• Continue Advocacy and Organizing of Neighbors to prevent gentrification
• and come up with and implement their own plan.
• Ensure that dollars spent on housing needs are not leaving our community.
• Robust policies that encourage development of the resources we need (Mandatory Inclusionary Zoning, Landlord licensing/regulation, Increased tenants rights protections, rent regulations, etc).
• Transfer of un/underused land for development purposes.
• Cooperative housing/ownership models that allow for shared liability and responsibility of real estate assets. (Community Land Trust.)
• So far behind in the race that you think you are winning.

Recommendations – V

To address the complex issues caused by housing segregation, redlining and disinvestment, and environmental racism, requires the mobilization of resources directed by community led utilization strategies. 

 Resource Mobilization Recommendations

The City of Pittsfield formally recognizes the detrimental impact housing segregation and Urban Renewal projects have had on Black residents of the Westside:

Recommendation 1

Reparations Resolution

• Follow the lead of Ashfield, North Carolina, Chicago and Evanston, Illinois. Draft and pass a Reparations Resolution.

Recommendation 2

Establish a Commission

• Establish a commission, whose members are selected by the Black community, to recommend investments in areas where a large disparity exists–such as property and land, education, criminal justice, health care. 

Recommendation 3

Advocate and Secure Funds

• Advocate for and secure set aside funds in the Berkshire Brownfields Revolving Loan Fund to determine if there are any environmental causes for the disparity in life expectancy between residents of the Westside Neighborhood and the average life expectancy for the City. 

Recommendation 4

Organize a Westside Community Land Trust

• To hold land in commons, while conferring equity of improvements to lessees.
• Also functions as the Neighborhood Planning Commission.
• Organizations that can accept donations/transfers of underdeveloped, publicly and privately held, property.

Recommendation 5

Full Start-up Funding

• Full start-up funding for a Westside Community Development Organization
• Non-profit umbrella organization serves a vital function as “developer” of the Westside.
• Community Design Lounge Program to incubate/ design, plan and implement community and neighborhood development plans and programs.  
• Neighborhood Revitalization Plan
• Neighborhood Programs around arts, education, recreation and events and wither programs

Recommendation 6

Affordable Housing Trust

The City of Pittsfield establishes an Affordable Housing Trust:

• The mission of the Affordable Housing Trust must be to counteract the disproportionate impact of; the citing of Public Housing nearly exclusively on the Westside, and; historic covenants that explicitly and implicitly prevented Black Pittsfield residents from purchasing and developing properties outside of the Westside Neighborhood.
• Current city leaders must advocate for the passage of bills S. 733 and H. 1769 in the Massachusetts Senate and House of Representatives, respectively. These bills allow for the implementation of a fee charged to real property, single-family zoned, transactions (with particular exemptions). The fees collected are used to fund the Affordable Housing Trust.

Recommendation 7

Update Current Zoning Ordinances

Update the current zoning ordinances that are restricting development on the Westside:

• For example; expansion of current “neighborhood business” spot zoning to include the entirety of Linden Street, all or part of Bradford Street, et al, and/or; develop a new business overlay district for the Westside, the preferable strategy. 
• Designate the entirety of the Westside Neighborhood as a Smart Growth Overlay District, with a mandatory Inclusionary Zoning policy for all new residential development of any size. Allowing developers/neighborhood residents to leverage incentives the state of Massachusetts currently offers.
• Concurrently organize and fund a to recruit developers and businesses; draft guiding architectural and streetscape design guidelines; research and write mandatory zoning ordinances that prioritize in-fill development that promotes mixed-use, pedestrian-oriented developments; and oversee maintenance.

Resource Utilization Strategies

Strategy 1

Establish a West Side Community Land Trust

• Hold land in commons, while conferring equity of improvements to lessees.
• Also functions as the Neighborhood Planning Commission.
• Organization which can accept donations/transfers of un/underdeveloped, publicly and privately held, property.

Full start-up funding for a Westside Community Development Organization

• Non-profit umbrella organization serves a vital function as “developer” of the Westside.

Strategy 2

Financial Institution

• Community Development Financial Institution funding of community workshops

Some potential workshops:

• Wellness courses
• Financial literacy, and personal credit development strategies.
• Intergenerational social programming
• Community sourced art installations
• Permanent community gardens, that pay gardeners

Strategy 4

Design Lounge Funding 

• A shared workspace for neighborhood residents and working groups to organize around an incubate-design-plan-implement process of community and neighborhood development.

• Fundamentally disrupts the current process for neighborhood development. The ideas of neighborhood residents are not “prioritized”, “respected”, “canvassed”, “solicited”. Their ideas inspire, direct, and actualize development.
• Indirect, and hard to quantify benefits of leadership, creative thinking, collaborative organization, are cultivated by neighbor residents for the benefit of their neighborhood.

Next Steps

• Organize working groups.
• Secure funding for Design Lounge.
• Fund research into environmental pollution, akin to the East Branch of the Housatonic.
  

   

  📚 References

Locally: City of Pittsfield Office of Community Development. Pittsfield Economic Revitalization Corporation. City of Pittsfield Community Preservation Committee. Greylock Federal Credit Union–a federally certified Community Development Financial Institution.

Regionally: Berkshire Regional Planning Commission 

State: Massachusetts Executive Office of Housing and Economic Development.

National: Office of Housing and Urban Development

Bibliography

1. Thompson, Nancy. Community Development Help for Neighborhood Leaders and Residents, 2010, www.useful-community-development.org/.

2. Massachusetts Association of Community Development Corporations. “The Massachusetts Association of Community Development Corporations.” MACDC, 2020, www.macdc.org/cdc-theory-change.

3. U.S. Department of the Treasury. Community Development Financial Institution Funds, www.cdfifund.gov/Pages/default.aspx. [Accessed October 2020]

4. “Community Land Trust Program ~ Schumacher Center for New Economics.” Schumacher Center for New Economics, 30 Sept. 2019, centerforneweconomics.org/apply/community-land-trust-program/.

References

1. 2019 Westside Learnings

Habitat for Humanity. Monroe, Tad. Neighborhood Revitalization Presentation. October 7th, 2019. 

2. Westside Survey Results 2016

Central Berkshire Habitat for Humanity. Westside Neighborhood Survey. Pittsfield, Ma. Westside Neighborhood. Updated 2016. Published, results distributed through public forums.

3. Rothstein, Richard. The Color of Law: a Forgotten History of How Our Government Segregated America. Liveright Publishing Corporation, a Division of W.W. Norton & Company, 2018.

4. Berkshire Regional Planning Commission. Gray to Green: Increasing Healthy Equity in Pittsfield by prioritizing green planning in social and racial justice contexts. October 2019. Retrieved from:

https://drive.google.com/file/d/1Uvk0KR8LRlkyf0hSul0FILN5RgxXfiL0/view?usp=sharing [Accessed August 2020]

5. U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development, Office of Policy Development and Research. Family Options Study: 3-year Impacts of Housing and Services Intervention for Homeless Families. October 2016. Retrieved from:

https://www.huduser.gov/portal/sites/default/files/pdf/Family-Options-Study-Full-Report.pdf [Accessed 2020 October.]

6. National Housing Conference, Center for Housing Policy. The Impacts of Affordable Housing on Health: A Research Summary. April 2015. Retrieved from:

https://www.rupco.org/wp-content/uploads/pdfs/The-Impacts-of-Affordable-Housing-on-Health-CenterforHousingPolicy-Maqbool.etal.pdf [Accessed 2020 October.]

7. U.S. Executive Branch, United States Interagency Council on Homelessness. The Importance of Housing Stability for Preventing and Ending Homelessness. May 2019. Retrieved from:

https://www.usich.gov/resources/uploads/asset_library/Housing-Affordability-and-Stablility-Brief.pdf [Accessed 2020 October]

8. City of Pittsfield, Department of Community Development, Consolidated Annual Performance and Evaluation Report, years 1998-2018.

9. Black Economic Council and Team R3set, virtual SUCC3SS Idea Jam 2020.

Research

A) Zwede, Naomi. “Universal Baby Bonds Reduce Black-White Wealth Inequality, Progressively Raise Net Worth of All Young Adults.” Squarespace.com, Naomi Zwede, , Nov. 2018, static1.squarespace.com/static/5743308460b5e922a25a6dc7/t/5c4339f67ba7fc4a9add58f9/1547909624486/Zewde-Baby-Bonds-WP-10-30-18.pdf. [Accessed 2020 October.]

A further explanation of Senator Booker’s bill by VOX: 

Matthews, Dylan. “Study: Cory Booker’s Baby Bonds Nearly Close the Racial Wealth Gap for Young Adults.” Vox, Vox, 21 Jan. 2019, www.vox.com/future-perfect/2019/1/21/18185536/cory-booker-news-today-2020-presidential-election-baby-bonds. [Accessed 2020 October]

Ashfield, North Carolina Reparations Resolution: 

https://www.scribd.com/document/468725433/Reparations-for-Black-Asheville (The resolution)

Burgess, Joel. “As Asheville Makes History on Local Reparations, Experts Disagree on Whether to ‘Applaud’.” The Asheville Citizen Times, Asheville Citizen Times, 16 July 2020, www.citizen-times.com/story/news/local/2020/07/16/asheville-makes-history-local-reparations-black-residents/5439784002/. [Accessed 2020 October.]

B) Median income for Census Tract 9006, that roughly overlaps the Westside Neighborhood, is 27,015, 54.7 percent of the median income of Pittsfield. Median income for Black households in Pittsfield–used as a reasonable proxy for Black residents of the Westside*–is 19,274.

38 percent of all the housing units in census tract 9006 are apartments (Defined as 3 or more units), a higher ratio than Pittsfield as a whole.

The median rent in census tract 9006 is 42.4 percent of median income.

75 percent of households making $20,000-34,999 in yearly income pay more than 30 percent of their monthly income towards rent, and 93 percent of households with less than $20,000 in yearly income do, in census tract 9006.

*Data for the median household income for Black Westside Residents (roughly census tract 9006 is not available), or the margin of error are so high as to indicate unreliability of the given figure. (For example in 2010 inflation-adjusted dollars, non-family household income for Black residents of census tract 9006 was 26,964 +/- 66,689)

A review of the City of Pittsfield’s Consolidated Annual Performance and Evaluation Reports dating 1998 to 2018 (2010 was not included) shows $33,410,479.84 of CDBG funding was spent benefitting persons of extremely, very and low income. A study compiled by the Department of Community Development, mapping properties that received grants and loans through the City of Pittsfield’s Home Improvement Program, covering the years 2009-2018 , shows 39 of the approximately 154 funded projects were located in the Westside neighborhood. (sources; https://drive.google.com/file/d/1UiA_sjr6lcRzHI2ZioQKuxyPjumMCwMt/view?usp=sharing.

City of Pittsfield, Office of Community Development, Consolidated Annual Performance and Evaluation reports, 1998-2018, with the exception of 2010.) 

The Home Improvement Program offered by the City of Pittsfield only comprises a small portion of CDBG funded projects. What is intended to be shown is the lack of a meaningful program that addresses the disproportionate and racialized impact of housing segregation in Pittsfield.

Idea Jam Facilitators

Analysts

John Lewis, R3SET
Kamaar Taliaferro, R3SET
Patrick Danahey, R3SET
Devin Shea, R3SET

Editors

Alyssa Mack, SP3AK EASY Studio
Kamaar Taliaferro, R3SET

Advisors

Segun Idawoo, BECMA
Malia Lazu, MIT

Glossary

Gap Analysis

A gap analysis is an examination and assessment of current performance for the purpose of identifying the differences between the current state of business affairs and where you’d like to be. It can be boiled down into a few questions:

Where are we now? Where do we want to go? What do we need to get there?