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TBF Housing
Special Reports
Chapter 40R School Cost Analysis and Proposed Smart Growth School Cost Insurance Supplement. Click the cover to download a pdf copy of this report containing recommendations from the Commonwealth Housing Task Force.
"Building Our Heritage: A Housing Strategy for Smart Growth and Economic Development," Nov. 2003. Click the cover to learn more about the report or download a copy. Report Cards The Greater Boston Housing Report Card 2002 The Greater Boston Housing Report Card 2003 The Greater Boston Housing Report Card 2004 The Greater Boston Housing Report Card 2005 - 2006 The Greater Boston Housing Report Card 2006 - 2007 The Greater Boston Housing Report Card 2008 Slide Presentations The 2003 Housing Report CardThe 2005 - 2006 Housing Report Card |
There at the Beginning
The Community Builders
In 1964 a grant of $75,000 from the Boston Foundation helped urban housing pioneer Bob Whittlesey launch South End Community Development, now known as The Community Builders. "I remember talking with the director of the Boston Foundation about involving the tenants themselves in the ownership and design of new housing," Whittlesey recalls. "That idea was almost revolutionary at the time."
The new organization demonstrated the feasibility of rehabilitating row houses in the South End, then began offering assistance to nonprofits, including Tent City Corporation and Inquilinos Boricuas en Accion, carrying out largescale community redevelopment in Boston. "It is not an exaggeraton to say that the Boston Foundation has walked the trail with us side-by-side since the very beginning," says Whittlesey today. "It has played a tremendously significant role in the nonprofit housing development phenomenon in this city."
Inquilinos Boricuas en Accion
With the help of $25,000 in start-up assistance from the Boston Foundation in 1968, a largely Puerto Rican neighborhood in the city’s South End established Inquilinos Boricuas en Accion. Through the organization, community residents opposed the city’s plans for their neighborhood and won the right to redevelop the community themselves.
The result was Villa Victoria, an 884-unit low- and moderate-income complex which today houses more than 3,000 residents and provides a range of social, educational, arts and cultural programs. At present, IBA is wiring the entire Villa Victoria community for the Internet and offering residents the technical training they need to take part in the knowledge-based economy.
Focused for more than three decades on building community, developing human capital, and supporting artistic creativity, IBA has come to be regarded as one of the most successful models of community development in the United States.
Achievements of Community Development Corporations
In the 1980s, TBF provided the intermediary organization Local Initiatives Support Corporation (LISC) with a grant of $500,000 to form its first local branch here. Since then, Boston LISC, which is still supported by TBF, has helped scores of Community Development Corporations (CDCs) to finance and build 5,000 units of housing and one million square feet of commercial space, leveraging three-quarters of a billion dollars in public and private investment.
In the early 1980s, when Community Development Corporations (CDCs) were beginning to flourish, it was clear that a trade association of CDCs would strengthen the capacity of its members to carry out their missions in communities across the state. TBF provided seed funding to the Massachusetts Association of Community Development Corporations, which advocates for support, runs programs that build CDC capacity, and educates the public about the community development movement. Since 1982, its members have built some 20,000 units of affordable housing.
