Growing Pains

Amanda Barber is 20 years old. Her baby was due three days ago.

A resident of Charlesview Apartments since she moved out of her aunt’s Dorchester house in 2003, Barber worked at the Harvard Square Staples until March. Now she is waiting for her water to break.

Sitting on a chair in the grass outside her ground floor apartment, Barber is also waiting to be told when and where she will have to move.

Currently, her home sits on a plot of land at the heart of Harvard’s new Allston campus, a seven-acre triangle at the intersection of Western Ave. and North Harvard Street that may become a new center for the arts.

Not yet owned by Harvard, the property is the focus of a proposal brought forth by the University in March to swap a five-acre property in the Brighton Mills Shopping Center for the land currently occupied by the low-income housing community.

According to Barber, the deal is typical of Harvard’s voracious appetite for property—but it is not without appeal.

“Truthfully, I don’t mind it. I hope it’s going to be better,” she says.

The seven clusters of gray concrete that compose Charlesview Apartments contrast sharply with the white finish of its neo-Georgian neighbor, Harvard Business School (HBS). The stairwells smell like rotting metal and the concrete steps are worn. American flags and Easter baskets adorn the scratched red and blue doors. Bicycles and television buzz overflow into the landings. Inside the apartments there is wall-to-wall carpeting, a couch, a television. Some contain two stories and many open onto private decks.

In 1995, the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development (HUD) identified the apartments as “troubled” property in need of repairs to remain viable. Aware that the apartments needed resources for extensive renovation—and that their land was an obvious site for University expansion—the Charlesview Board of Directors approached Harvard in 2003 seeking a deal that would result in a better facility. Since then, the Board has rejected two offers from Harvard, maintaining that those sites lacked adequate access to amenities like public transportation.

“It’s not a Harvard takeover. In fact, for your information, Harvard would not even dare to approach any institution, especially a low-income housing community, because of the bad press that they would have gotten,” says Lawrence Fiorentino, a member of the apartments’ Board of Directors, whose mother chaired the board until she passed away in October, and whose family ties to the area extend back to the early part of the century when his great-grandfather owned a farm where HBS now sits.

Harvard’s holdings in Allston—271 acres, many amassed over the course of 20 years—are dominated by autobody repair shops, industrial railyards, and fast-food franchises.

Businesses like Pepsi, Kmart, and WGBH, which previously occupied the land, are vacating the premises as Harvard prepares to break ground on its first building—a 500,000 square foot science complex that will house the Stem Cell Institute. The Institute will be located across from Charlesview on Western Ave.

But as Harvard and Boston officials relentlessly promote the economic benefits the University will bring to the area—1,000 new jobs at the science center alone—it is easy to overlook the people being pushed aside to make way for Harvard’s vision. Redeveloping the area while preserving its affordability and character will be a tricky balancing act.



‘I’VE NEVER HAD ANY TROUBLE’

Thomas Harper, 20, is the third generation of his family to live in the apartments. His grandfather was employed to help with maintenance when the apartments were constructed in 1971 to provide housing—ironically enough—or people pushed out of Cambridge by Harvard’s expansion. Originally owned by HUD, the Section-8 housing is now owned by three churches and a synagogue: St. Anthony’s Roman Catholic Church, St. Gabriel’s Roman Catholic Church, the United Methodist Church of Allston, and Kadimah Toras-Moshe. According to State Representative Michael Moran, who says he has many friends who grew up in Charlesview, the apartments are “the perfect model for affordable housing networks.”

At a meeting of the Tenant’s Association in March, evaluations of the land swap were passed out in five languages. A mix of white and black, Hispanic, Korean and Chinese, the residents represent a broad swath of the American working class.

“It’s pretty diverse,” Harper says. “There’s pretty much every race I can think of.”

But in interviews, tenants repeatedly praise the apartments for being quiet, safe, and peaceful. Bordered by Ohiri Field and in the shadow of Harvard Stadium, the apartments are a grassy refuge from the traffic of Western Ave. The managers organize community barbecues and Easter parties. They have recently established a children’s resource center. The neighbors themselves are a key part of the apartments’ appeal.

“It’s multi-denominational, it’s multi-cultural. There are newborns, families, and senior citizens,” says Hurley, 45, an administrative assistant who has lived in Charlesview for 12 years. “It’s a safe place.”

“So far, I’ve had no problems,” says Sothy Soeun, 24, who moved into Charlesview with her four children, ages seven to five months, in November. “The people are pretty nice compared to where I used to be [Philadelphia]. They’re not ignorant.”

For Charlesview’s longer-term residents, though, there are hints—like a shooting in October—of the area’s decline.

“It’s turning into the projects,” says Harper, who just completed training at the Mobile Electronics Technical School and, with the prospect of a well-paying job on the horizon, is seeking to move out of his parents’ home.

“I can see it happening even since I’ve lived here. Two of my friends have gotten shot, there have been stabbings. When I was six or seven, I could play outside when it was dark.”

Ligia Pirugro, a widow with six grown children who has lived in the apartments since their inception, also mourns the changes to what were once sparkling new models of low-income redevelopment.

“Later it was beautiful people. Now, so-so,” she says. Pirugo, not a native English speaker, means before.

‘I WANT A NEW HOUSE’

The Charlesview apartments are a mix of market rate rentals and Section-8 housing, a federal program for low-wage earners that requires them to attribute 30 percent of their income to housing while the city subsidizes the rest. According to a notice on the window of the manager’s office, rents at Charlesview range from $1,165-$1,494 a month. But if tenants are in exceptionally dire financial straits, the owners are accommodating, occasionally charging nothing—as happened the year Edna Archer lost her job.

Archer, 42, came to the United States from Guatemala 20 years ago, following her mother to Massachusetts in search of work. Now employed by a medical company in Bedford, Mass., the single mother moved from nearby Everett Street to Charlesview three years ago with her two children, aged 16 and 20, attracted by the low rent and proximity to schools and public transportation.

“I don’t feel like I’m in housing. Most of the people over here, we work. It’s not like we have welfare,” Archer says. “We have almost everything we need. If they decide to buy this place we need to have one just like this.”

The proposed location is only about one mile away, situated near Shaw’s Supermarket and major bus routes. Though the site is currently under review, Charlesview Board members say it is the best one offered so far. If they accept Harvard’s offer, their plans will then come under review by the Boston Redevelopment Authority, which will have to approve a zoning change and their plans before they can be built.

When asked if she anticipated trouble sealing Boston’s go-ahead on the deal, Felicia Jacques, a lawyer for The Community Builders, a non-profit organization devoted to public housing with offices around the country, says the city has been supportive of the relocation.

“The city has invested an enormous amount of time and resources in thinking about this and how it dovetails with Harvard’s master plan,” she says.

And in interviews with tenants, it appears that the University may have finally made a satisfying offer.

“I’m fine with it. It’s not that far away,” Soeun says. “But I’m not as attached to this place as some other people.”

Hope that Harvard will provide enough resources to improve the apartments runs high—air conditioning and green space outside continue to top the list of dream additions. Private laundry machines, Archer says, are a “big issue.”

“It would be good. I want a new house,” says Wilmer Berril in a pause during an informal basketball game on Saturday afternoon. At 16, Berril is just one of 170 children under the age of 18 who live in Charlesview.

“They should build a basketball court and a park and a slide,” says Nadia Bentley, 9, who has lived in the apartments since she was 4.

The new location, however, does present its downsides. Moved to what is now a busy shopping center, the apartments will be exposed to near-perpetual traffic.

“They’re putting us in a parking lot,” says Hurley. “I know they’re going to try to make it livable, but they’re putting us in a parking lot. That’s all I can think of.”

And for Ruth Olivole, 76, a widow with seven children and a dog named Allbright—after the Allston-Brighton neighborhood—moving from her home of 15 years still presents a daunting prospect.

“It’s all right, and it’s near the market, so they’re not taking too much away from us,” she says. “It’s just moving—oh, God.”



‘WHY DO THEY HAVE TO TAKE SOMETHING THAT’S FOR US?’

Rumors that the University would buy the property—which houses the only residents directly in the way of Harvard’s campus plans—have been circulating for years, generating a sense of inevitability about encroachment into the area. Described alternately as “spoiled” and “selfish,” the University’s greed—“they just seem to want everything” is a common refrain—appears to the residents to be a natural outgrowth of its wealth, an estimated $26 billion last year.

“For [Harvard] not to want to expand is pretty much impossible,” says Danny Wera, 27, who has lived in Charlesview for 15 years and is currently unemployed. “Harvard’s got the money. They can get anything they want.”

But some residents say that while Harvard’s billions may give it a right to the property, they do not match the value of the human lives contained within the space.

“Harvard has so many properties, why do they have to take something that’s for us?” asks Melida Deleon, 37, who has lived in the apartments for nine years with her husband and two children. “They’re not thinking about how it’s affecting our kids, our lives. I understand it’s their property and they can do whatever they want, but it would be nice if they let us stay.”



‘ANOTHER HARVARD SQUARE?’

Not everyone objects to the idea of Harvard in their neighborhood. Sengh Chea served in Vietnam as a medic for the U. S. Army from 1969 until 1975. Originally from Cambodia, he fled the country for the United States in 1981, after he and his wife were tortured in a prison by Cambodia’s Khmer Rouge regime. Six months after their arrival in the United States, Chea divorced his wife and never saw their two children again. One of them was gunned down in Charlestown, Mass., two years ago.

“I don’t feel anything [about the move]. Anywhere, anyplace, I can live,” says Chea, who receives disability benefits since suffering a back injury while working as a nurse in a state hospital. Chea pays less than $200 a month for his apartment. “I’m just happy that Harvard is spreading out for education.”

Both Boston and the University believe that Harvard’s increased presence across the river will present an opportunity for broad economic revitalization. University officials often identify the Charlesview property as the future site of a “cultural center” that will generate positive “interface” with the community, and excitedly discuss new shops, a canal, and a T-stop as within the realm of possibility. And Harvard’s properties border the campus of Boston University, giving the vision of Allston as a “hub” for interdisciplinary science an intercollegiate tinge.

“I think this really has the potential to transform science at Harvard and to transform that area of the city,” says David Scadden, a co-director of the Stem Cell Institute, one of the first departments that will be located in Allston. “The area is currently industrial and doesn’t appear to be heavily used, so I suspect if we created something that was another center of gravity that that would be a regarded as a plus.”

But the idea that Harvard could transform the area into “another Harvard Square” is met with skepticism—and some distaste—from tenants accustomed to living in the shadow of the Harvard Stadium, located just across the street. Over the years, Charlesview residents watched as Harvard bought out business after business, shutting down large stores that were a valuable source of jobs.

“We’re losing our K-Mart. I know four people who worked there and a lot of people who shop there,” Hurley says. Kmart, which Harvard accused of lapsing on the terms of its lease, will vacate the property at the beginning of August.

Members of the Allston Task Force, a 16-person watchdog body appointed by the mayor to review Harvard’s plan, repeatedly press the University to find tenants for its currently vacant properties along Western Avenue.

Moran said it was hard to judge how the University’s presence would impact the neighborhood at this point in the process.

“That remains to be seen,” says Moran. “They’ve done nothing so far as putting a shovel in the ground.”



‘IS IT STILL GOING TO BE AFFORDABLE?’

Hurley says that she hopes the businesses Harvard intends to attract to the area remain “moderately priced.”

“I’m worried about, ‘Is it still going to be affordable?’” she says.

Just as Harvard has changed the housing market of its home city, Cambridge, residents of Allston are watching as their property values skyrocket in response to the University’s presence. How a low-income community will be able to live next door to multi-million dollar science labs remains to be seen.

“The underlying piece of all of this is that the affordability needs to be preserved, and the neighborhood needs to stay intact,” Jacques says. “The question is how do you come up with a plan that allows for the two entities to exist without there being a need for competing agendas.”

Gerald Autler, the project manager at the Boston Redevelopment Authority who coordinates Harvard’s plans with the city, called the possibilities of economic development a “double-edged sword,” saying that while better amenities improve the neighborhood, they also increase rents and other prices.

“I think the key is to not only look at ways to create additional affordable housing. People have also suggested other tools that we’d certainly like to look into, ways that Harvard might be able subsidize mortgages,” Autler says. “I’m obviously not speaking on behalf of the University.”

The University has already invested millions of dollars in Allston. In 2000, the University established a continuously-replenished $10 million loan fund to help affordable housing projects in Boston. And in 2001, it made a separate $3.5 million donation to build a housing complex in south Allston. They have promised $5 million to after-school programs and made smaller donations to improve local parks and playgrounds.

“I think as we look at how to work with the neighborhood and with the city. We all have a shared focus on mutual benefit and I think that will continue drive our work together,” says Director of Boston Community Relations Kevin A. McCluskey ’76, who served on Boston’s School Board during the 1980s.

In 1998, a Boston Globe article generated community outrage when it revealed that the University had acquired 52 acres in Allston using a front company, a tactic to avoid paying the highest price that a seller would expect from a University with a multi-billion dollar endowment.

But the University has been working in Allston for years to coordinate their master plan—set to be released in the next two years—with Boston’s development goals, and administrators believe that they have now fashioned a relationship with the city characterized more by cooperation than contention.

“I think the Allston community is open-minded and very curious,” says Chris Gordon, the chief operating officer of the Allston Development Group. “Of course they want to make sure they have a role.”

Hurley says she has attended the meetings with the Allston Task Force (once characterized by its chairman as a “little local, yokel group”) and thinks that the University tries to cooperate with residents, but resists stating more than the bare minimum about its plans.

“They do try to answer what they can, but they stick to the agenda. You always hear the same thing,” she says.



‘LATE NIGHT TOO-MUCH-WINE DRIVEL’

The urgency of stem cell research has propelled Harvard’s plans across the river. University officials said last week that Harvard intends to seek permission from Boston by the end of April to build its new science center on property formerly leased by Channel 2. The architect of the new building, Stefan Behnisch, will attend next week’s Allston Task Force meeting to talk to residents about designs. The University hopes to break ground on the building in 2007.

“I think we have a number of challenges: that we are able to convince people that this will add real value to the University, to the city, and frankly to our nation, that the science is organized in a way that can help maximize our success in the near term, because success will change the nature of this debate,” Scadden says.

“I’m sorry I’m giving you such late night too-much-wine drivel,” he adds, becoming jokingly self-conscious about his enthusiasm for the possibilities in Allston.

But it’s not just Harvard’s ambitions that need to move quickly. In addition to contending with rapidly deteriorating facilities, the Charlesview Board must rush to utilize a law passed by Congress last year that provides vouchers to those with Section 8 housing, so that they can move with the building without reapplying to the program.

“That’s why everything is sort of getting pushed along the fast track here,” says Vince O’Donnell, vice president for housing preservation at the Local Initiatives Support Corporation, which is working on the negotiations with the tenants.

As the University deepens its presence across the river, it comes one step closer to the realization of ambitious, multi-generational promises—cures for debilitating diseases, economic rebirth, and a new partnership between city and University.

In the path of this epic proposal are 213 crumbling apartments, populated by immigrants, single mothers, and the elderly. For some the move represents a new washing machine; for others, the eviction from a place they have called home for more than three decades. The average undergraduate will rarely cross their paths, but for these residents, the University’s decisions will have lasting consequences.