Worcester Business Journal

wbjournal.com | December 12, 2022 | Worcester Business Journal 15 REDLINING: An Economic Legacy Authority, and later chairman of the Worcester Redevelopment Authority. Harold has been called the driving force behind the city's plans for urban renewal, and he helped build housing for return- ing veterans aer WWII as well as Curtis Apartments, Great Brook Valley Gardens and Booth Apartments. Harold also assisted and advised on the redlined Worcester HOLC realty map, which was completed on Feb. 10, 1936, with five other local advisors and one field agent. While Harold did build some low-income housing and housed veterans returning home from the war, he set the city in a way that has forced large neighborhoods and its population unable to gain a foothold on the promise of the American dream. And the city and its residents have not been able to break the cycle. Efforts to fix the impacts of the redlin- ing have included creating community groups like Main South Community Development Corp. and Worcester Com- mon Ground, Inc., which was set up in 1988 to help people find affordable hous- ing. Now, Worcester Common Ground, which is a land trust, buys property in its neighborhood, fixes it up and either rents it or sells it to a first-time home buyer who may not be able to afford a home in the city. e deed attached to the home says it must stay affordable in perpetuity. is not only gives people a chance to buy a home and gain wealth via equity, which they may not have been able to achieve before, but gives the city some more affordable housing in a neighbor- hood of three-deckers once a place for immigrants to buy a home and bring their family and friends over to work and live. But those efforts have been limited, as the 13.5% of Worcester housing stock deemed affordable is lower than Boston's 20% and Springfield's 16%, according to a WGBH story in June. Borges-Mendez has studied redlining impact across other cities and become keenly aware of Worcester's current housing issues as a member of Worcester Common Ground. He had a student, Nick Meliss, unearth a copy of Worces- ter's redlining map from 1936, which has been part of their own research. Borges-Mendez wants the city gov- ernment in Worcester to think about who has decided to partner with for new housing development. e city needs to rethink its strategy and push back on developers who want to come into the city, make money, and move on. He sees every new development, every new home, as a chance for the city to welcome in immigrants and blue-collar workers. "ere are developers out there who want and who would like and who would think that creating affordable and cost-effective housing is important," Borges-Mendez said. "And there are oth- ers who don't give a shit and don't care. "So it will depend on who you want to bring into the city, and if you are really hard ass, you can create mechanisms where you bring developers who are worthy, not developers who simply want to make a buck. at is an important part of the story," he said. While the cycle of redlining is racist in its programming, it's also one that profiteers off of the poorer classes. It allows the upper-class to take something and value it to a point so their invest- ment flourishes while at the same time destroying other people's, which then the cycle feeds off of again because people with money have the means to invest in distressed assets, which is what has hap- pened in the city as it is now faced with a shortage of affordable housing and more land and homes are being snapped up for big developers building more luxury and market-rate apartments like the ones at the Voke Lo and 145 Front Street at City Square. While we look toward the future, it's instructive to look at a map like the one from 1936. It lays out all of the biases and tells us the story of why Worcester looks like it does today. "One of the things that screams out of this map is the west-side/east-side/south- side thing holds tremendously true," Martin said. "e areas today that people talk about as upper-income Worcester – the West Side – are all by far where the majority of blue and the one green area is [on the redlined map]. "ese patterns were set very early, and you can see the way people talk about class and the way they talk about race in the city," she said. If you're cost-burdened, there's no way to build wealth. You're struggling each month to pay to live. Saving and creating wealth becomes more difficult and at any moment bad luck strikes and sends you tumbling down again, unable to even pay for a place to live because it costs too much. And it's the same groups and areas of the city reliving this fate all over again. It's the same story. It's the same hill needing to be climbed. Like before, it's dangerous and still littered with traps and potholes. The Main South neighborhood has a high level of traffic, which increases pol- lution and decreases quality of life. PHOTO | CHRISTINE PETERSON W Ramon Borges-Mendez, associate professor of community development and planning at Clark University, recommends the City of Worcester be more heavy handed with developers, in order for them to take into account the community good of their projects. PHOTO | MATT WRIGHT

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