“Our goal is community stabilization without gentrification,” said two new leaders of the reviving Chatham Square neighborhood.
Hope Metcalf (in the back of the photo) and her co-coordinator Joan Bosson Heenan were leading by example. They have both recently bought houses in the neighborhood of beautiful Chatham Square Park in Fair Haven, and have become leaders in the local Chatham Square Neighborhood Association.
Metcalf, who lives on Perkins Street, and Bosson Heenan, who recently bought the stately 1885 house on the southwest corner of the square, both work at Yale. On the occasion of Yale’s Volunteer Day this past weekend — when all students and staff are urged to give up some time for the community — they corralled more than 40 people to do clean up in the park and at several smaller green spaces, such as the community garden on Grand and the vest pocket park on Lewis Street.
For many of these students, such as freshman Kate Selker (in the pigtails), who hails from Boston, it was the first time they had set foot in Fair Haven.
She liked what she saw. Some had never heard of the area.
That situation will no longer obtain. The students took up rakes and joined a group of nearby old-timers such as woodcarver John Bontatibus, who grew up in the area.
A squad of Clinton School kids such as Willie Griffin (pictured at the top of the story) were also on hand to weed and to collect the winter’s leaves. Their science teacher had told them about the clean-up.
Nearby, Winsome Watson (pictured), a custodian at Yale and also a Chatham Square member and resident, joined life-gathering forces with Eric Neubauer, who lives on Grafton Street. He’s been in the Chatham Square area for two years, having arrived from Texas. He’s begun a non-profit called Compassion Corps, which has been addressing the prostitution problem on Ferry Street. “We’re also organizing to open a food pantry,” he added, “which we don’t have in this area.”
This wide range of individuals — Yale families, local kids, and community activists interested in green spaces — may not have precisely the same interests. But they are all anchored in the Chatham Square Neighborhood Association, which has grown, according to Ledger, to 40 very active people, and others who join in on specific projects, such as the upcoming second summer festival.
Erin Sturgis-Pascale, the area alder, said that Metcalf and Bosson Heenan were exactly the kind of new leaders that she had been waiting for to take the helm of the association.
“Hope and Joan have just grabbed the bull by the horns,” said the alderwoman. “They are so committed. They’ve energized everybody.”
It’s not as if the Chatham Square Neighborhood Association didn’t have energy before. Begun with a grant from the Community Foundation for Greater New Haven and organized by one of its senior philanthropic officers, Lee Cruz (pictured at top, second row on the right), the association was organized on a community-building model that focused on strengthening home ownership around the square.
It has done so by offering foundation-provided funds for significant down payment assistance as well as a fund to subsidize exterior improvements such as driveway reconstruction as well as rehabbing a rental unit within a private home. Many of the houses that ring the sedate park are multi-family.
What’s new is that Cruz and the foundation are gradually turning the reins over to people like Metcalf and Bosson Heenan. There is still some money left in both the homebuyer funds, but not a whole lot. Perhaps enough to help one new buyer. And there are also funds in the repair account. Sturgis-Pascale said they were hoping for more, but that the neighborhood had received a kind of start-up gift through the foundation, but was now more indigenous and independent, and doing well.
The area has organized a summer festival, a walk-to-school event to promote local safety, and various art exhibitions combined with oral histories with residents of the nearby Mary Wade Home. For previous stories on those activities, click here, here, and here.
New plans? Hope Metcalf, who works at the law school, and Bosson Heenan, who does research in pediatric endocrinology, said they were aware that houses even around modest Chatham Square were very expensive. Yale’s homebuyer program had helped Bosson Heenan with her purchase.
“We want to attract more young families,” Metcalf said, “so our next step is to figure out if there is a way to do condos or co-ops here to make it easier for people to enter the housing market.”
There was a 2004 study done in NYC showing that poor people are more likely to stay in a neighborhood which is improving. Essentially, it showed the "gentrification" term to be a myth.
<a href="http://nycenvirons.blogspot.com/2005/06/exploding-gentrification-myth-columbia.html" rel="nofollow">http://nycenvirons.blogspot.com/2005/06/exploding-gentrification-myth-columbia.html</a>
I think its great what this neighborhood is doing, and other neighborhoods shouldn't fear "gentrification" or be dissuaded from improving their surroundings.
Bravo CSNA