting fire to their own buildings to cash in on their insurance policies and, simultaneously, rid themselves of the responsibility of maintaining deteriorating buildings. Unfortunately, many buildings were occupied at the time of the fires: a dozen people were killed, and 600 others were displaced. Nueva Esperanza was developed by activists in the Puerto Rican community of Holyoke to fight the arson, and to restore the neighborhood, both physically and socially.

In the ensuing years, Nueva Esperanza often found itself fighting City Hall. The CDC battled with the mayor in 1983 to save a 32-unit apartment building known as St. Martha's from the wrecking ball, but lost. Nueva also became involved in a lawsuit begun by local Puerto Rican activists against the city for destroying 2,550 more apartment buildings than it had created, allegedly in an effort to rid the city of many of its Puerto Rican residents. This case was settled out of court with a promise of funding for affordable housing and a five-year Fair Housing Plan.

On my first day, John Linehan gave me a walking tour of South Holyoke, the neighborhood in which Nueva Esperanza was based. Nueva has used Community Development Block Grants, Low Income Housing Tax Credits, and other funding mechanisms to create 400 units of affordable housing since its inception. Most of these units are in buildings built around the turn of the last century, buildings that are virtually irreplaceable in today's economy. One architect familiar with Nueva's work estimated that it would cost at least twice as much as the cost of rehab to build a new building with the same level of architectural detail and quality. In addition to rehabbing the buildings, Nueva worked with the city to plant street trees and widen sidewalks on some of the residential streets, resulting in a very pleasant, pedestrian-friendly environment.

My tasks at Nueva divided into three areas: research and reporting, project management, and teaching youth. I conducted a housing study for Nueva with two main parts: determining the need for affordable housing in the city, and finding the best locations for rehab or new construction projects for such housing. The study began with the gathering and interpretation of demographic and housing data from the U.S. Census and from the reports and analysis of other organizations and their consultants. I began to realize that determining the need for affordable housing for a single municipality like Holyoke is a rather unscientific business, because people will inevitably adjust if housing in their price range is not available, either by doubling up, or by moving elsewhere.

Holyoke is one of the poorest communities in the state, with 22 percent of families receiving public assistance, compared with a statewide average of 6.7 percent. The city has become a major source of affordable housing for low-income households, with 20.6 percent of its housing units subsidized, and many deteriorating market-rate apartments also available at comparatively low rents. Was the city a victim of its own generosity, as some at City Hall would claim? Had they done too much to assist low-income families with the result that they were now burdened by a crippled real estate market, crime, and severe limitations on city finances? My research suggested that while the city has, in fact, provided more affordable housing than any of the other municipalities in the region, the need for affordable housing has by no means been met. The city's own Office of Community Development reported that almost half of the renters in the city pay more than 30 percent of their income for housing, putting them at great risk of losing their housing. I concurred with the mayor on one thing: The city should not be dealing with these housing issues in isolation. The costs should be borne by the region as a whole.

The second half of the study examined the neighborhood in which Nueva Esperanza had been doing most of its redevelopment work over the past two decades in an effort to identify objectively the most important locations for future redevelopment. After extensive research and community participation through six walking tours of the neighborhood, where residents ranked the properties in the study according to various factors of community concern, I was able to collate the results in the map below. This map also shows the number of buildings Nueva has redeveloped over the years. Further, many properties that were identified as priority locations for economic development were also important from the community's point of view.

Click here for the final priorities map

Meanwhile, in addition to learning about the facts and figures of Holyoke, I was working to help turn over some beautiful old buildings into newly renovated apartments. I helped move lumber from the gutted interiors and I met with contractors as they began to get oriented to the buildings. I also prepared a request for proposals for masonry work on a group of nine three-story brick row houses.

And best of all, as a teacher for Nueva's YouthBuild Program, I got to know some young Puerto Rican people, ages 17 to 22, who lived in the downtown. In the first year, I supervised construction on a part-time basis as these young people were finishing the construction of a new duplex in the neighborhood. The following summer, I taught a couple of masonry apprentices how to repair and build new brick walls on the sites of the row houses and the duplex. And in my second year, I taught YouthBuild students math in the classroom, using examples from their construction experience (they alternate one week in the classroom, one week doing construction on site).

In addition to working directly for Nueva, I also strove to be an advocate for Nueva and the needs of the people of Holyoke's downtown in my interactions at the university and in my department. I made possible a studio project focusing on the Holyoke Community Land Trust's role in the development of homeownership-based housing in the city. City Hall claimed that the HCLT was too slow and too expensive in its production of housing and therefore not eligible for further HOME grants. Our findings showed that there were other, more favorable interpretations available if the city was willing to cast aside a history of antagonistic relationships with this community-based group (in fact, the HCLT evolved out of an initiative of Nueva Esperanza).

I also served on a committee known as the Holyoke Planners Network, which worked to bring community-based organizations together to define a research agenda for the benefit of the community. This was in response to the experience of these groups, and City Hall as well, that universities in the area — including the University of Massachusetts and such prestigious schools as Smith, Amherst College, Hampshire College, and Mount Holyoke — used the city as a laboratory, but failed to work collaboratively with the city to establish useful research questions or to report back their results to the community adequately.

When I decided to focus my thesis on Holyoke's downtown, I spoke with many community leaders about the kinds of research needed and decided to write about Holyoke's abandoned apartment buildings and what could be done to reduce the barriers to rehabilitation of these historic structures. Upon completion of my research, I invited community leaders to my thesis defense. Afterward, I distributed about a dozen copies, at my own expense, to the community-based organizations, the Holyoke Public Library (which now has a special collection of research about the city, thanks to the Holyoke Planners Network), and to City Hall.

I found through my research that rehabilitating abandoned buildings, or buildings at risk of abandonment, was difficult in Holyoke due to four main factors. These were:

• A weak housing market in the downtown

• Lack of financial resources or access to financial resources

• Legal and regulatory barriers

• Social and political conflict within the city

I found evidence that opinions on how to improve Holyoke generally fell into two camps. Efforts on behalf of these two camps have, in effect, cancelled each other out. The first opinion, held by many in City Hall, is that the best way to improve the city is to limit or reduce the number of low-income people in the city. A message that I heard consistently while interviewing residents and officials of the city was that the city already had too much "affordable housing," meaning there are already too many low-income people in the city using federally subsidized housing.

Efforts to reduce the number of low-income residents can be traced to the demolition of buildings funded by the city that far surpassed the production of new and rehabbed units, to lack of effective action on behalf of the city to force landlords to maintain their properties, and to lack of effective action on behalf of the city during the early 1980s, when the city was nicknamed "Arson City."

The other view on how to improve the city was to improve the lives of the people living there, including improving education, housing, social services, small business assistance, and other community development initiatives. While this approach has been moderately successful, it has not gone far in the face of the former approach of discouraging low-income people from living in the city. For conditions to improve citywide, the public and the leadership need to come to terms with embracing a strategy for change.

To conclude, my relationship with Nueva Esperanza has been a vital part of my education. Through my involvement in Nueva's efforts to rebuild and revitalize downtown Holyoke, I learned a lot about how the issues of planning — the regional economy (indeed, the corporate globalization of the economy as well), housing, education, transportation, law, politics, history, migration and immigration, labor and capital, race and class — are all inter-connected. I would not have learned as much in graduate school if I had not had this direct and personal encounter with Holyoke, Massachusetts.

Chris Holme, M.R.P., is a graduate of the Department of Landscape Architecture and Regional Planning at the University of Massachusetts — Amherst. He has served as Chair of the Student Representatives Council of the American Planning Association and has been an active member of the University's Radical Student Union. Currently, he is engaged as an organizer for the Boston Social Forum. He can be reached at csholme@yahoo.com.