Olneyville Housing Corporation: Revitalizing one of Providence’s poorest neighborhoods
Driving through Olneyville, Frank Shea, executive director of Olneyville Housing Corporation (OHC), points out properties the 22-year-old organizations has rehabilitated, noting one that was purchased by a young couple expecting twins, another that is home to a single mother and her children, yet another that is occupied by recent college graduates.
Shea is quick to acknowledge that housing is only one element of the revitalization of one of Providence’s oldest and poorest neighborhood. He drives to a formerly abandoned area along the Woonasquatucket River – adjacent to the 51 units of OHC-developed affordable housing – that now features a park, playground, and bike path, then points out various social service agencies and businesses that provide needed services for neighborhood residents.
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| 63 Aleppo Street in 2001, top, and after Olneyville Housing Corporation (OHC) and its partners developed this formerly blighted, now thriving neighborhood as part of the Riverside Gateway project, completed in 2007. The Foundation is a significant funder of OHC's important community development work. Photo credit: Bill Geller |
“This has been our most dramatic success,” Shea says proudly of the neighborhood transformation that resulted in an 80% decrease in crime and a shift from absent landlords to owner occupied homes.
But extreme fluctuations in the housing market have challenged OHC’s work. “We had this huge number of foreclosures that was threatening the other work we’d done in the neighborhood. The area right around William D’Abate Elementary School has been intensely affected,” Shea explains.
In 2007, OHC applied to the Foundation for support of its Olneyville Foreclosure Intervention Initiative, an effort to stabilize neighborhoods through comprehensive intervention strategies. The Foundation has supported the initiative for each of the past three years.
“The Foundation grants have allowed us to have the staff capacity to look at 70 houses and to get the 10 we’re working on now. The Foundation also has supported the collaborative work we’re doing with organizations in the neighborhood,” Shea states, noting that the Olneyville Collaborative now includes 23 organizations working together for social, economic, environmental, and community change.
Brent Kermen, principal at William D’Abate, sees the direct impact of OHC’s work. “The string of five consecutive foreclosed and abandoned properties directly across the street from our elementary school is now down to two, thanks to OHC. They have conducted community cleanups in collaboration with other community agencies, making for cleaner streets and a stronger sense of community.”
“The Foundation grants have allowed us to have the staff capacity to look at 70 houses and to get the 10 we’re working on now." - Frank Shea, executive director, Olneyville Housing Corporation
OHC works closely with the Local Initiatives Support Corporation (LISC) which not only serves as a traditional lender, but also is providing capacity-building support through such efforts as the recently-launched “Our Neighborhoods: Invest. Build. Believe.” (Since its 1991 establishment in Rhode Island, LISC also has received significant support from The Rhode Island Foundation.)
This program’s neighborhood approach builds upon a philosophy Shea has practiced for years. “Involving the community,” Shea says, “provides value-added for an organization such as ours.”
Adrian Bonéy, grant programs officer at the Foundation, remarks, “Olneyville Housing works in a collaborative fashion with Community Housing Land Trust and West Elmwood Housing Development Corporation (both which also received 2009 Foundation funding) to acquire and increase affordable housing stock in 14 neighborhoods highly impacted by foreclosure in the metropolitan region. Our funding recognizes this collaborative approach to the foreclosure work and OHC’s demonstrated leadership in community development.”
For more information, www.olneyville.org
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