Developers with a mission: Lawrence CommunityWorks gives low-income residents a chance for home ownership

Published: April 06, 2008 05:43 am

Developers with a mission: Lawrence Community Works gives low-income residents a chance for home ownership

By Bill Kirk
Business Editor

LAWRENCE — As Lawrence Community Works embarks on its most ambitious development project to date, the nonprofit is staying true to its mission to create affordable housing while helping residents stay financially afloat.

The development project involves renovation of two riverfront mill buildings into a $75 million housing, retail and commercial complex called Union Crossing. Located at Union and Island streets near the Duck Bridge, it will eventually add 150 to 165 rental and owner-occupied apartments to the city's housing stock, with a portion reserved for low-income tenants.

Simultaneously, LCW will enroll many of the low-income tenants in its Family Asset Building program and offer some a 3-to-1 match on their savings, along with financial literacy and home-ownership classes on site.

"Our roots were in community organizing," said Armand Hyatt, a local attorney who has been on the board since the organization was founded in the early 1980s.

He said back then the Lawrence Redevelopment Authority came into the North Common neighborhood and under the auspices of urban renewal began demolished historic buildings that were also low-cost homes for residents.

That prompted the creation of the Immigrant City Housing Corporation — now Lawrence Community Works,made up of displaced residents and activists who challenged the Redevelopment Authority in federal court.

The result, after a tough fight, was Heritage Common, a 140-unit affordable housing complex off Jackson Street that remains to this day, Hyatt said.

Although the fight was over, the organization stayed intact, Hyatt said, over the years developing more affordable housing projects. In 1999, the modern organization that became Lawrence Community Works really took off, Hyatt said, after the board of directors hired Executive Director Bill Traynor.

A Lawrence resident who attended St. Laurence O'Toole School, which was renovated to house LCW's new headquarters at 168 Newbury St., Traynor came with a Harvard degree in design and planning. And he brought with him a team of MIT-educated urban planners.

Over the next eight or nine years, the team, backed by the board, hard-working volunteers and a growing membership base, transformed what had become a sleepy nonprofit into a thriving corporation.

"I'm proud of all aspects of what Lawrence Community Works is doing," Hyatt said. "So many of the things we do end up helping people in so many ways. We're connecting people to housing, but that doesn't do any good if there aren't people who can connect them in any meaningful way."

The Family Asset Building program offers Individual Development Accounts for people enrolled in a two-year financial education and training program. Participants, who may or may not live in the organization's affordable housing, put money into an escrow savings account that is matched by Lawrence Community Works on a 3-1 ratio. That is, for every dollar a person enrolled in the program puts into the account, LCW puts in $3.

Jessica Andors, deputy director of Lawrence Community Works and one of the MIT planners who came to the city in 1999, said typically people put in $50 a month, which is matched by a $150 donation from LCW.

Once out of the program, people can use the money to buy a house, start a new business or go to college, she said.

"It sits in an account and can only be used for whatever their goal is," she said.

Andors said at Union Crossing, a certain number of units will be preserved for residents enrolled in the Individual Development Accounts, with an option to buy into the complex.

In addition to Union Crossing, LCW also is developing 108 Newbury St., an 18-unit affordable housing complex with first-floor commercial space slated for completion next spring.

Since 1999, the organization has renovated a number of vacant or dilapidated properties, many in the North Common neighborhood, and turned them into affordable rental or owner-occupied housing.

Some of those projects include:

Berkley Place Apartments, a 38-unit affordable rental apartment complex;

Summer Street homes, eight units in four duplexes with affordable home ownership and a neighborhood playground;

Reviviendo Family Housing, 17 scattered-site units of affordable rental housing in three historic buildings;

Scarito Homes, a 10-unit green townhouse homeownership project;

The Our House for Design and Technology, newer headquarters for Lawrence Community Works, as well a community learning center for the organization's adult and youth programs. The "green" building uses solar panels to generate electricity and hot water, and geothermal cooling to ease temperatures in the summer.

In all, LCW has built or renovated 200 units of affordable housing in the city and brought in $25 million worth of public and private investment.

Luis Yepez, a businessman who is also a partner in the new Union Crossing project, praised LCW for its work on financial literacy.

"People go through the program and have a whole new outlook on life," he said.

Hyatt said he's glad he stayed involved in Lawrence Community Works.

"Since its rebirth in 1999, it's actually fun," he said. "There's good stuff happening, and it's fun to be participating."

Dan O'Connell, the secretary of Housing and Economic Development for Massachusetts, in Lawrence Friday to visit local high-tech businesses, called Lawrence Community Works "the best CDC in the state," referring to Community Development Corporations which have been set up in communities all over the Commonwealth to develop affordable housing and take on other projects.

He noted that as bad as the home foreclosure rate has been in Lawrence — one of the hardest hit communities in the state — none of the people who went through the financial literacy program with LCW had their houses foreclosed on.

Lawrence Community Works at a glance

Started in the early 1980s to build affordable housing in North Common neighborhood of Lawrence

Has built or renovated more than 200 units of affordable housing in the city.

Now is developing nearly 200 more units of housing.

Has 3,000 members, who can take classes, live in the organization's affordable housing, or take part in programs offered at the Our House for Design and Technology.

Offers Family Asset Building programs for 300 adults annually, offering savings account match programs, teaching financial literacy courses, English as a second language, computer basics and other workshops

Since 1999 has attracted more than $25 million in public and private investment.

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