Neighborhoods Get Housing Boost From State

If you’ve ever been stopped at the long light at the intersection of Winchester and Bassett in Newhallville, you likely noticed a yellow house that was once so blighted that it hurt to look at it.

Thanks to the work of not-for-profit Neighborhood Housing Services of New Haven Inc. (NHS), it no longer hurts to look at it. The house received a cosmetic improvement, but will one day be as beautiful on the inside as it is outside.

An infusion of new state money is on the way to helping the whole house look better, too, along with 16 others that NHS will be able to rehab in Newhallville, Dwight and the Hill.

NHS will be getting $1.75 million from the state to rehab homes like the yellow one on Winchester Avenue, and help people become first- time homeowners and reduce neighborhood blight. The homes will be sold to homeowners earning at or below 80 percent of the area median income.

Before getting the new money, NHS undertook a rehab of the yellow house’s facade so that people wouldn’t have to stare at the blighted building while sitting at the traffic light, said Executive Director Jim Paley (pictured). Now it can finish the job by redoing the entire home and finding a homeowner to live there and rent out an apartment.

“Without this grant, there is no question that we could not do what we do,” Paley said.

The money comes from the state Department of Housing’s Affordable Homeownership. NHS is one of three New Haven entities to receive funding. The other two recipients are Habitat for Humanity of Greater New Haven Inc. and city government’s Neighborhood Renewal program.

Habitat for Humanity will receive $525,000 toward the construction of six new, single-family homes in the Hill North neighborhood and one rehab of a historic property in Fairhaven Heights. The homes, which will be constructed on infill lots, will create homeownership opportunities for seven families and individuals at or below 60 percent of the area median income once they are complete.

The city’s Neighborhood Renewal program will receive nearly $2.5 million to augment its housing development subsidies for homes in the Newhallville, Dixwell and West Rock neighborhoods. Aimed at increasing homeownership rates in areas that have extremely high rental housing stock and decreasing utility costs by building energy efficient homes, the program will be used to leverage other partnerships to create 23 new homes.

“We want to do the worst houses and then work with the owner occupants of homes that are in better shape, because it motivates others to feel good about their property,” Paley said during a recent tour of several NHS homes in Newhallville that have either been renovated, are in progress, or are on the list to be made over.

NHS is already at work on transforming this single-family, Bassett Street house, for instance.

The organization typically takes on a cluster of blighted and ramshackle houses in a neighborhood, guts the insides, makes them structurally sound and turns them into places that people are proud to call home. The quality of NHS’s work has become so well known that people often inquire about the signature light posts in front of their rehabbed homes, and want them for their yards.

But such complete overhauls, which insure that new, first-time homeowners don’t also take on a mortgage and lots of repairs, cost a lot of money, Paley said.

“Increasing the opportunities for individuals to become homeowners will be invaluable to those not only of modest means but to the growth of New Haven as a whole,” State Sen. Gary Winfield said in a statement about the three housing grants.