Neighborhood organizer Alan Kendrix, Chief Esserman, and NHS’s Paleya t Tuesday’s event.
A national foundation took notice — to the tune of $20,000 — of how people in Newhallville are working on building up housing and fighting crime at the same time.
The foundation, MetLife, came to the neighborhood Tuesday to award the $20,000 in conjunction with Local Initiatives Support Corporation to groups working together to revive Newhallville: Neighborhood Housing Services (NHS), a not-for-profit that restores beautiful but neglected old homes, then helps working families buy them and live in them; the police department; and a neighbors’ group called Newhallville Community Matters. (Read about that group here and here.)
The Newhallville police-community partnership was one of 11 to receive the award nationwide — out of 560 that applied.
“The best way to work together is to build our way out crime,” Chief Dean Esserman said Tuesday.
Some of the driving forces behind the Community Matters group bought homes through NHS. Read about the group’s work here and here.
“When we began our concentrated efforts in Newhallville, we knew that a few rehabbed houses and new homeowners alone would not reverse the decline that this neighborhood had experienced for years. Working together with local residents and the New Haven Police Department provided the key ingredients for a successful neighborhood revitalization campaign,” a release quoted NHS Executive Director James Paley as saying. Click here, here and here for stories about his agency’s work in Newhallville and beyond.
Alder Delphine Clyburn, Mayor Toni Harp, & eserman Tuesday.
