Boston War Zone Becomes Public Housing Dream

New York Times, 11/23/1991

In the 1980s, Ruby Jaundoo lived in one of the country's most dilapidated and dangerous public housing projects. Likened by city residents to a war zone, the Columbia Point apartments sat secluded on a peninsula jutting into Boston Harbor; even ambulance crews and firefighters would not come to the neighborhood without a police escort. When the apartments were first built in the 1950s, the only other thing on the point was a garbage dump. The community itself had to fight and organize to get the dump closed, to get schools and grocery stores and a health clinic built for the 5000 residents who were living there, isolated from the rest of the city.

"Nobody wanted to come out here," Ms. Jaundoo said. "The police wouldn't patrol. The gangs were infesting our housing. I was fearful and I'd had enough."

Ms. Jaundoo and the other women who dominated Columbia Point's tenants' board began negotiating in the late 1970's with developers who coveted the project's 51 acres, a strip of waterfront property that shares views of the harbor with the nearby John F. Kennedy Library.

"We knew this land was becoming prime property and we were an eyesore," said Ms. Jaundoo. "We were afraid that we would be driven out."

Today the site, renamed Harbor Point to shed bad memories, is a sprawl of manicured lawns surrounding tennis courts, town houses and mid-rise apartment buildings where residents, including Ms. Jaundoo and most of her original neighbors, represent a broad range of races, ethnic backgrounds and incomes.

While mixed-income developments have been successful on a smaller scale, Harbor Point is the nation's first effort to transform a large Federal project by recruiting middle- and higher-income residents, government officials say. State and local authorities are hoping Harbor Point will be a model for economic and racial integration of public housing elsewhere.

But the transition has not been painless. Fractious tenant disputes are only now easing, and a surprise investment from the Chevron Oil Company in August rescued Harbor Point from the brink of bankruptcy.

When Catherine D'Vileskis moved into Harbor Point three years ago, the first white person on her block, she was greeted by a young Hispanic boy who pointed at her and said, "It's a whitey!" Now "that family has been my neighbors for years," she said, adding, "The shock is gone."

But feelings of mistrust still linger among tenants. Harbor Point had been home to black and Hispanic low-income Bostonians since it first opened in 1954. The imposing yellow brick buildings, 30 seven-story structures built to house 1,504 impoverished families families, were a source of great pride in Boston. Yet by the 1970's, the buildings had fallen victim to neglect and blight, and were abandoned by all but 356 families.

Conceding failure, the Boston Housing Authority turned over the site to private developers in 1986 with the ambitious goal of renovating the neighborhood without driving out low-income residents. The 99-year lease names two owners: the tenants' elected board and a partnership of developers led by the firm of Corcoran, Mullins, Jennison of Braintree, Mass.

The development now has 1,283 units, some refurbished and others built new. The lease requires that 400 of them be set aside for residents who receive rent subsidies, while the rest command market rates. A two-bedroom apartment now goes for $825 a month.

To attract wealthier tenants, the developers advertised the site's proximity to downtown Boston and amenities in the development, including a fitness club, two swimming pools and a child-care center. The developers also hired a 24-hour security force to help ease fears about crime.

Nearly all the low-income units are now occupied, but 26 families who lived in Columbia Point before the arrival of the private developers have since left, many evicted for drug dealing, nonpayment of rent or vandalism.

"There was a bad element and there still is," said Joe Corcoran, who heads the development firm. "We have rooted out 25 families that were really bad, but there are five more to go."

Fears that the developers are trying to rid the site of all low-income residents have emerged among tenants who complain of harassment by the 25-member security force. Many longtime residents have chafed at strict rules enacted by the tenant board. Residents are asked to move along if they loiter on streets at night. Young children must be inside by 7:30 P.M. in the school year, and teen-agers by 10:30. No pets are allowed and the management checks apartments to enforce housekeeping rules.

Ms. Jaundoo acknowledged that some security guards had been dismissed for mistreating residents, but said: "People have to pay their rent on time, take care of their children and respect other people's rights. Those rules are true at any housing project, but we enforce them."

Many residents describe the 12-member tenants' board, a mix of low-income and wealthier residents who hold quarterly open meetings to air disputes, as the glue that holds the community together. "The security force is only acting on what the tenants themselves have enacted," said Onjada Haggard, a resident.

To help blur the color line between low- and higher-income residents, an aggressive marketing effort has attracted black, Asian and Hispanic professionals and a small number of white low-income renters. Many of the market-rate renters are young professionals who work nearby in Boston's financial district.

Maureen Coleman, a manager at Scudder, Stevens & Clark, a mutual fund company in Boston, moved to Harbor Point in 1988. "I like it here," she said. "It's clean and it feels safe. But if you grew up in a neighborhood where everyone looks just like you, this isn't the place for you."