Paul Bass Photo
Gerard Bellamy won’t even need his bike anymore — he can walk the one block from his new home on Putnam Street to work at the Hill Fire Station.
With the help of Mayor Toni Harp and Hill Alder Andrea Jackson-Brooks (center and right in top photo), Bellamy, a 44-year-old city native and Marine vet, cut the ribbon Thursday on a new two-family home he bought from the city at 201 Putnam St., across the street from Hill Central Music Academy at the corner of DeWitt Street.
A crowd of honchos gathered for the occasion, because Bellamy’s purchase marked a milestone. His house is the seventh home built or rebuilt by city government’s Livable City Initiative (LCI) on four-block Putnam Street. LCI built four of the houses from scratch, and rebuilt three trashed old vacant historic gems. In the process, observed Hill Alder Jorge Perez, it “transformed” the neighborhood, with other property owners taking the cue to upgrade.
Bellamy’s personal story marked a second policy milestone: promoting alternatives to car commuting, helping New Haven workers live near their jobs.
Bellamy, a member of the First Division of Engine 11 at the firehouse at Putnam Street and Howard Avenue, used to drive his 1994 Acura to work from his home on Porter Street. (Occasionally he biked.) Now, he said, he can keep the car parked in the driveway of his new home and stroll down the block to work.
“I was in the neighborhood. I saw them building the house. I figured it was a nice house to buy,” said Bellamy, who has been a firefighter for seven years. He will live in the upstairs three-bedroom apartment with his fiancee, Yajaria Bolden (pictured with him in their new kitchen), and his son and two daughters.
“How about that for public policy at its best for creating walkable environments?” crowed LCI chief Erik Johnson (pictured at Thursday’s event). He noted that in this new urbanist age, policymakers talk about building housing in the city “so we can help people like the firefighter, the teacher, the nurse, the police officer.”
The city spent about $700,000 building and rebuilding the seven homes, according to LCI Deputy Director Cathy Schroeter. The federal Department of Housing and Urban Development and state Department of Community and Economic Development threw in another $2.5 million to rebuild Putnam Street — not just the seven LCI-built homes, but three more homes with eight apartments built by the Mutual Housing/Neighborworks. (Click here for a previous story on an earlier phase of the project.)
181 Putnam, one of the rehabbed homes.
Schroeter said she expects the city to take in about $1.1 million on the seven home sales; the profit will be turned back into the street’s renewal, through the construction of another home, at 137 Putnam.
Great! Just as much as we need good jobs, we'll need incentives to keep them here when they land the jobs, and we'll need more incentives for people who already have good jobs, so they stay in New Haven until they retire instead of commuting back and forth each day.