Left In Lowell

I’m back from the Affordable Housing rally and city council meeting. I took a full load of notes, trying to catch everything I could from the meeting, which I will make a full report on shortly (hopefully tonight if I don’t run out of steam).

First, we were denied our tent city. Because the permit didn’t explicitly say “can have tents”… apparently you have to itemize everything. Next time we apply for a permit, I suggested, we put in everything - “we will have 200 cans of soda, 50 of Coke, 50 of diet Coke, 25 of Sprite…” Ah, well, thwarted by stupid bureaucracy. Either it was small-town mentality working against us, or a more sinister reaction to the cause engendered, but in any case, no tent city. We did, however, deploy one of the tents and carry it around with us. I will post pictures when I can.

I find that two very distinct and contrary storylines are emerging about what happened/what is happening with Julian Steele (the former 20 acres of public housing, now an empty lot awaiting market-rate and some affordable houses to be built). The Councilors were very clever tonight - whether on purpose or by accident, I don’t know. Probably both. They put our petition nearly last on the agenda (the petition being a demand that something be done to fulfill promises to former Steele residents and to rebuild affordable housing elsewhere), which made our speeches come after the subcommittee report from Councilors Milinazzo and I think Elliot and Martin on the current issues around development problems at the Julian Steele site. They got to tell their side of the story (or at least some parts of it) before we got to make a case. Namely, that the legislation passed at the state level stipulated as I mentioned in my last post that some replacement housing (affordable housing, though I’m not sure where that “affordable housing” falls next to actual public housing) and that the city has put forth all effort to follow the “replication plan” under the bill. They also got a chance to mention that the stipulations in that bill put constraints on developers such that it’s difficult to begin work (I guess because it puts a limit on some units’ sale in terms of cost?).

The discussion after the four speakers spoke among the councilors was about how Lowell is only 12th in the state for highest ratio of affordable housing (T.J. McCarthy, assistant City Manager, whom I had a lively talk with afterwards, mentions 14% - the state recommends a minimum 10% ratio of affordable housing to market-rate). If so (obviously, it’s hard to counter when I don’t have the numbers in front of me, but I’ll take them at their word) that’s extremely commendable. They also argued that since Julian Steele was demolished, some 200 units of affordable housing (again, what defines this affordable housing I don’t know - income of $33K and below? something higher? lower?) have been created, though not all under the reclamation plan. They also mentioned that the state of the housing was terrible, some units had been condemned or were unlivable, “at least 1/3 were not fit for human habitation” according to Bud Caulfield. He also said millions had been invested over the years since the housing was built in 1950 to get very little out of it (that doesn’t sound right - unless some contractor or other was stiffing the LHA, or someone made off with the money - money put into fixing a building usually does SOME good, unless it was misappropriated, in which case, where was the investigation?).

Eileen took issue with the suggestion that no resident or community input went into the Julian Steele plan. This was not a project done “on a whim” as she put it. The state was not putting the money in (so what was the $7M offered to fix up the units, I wonder, and who would have had control of that to ensure it was used correctly?). She toured J.S. units, remembers many as being condemned, etc. etc. (I still wonder the ratio of condemned/unlivable to “salvageable” units since there were 284 of them).

Rita also piped up, but I’m not really sure what she was saying. Something about when people thought of J.S., there was a stigma attached, as a drug haven, that was wrong, etc etc (but I’m not sure she was saying it was wrong to attach that stigma, or the stima was wrong in the first place).

As I said, there seems to be two threads emerging about this - the Councilors all seem to remember totally-run-down horrible housing units, that were doing the public no good, that were unsalvageable, that no one advocated for keeping, that under the Home Rule Bill would be (mostly) replaced in a reclamation plan with better housing. But the story from some people, including former residents, was that the place was rundown but salvageable, that it was a community they wanted to keep, but by the time the plan came to fruition the residents’ group there was decimated by evictions, that the relocation for many of them was not up to snuff (or law), that the housing to replace Julian Steele is both inadequate in terms of numbers and in terms of what “affordable” is defined as, and not quick enough in coming. Certainly the facts and the truth can’t be espoused by both sides, because they contradict. Maybe the truth is somewhere in the middle - good intentions mingled with some bad tactics or plans, bad circumstances converged with bad timing. No one claims to have been malicious, of course. No one claims to want to gentrify the city (in the way of pricing the poor out in favor of the rich) either, but the effect is there.

In the end, the motion was to pass our petition to the LHA (Lowell Housing Authority). Really, it’s all symbolic anyway. The LHA, I’m sure, won’t really want to talk to us, particularly in light of the lawsuit by former residents…and the CBA does work with them on other projects, so a relationship exists. But if the LHA and the city did half of what is claimed, they do have some apologizing to do.