The Women’s Institute for Housing and Economic Development, a nonprofit organization that celebrates its 25th anniversary next month, developed this former school in New Bedford into community space and 12 apartments for low-income families. Known as Acushnet Commons, the development received national recognition last year.
For recovering addicts, Casa Esperanza not only has provided treatment to help pull them out of the darkness of substance abuse. It’s also offered them safe and supportive homes to remain drug- and alcohol-free.
Casa Esperanza, a Roxbury-based residential substance abuse program for Latino men and women, is hoping to expand its reach. The group will be opening nine new housing units and an outpatient facility for people on the road to recovery this summer. The project, known as Familias Unidas, will be added to the 16 housing units and programs it already offers.
But Casa Esperanza Executive Director Rick Quiroga said the housing wouldn’t be possible without the Women’s Institute for Housing and Economic Development.
“They are a godsend to us,” said Quiroga. “They’re the ideal entity to work with us because they understand the issues of our community.”
The Women’s Institute, a nonprofit organization that is celebrating its 25th anniversary next month, has partnered with dozens of agencies like Casa Esperanza to create transitional and supportive housing for the neediest residents in Massachusetts and Connecticut.
“We are targeting areas where there is low capacity and high need,” said Lisa A. Wong, who became the institute’s executive director in July.
Throughout its history, the group has ushered in 456 housing units and more than 43,000 square feet of space for programs and services that help low-income people who have suffered domestic violence, substance abuse or homelessness to rebuild their lives.
Today, the institute has 288 units and nearly 4,000 square feet of programming space – including Casa Esperanza’s Familias Unidas project – in the works.
While the number of units sounds fairly small, the institute’s leaders and their community partners say their projects have had a significant impact in turning round the lives of thousands of men, women and children, revitalizing whole neighborhoods and boosting the work of community-based nonprofit groups.
A prime example they point to is Acushnet Commons, a project that involved the renovation of a 19th century school building in New Bedford into 12 apartments for low-income families. The institute received the prestigious Fannie Mae Maxwell Award of Excellence, considered the gold standard in affordable housing development, for Acushnet Commons last year.
To make Acushnet Commons a reality, the institute partnered with the NorthSar Learning Centers, a local group that has provided early education and youth and family support programs for more than 30 years. In addition to building new housing for 12 families, the $4 million project produced 4,200 square feet of office and community space for the NorthStar Learning Centers.
Anne Gelbspan, a project manager with the institute, said Acushnet Commons not only provided homes for families that were at risk of becoming homeless, but it also turned around a vacant building that had become a trouble spot for the city and provided a new appropriately designed home for NorthStar Learning Centers.
“Sometimes a small project can have a really huge impact. And I think that’s true for most of the things we work on,” said Gelbspan, who has been with the institute for 15 years.
The organization has won national recognition for projects like Acushnet Commons and GrandFamilies House – 27 apartments in Dorchester that it developed in 1998 for seniors raising their grandchildren. Both projects are held up as innovative models for affordable housing development.
‘The Best-Kept Secret’
In the first seven years of its existence, the institute largely focused on advocacy and policy work. During that time, it introduced publications and offered national training.
Bonnie Heudorfer – who along with the late Joan Sprague and Barbara Brower founded the institute – recalls that one of the first projects they tackled was preparing a development primer for groups building affordable housing throughout the country.
Heudorfer said she came together with Sprague and Brower because they wanted to help low-income women who needed affordable housing and were interested in starting their own businesses.
The trio felt they had the skills to undertake the challenge. Heudorfer had experience in affordable housing financing and planning, while Sprague had an architectural background and Brower had legal skills.
“Our idea was that by providing quality affordable housing in combination with economic development and supportive services, these women and their families could thrive,” she said.
In those early years, Heudorfer said few people understood women’s housing. Even though community development corporations were starting to emerge in Boston and other cities, many of those groups were focused on getting housing developed, not on the services that low-income women needed to get back on their feet, she explained.
“Domestic violence, family homelessness, women with substance abuse problems – these were issues that weren’t on the agenda,” she said.
As the institute matured, its focus gradually changed. During the first decade, the group provided consulting and project management services to organizations that were developing housing. Much of the emphasis was on transitional housing – temporary housing designed for families moving out of emergency shelters.
“That was new when we did it, and now it’s a more accepted form of housing,” said Gelbspan.
The institute began taking a more direct role in developing housing in the last 15 years. In recent years, it also has begun to embrace the concept of creating permanent supportive housing for individuals and families, explained Wong.
Supportive housing combines affordable housing with services such as child care, job training and counseling. The idea behind supportive housing – which supporters say is a cost-effective way of dealing with homelessness and those at risk of becoming homeless – is to stabilize the lives of individuals and families.
Wong said she believes helping the lowest-income residents by providing supportive housing is critical for economic development.
With so much talk about the state losing young residents and political leaders worried about maintaining the workforce and attracting jobs, she said, what’s often neglected in the discussion are working poor people who already live in the communities.
“We’re giving them the first-stage resources and support they need to eventually be part of the workforce that the state so desperately needs,” said Wong.
The institute has been working closely with the Corporation for Supportive Housing, a national policy organization that provides funding for the supportive housing model.
“We want to leverage the fact that we’ve been around for 25 years and we have a great reputation, even though our reputation is the best-kept secret. We don’t want to be the best-kept secret,” Wong said.
For Quiroga of Casa Esperanza, the Women’s Institute’s work is no secret.
More than six years ago, when the agency was searching for a partner to create homes for women recovering from drug and alcohol addiction and their children, it turned to the Women’s Institute.
The result was Dunmore Place, six apartments located on Dunmore Street in Boston’s Roxbury neighborhood. Casa Esperanza’s programs and housing have helped rejuvenate Eustis and Dunmore streets, a long-neglected section of Roxbury. Through it all, the institute has been a key partner, says Quiroga.
“I rely on them totally because they have a thorough understanding of our programs and our goals and treatment philosophy and what we’re doing with our community,” he said.
