After community groups rescue a troubled neighborhood, the area may attract many newcomers—and become expensive. One community shows how to help activists retain the diversity of the towns they work so hard to revitalize.Community development - Massachusetts ; Housing - Prices ; Housing - Boston

Chris Ney

Sally Swenson

English

Research Papers in Economics

Winter  2006 16
Boston’s Jamaica Plain neighborhood embodied many of the characteristics of declining urban
areas across the United States. Years of disinvestment had left a blighted and vulnerable communi-
ty. Nevertheless, many residents refused to give up hope. People of varied backgrounds and
incomes joined forces in an effort to revitalize their neighborhood. 
Today, Jamaica Plain is one of the most sought-after places to live in Boston. With the mission
apparently accomplished, a new mission arises. Many of the neighborhood’s rescuers, who banded
together to form community groups such as the Jamaica Plain Neighborhood Development
Corporation (JPNDC) may not be able to enjoy the fruits of their labors if the area becomes too pricey.
In the mid-1970s,
Beyond 
Neighborhood
Revitalization 
Photographs in this article are courtesy of JPNDC.&Banking Communities 17
This is a common post-revitaliza-
tion concern for all nonprofit commu-
nity development corporations (CDCs),
not just JPNDC. Young college gradu-
ates, teachers, accountants, firefighters,
and nurses are among the workers who
are excluded from settling in many revi-
talized communities. In New England,
the overheated housing market is one of
the greatest threats to economic sustain-
ability of communities.
1
That’s why, in collaboration with
other groups, the 28-year-old Jamaica
Plain Neighborhood Development
Corporation is adapting itself to new
challenges. Its approach may serve as a
model for other communities that have
experienced successful turnarounds.
Today’s mission is to shape the kind of
revitalized neighborhood that people
want their community to be and to
ensure that development is equitable,
sustainable, and resident-driven.
One Neighborhood’s
Decline
Jamaica Plain was long known for
its graceful parks, designed by Frederick
Law Olmsted, and its elegant Victorian
homes. It was also known as a place
where working-class and immigrant
families found jobs and put down
roots. For generations, businesses flour-
ished in JP and provided jobs. For
example, at the turn of the 20th
Century, Jamaica Plain and adjacent
communities were home to 25 brew-
eries—the highest concentration in
New England. And the massive TG
Plant Shoe Factory used to be the
largest industrial site in Boston,
employing 4,000 people in its heyday. 
But by the 1960s, factory jobs were
leaving, and many Bostonians were
moving to the suburbs. Abandoned
breweries attracted vandals, and banks
refused to approve mortgages. In 1976,
arson destroyed the shoe factory. For
nearly two decades the abandoned
property attracted drug dealers and ille-
gal dumping.
The defining moment in JP’s
downward spiral was the proposal to
raze large sections to build an eight-lane
highway. More than 400 homes were
destroyed before a broad alliance of res-
idents stopped the project. Their suc-
cess inspired them to create organiza-
tions that could direct future develop-
ment.
Community-Based
Reinvestment Strategies
From 1977 to 1997 JPNDC and
others undertook numerous initiatives
to reverse blight, create jobs, and pro-
mote community ownership. The
Brewery Small Business Complex, a
formerly abandoned five-acre brewery,
became home to 40 small businesses
employing 200 people. Distressed
buildings were either renovated as resi-
dent-owned cooperatives or sold at
affordable prices to first-time home-
buyers. Community organizers brought
residents together to plan improve-
ments and to help merchants create one
of Boston’s strongest neighborhood
business associations. Another program
provided technical assistance to mer-
chants, who have been able to access
nearly $5 million in financing from
banks that had not previously made
loans to small, inner-city entrepreneurs.
Occasionally during these 20 years,
the real estate cycle turned upward, and
investors took an interest in Jamaica
by Sally Swenson and Chris Ney
Jamaica Plain Neighborhood Development Corporation
Stability, Sustainability, and Equal OpportunityWinter  2006 18
Plain. Community leaders saw the risk
for the neighborhood’s hallmark diversi-
ty. So a local tenants’ group, City
Life/Vida Urbana, and JPNDC formed
an alliance to protect low-income resi-
dents from displacement. Together they
created an effective mix of public advo-
cacy, direct action, and development
expertise that led to acquisition of key
neighborhood properties and their rede-
velopment as permanently affordable
housing. The alliance produced a total
of nearly 200 rental or cooperative units
for families and the elderly. 
By 1998, the results of this com-
munity activism were visible through-
out Jamaica Plain. On Lamartine Street,
the new Nate Smith House for low-
income seniors replaced an eyesore that
a notorious landlord had long refused to
repair. The Hyde Square Cooperative
brought new life to a troubled area,
replacing trash-filled lots with town-
houses and a community garden. And
20 years after fire destroyed the Plant
shoe factory, a private developer, a pub-
lic-housing tenant-management corpo-
ration, and JPNDC teamed up to build
a community health center. They also
brought in a Stop & Shop, which was
the first major supermarket to build in
Boston’s inner city in 15 years.
In 2001, the National Community
Development Initiative cited JPNDC in
a study on the catalytic role of CDCs in
neighborhood revitalization. One of
NCDI’s main indicators was rising
property values. 
But rising property values are both
good news and bad news.
Strategies for Stable,
Equitable Communities
Housing prices began rising in
Jamaica Plain after 1995 and have con-
tinued to increase ever since. In ten years,
the median price for a single-family
house went from $165,000 to $500,000.
Jamaica Plain is now the third most
expensive of the 16 neighborhoods in
Boston, which is one of the most expen-
sive metropolitan areas in the United
States. 
If property values are the only meas-
ure, then revitalization has occurred. The
decline has been reversed. But what is the
proper role for a community develop-
ment corporation after that? 
Neighborhood turnaround raises a
new set of concerns. Sociologists and
other researchers who have studied gen-
trification generally agree that once real
estate agents “discover” an up-and-com-
ing neighborhood, a new wave of resi-
dents arrive who are attracted to its cafes
and investment potential but are rela-
tively unlikely to put down roots. In his
classic book Common Ground: A
Turbulent Decade in the Lives of Three
American Families, J. Anthony Lukas
termed such gentrifiers “the most
mobile members of a mobile society.”
Census and real estate data confirm
increasing transience in JP, lending cre-
dence to the worries of long-term resi-
dents about social stability.
New situations call for new strate-
gies to ensure that revitalization is sus-
tainable and benefits low- and moder-
ate-income residents. The following
approaches being tested in Jamaica
Plain may have application elsewhere in
New England
Leadership in the Affordable-
Housing Debate 
When gentrification creates sophis-
ticated opposition to additional afford-
able housing, community development
corporations need to be prepared. A
campaign to increase understanding
about exactly who needs affordable
housing (a wide range of people, includ-
ing teachers and firefighters) and to pro-
mote values of inclusiveness and com-
passion is important. Experienced non-
profit groups need to have answers for
opponents who argue that affordable
housing translates into crime and trash.
Such views represent a lack of under-
standing.
Sophisticated Real Estate
Capacity
Fifteen years ago, organizations like
JPNDC could buy properties from
foreclosing banks at rock-bottom prices.
Today it is necessary to compete with
savvy private developers in a world
where deals are made overnight.
Although the financial resources of
community development corporations
The Jamaica Plain Neighborhood Development Corporation purchased the Blessed Sacrament Church
from the Archdiocese of Boston in September 2005.The renovation will provide for affordable housing,
commercial space,and other community uses.&Banking Communities 19
can never equal those of for-profit
developers, CDCs need to keep
improving their real estate sophistica-
tion. That means having staff with
expertise, a wide range of expert con-
sultants available, and multiple levels of
short- and long-term financing. Then
the CDC can move quickly and take
risks, putting cash up front so that it
doesn’t lose opportunities.
Jobs for Self-Sufficiency
It is important to bring jobs back
to the neighborhood, but not just tem-
porary, low-paying jobs. Revitalization
groups must help residents obtain work
that can support a family. The Jamaica
Plain Neighborhood Development
Corporation is doing that through its
leadership of the Boston Health Care
and Research Training Institute, a col-
laboration of nonprofit organizations
and 11 employers in Boston’s largest
employment sector. Because of the
Training Institute, some of the nation’s
most prestigious teaching hospitals are
now investing in previously ignored
segments of the workforce to meet their
own urgent needs for nurses and other
skilled professionals.
Embracing Sustainability
Mixed-use neighborhood plan-
ning, sometimes called “smart growth,”
needs to be applied to all new projects.
In Boston, lead developer JPNDC is
embarking with Urban Edge and the
Hyde Square Task Force on their largest
initiative ever: the transformation of
long-neglected Jackson Square with
400 new mixed-income homes, a youth
and family center, and 130,000 square
feet of new retail, office, and recreation-
al space. A new and vital community
will be created on now barren land at a
major transportation hub. Moreover,
the buildings will incorporate environ-
mentally sound design principles to
protect the health of residents and to
reduce energy use.
Continued Commitment to 
Resident Leadership
Accountability to the community
will always be the foundation of CDC
success. Recently in Jamaica Plain, the
community wanted to save a beautiful
Catholic church from outside develop-
ment. Countless calls and letters to the
Archdiocese of Boston from church
members and 1,400 petition signatures
supporting a JPNDC purchase made it
clear what the community wanted. In
September 2005 the JPNDC became
the first community development cor-
poration in Boston to purchase a shut-
down church for use by the neighbor-
hood. 
The key to such successes is con-
stant renewal of trust and the strength-
ening of grassroots leadership through
participatory decision making. The
work is never done. CDCs that see revi-
talization efforts bear fruit must be
more vigilant than ever to ensure that
the low- and moderate-income people
they serve have economic security,
equal opportunity, and a role in shaping
their future. 
Sally Swenson is resource development
director and Chris Ney is resource
development associate and of the Jamaica
Plain Neighborhood Development
Corporation in Boston. 
Endnote
1
See http://www.nhc.org/chp/p2p/. By typ-
ing in the name of a city, one can view a table
showing annual income needed to afford a medi-
an-priced home compared with the income of
professions such as teacher and police officer.
The key to success in the post-revitalization stage of community development is constant renewal of trust and the strengthening of grassroots leadership
through participatory decision making.

Beyond neighborhood revitalization

http://www.bostonfed.org/commdev/c&b/2006/winter/beyond.pdf

Beyond neighborhood revitalization

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