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Springfield Forward… or Back?

by Bill Dusty

George Pappas is a determined man. A Springfield resident for less than two years, he sees a broken system in the way low-income housing subsidies are provided in the city. And his recent efforts to address and correct that system after a WinnDevelopment proposal to create over a hundred new low-income rental units in the Forest Park neighborhood have met up with stiff resistance from both city officials and a civic establishment that Pappas says mocks the opinion of newcomers to the city.

But Pappas and the civic group he is a member of, Springfield Forward, are in no mood to give up the fight against the Winn proposal for the redevelopment of the long-suffering, former Longhill Gardens Condominiums. That’s because Springfield Forward sees the Winn plan as just the latest example (“Exhibit A,” as Pappas puts it) of the City’s deeply flawed process of distributing low-income rental vouchers and tax credits to Springfield’s neighborhoods.

“There are 1,800 to 2,000 low-income units in Forest Park,” says Pappas, which he says greatly outnumbers, by percentage of population and housing, those allotted to other neighborhoods. “We are not against low-income housing,” he insists. Rather, the group is fighting to see a city-wide, balanced housing plan put into practice.

Pappas says the current gross imbalance in the distribution of low-income housing in the city is the end result of years of having no city-wide housing plan. He says the city has been segregating low-income residents by “warehousing” them in projects that have gradually overtaken entire neighborhoods. This, despite the fact that the City of Springfield, under then-Mayor Michael Albano, signed a conciliation agreement back in 1997 with the Department of Housing and Urban Development and the McKnight Homeowners Association to provide a balanced housing plan for the city – a plan which Pappas says was never implemented. Instead, says Pappas, the Springfield Housing Authority continued to distribute rental vouchers haphazardly, with little or no regard to geographic location or other housing standards.

BALANCING ACT
Back in 2001, the City of Springfield conducted an “analysis of impediments” to fair housing as a part of a Fair Housing Planning study. That analysis was later updated in 2003 and 2005. What it found showed marked disparities in housing and home ownership rates throughout the city. The study found, for example, that while the overall rate for single family housing stock in Springfield stood at 49%, in certain neighborhoods this percentage went as high as 80%, while in other, more urban neighborhoods the rate was found to be below 20%. Likewise, owner-occupied housing in Springfield was found to be as high as 86% in outlying neighborhoods, while the rate among more urban neighborhoods was found to be as low as 5-20%.

The study further listed actions the City would take to remedy the current imbalance in housing. These included infilling new housing on scattered plots of land available for development, pursuing strategies to demolish and/or redevelop abandoned properties, and the implementation of a balanced housing strategy (which should have been done under the previously-mentioned 1997 HUD conciliatory agreement).

According to a report prepared by Abt Associates for the Poverty and Race Research Action Council (July, 2006), the current objective of Federal housing policy is to create mixed income communities – placing low income families in middle-and-higher income communities, so as to improve the general standard of living for these low-income families. As the report puts it, “Just as living in a community where most other families are poor can have negative effects on the life chances of the children of low-income households, living among households with relatively higher incomes can create benefits for low-income children.”

This policy mirrors the “balanced housing” strategies implemented in many cities throughout the United States, with some cities being better at it than others. Why Springfield – with such a high poverty rate – continues to struggle with the concept of balanced housing is a question Springfield Forward hopes to find answers for.

In the matter of the Longhill Gardens redevelopment deal, Pappas maintains that the city never seriously entertained any other alternative plan for the former condominiums, and that the City merely feigned deliberating possible scenarios for the Longhill properties in the early months of 2008. That’s because the holder of the mortgage on the 192 Longhill units in question, Citibank, had already signed-off on a Letter of Agreement with Winn to purchase the units back in November of 2007. That letter was conditioned on Winn being approved for state subsidy funding. Citibank asserted that should Winn not receive the required state funding, the bank would be free to entertain the next highest offer.

But Winn had a couple of aces up its sleeve. Those aces were in the form of two well-established Springfield civic organizations – the Forest Park Civic Association (FPCA) and Concerned Citizens for Springfield (CCS). Both groups strongly supported Winn’s plan for acquiring the Longhill Gardens units from Citibank and redeveloping the property. In votes conducted by their respective Boards, each group voted to approve Winn’s proposal. These votes were later touted by the City as further evidence of widespread community support for getting Winn into Longhill Gardens.

But there have been questions raised regarding these votes, along with who participated in them. With both the FPCA and Concerned Citizens, only Board members were reportedly allowed to vote – hardly representative of a Forest Park community of over 25,000. What makes the votes even more questionable is the fact that some Board members with the FPCA are also on the Board at CCS. Records on file with the State of Massachusetts as well as offered at the FCPA website show that Patricia Triggs, Mary Ann Maloney, and Russell Seelig are – or were – members of both Boards. A November 1, 2007 Annual report filing with Concerned Citizens shows Triggs as President, Maloney as Treasurer, and Seelig as Clerk. On the FPCA website, meanwhile, a 2008 listing of Board members shows Triggs and Maloney as being members and, up until recently, Seelig as an “At-Large” member (his name was recently removed from the listing).

And then there is the matter of Concerned Citizens’ ownership of five units at Longhill Gardens, purchased back in 2005. Pappas points out that this hardly makes them a financially disinterested party, and that any redevelopment deal obviously benefits their properties.

As a side note, Concerned Citizens for Springfield is (or was) also the “beneficiary organization” for a real estate corporation called Longhill Heights, which filed with the State of Massachusetts back in May of 2002. The officers of this corporation at the time of its filing were none other than Patricia Triggs, Mary Ann Maloney, and Russell Seelig.

CLOSING THE DEAL
Its “community support” assured by the FPCA and CCS board votes, WinnDevelopment sent a letter to Mayor Domenic Sarno, dated March 19, 2008, urging the Mayor to support state funding for the Longhill Gardens plan. The Mayor’s response to Winn’s request was swift: On that very same day, March 19, 2008, Sarno sent a two-page letter to the Undersecretary of the Massachusetts Department of Housing and Community Development (DHCD), Tina Brooks, urging approval of State funding of the WinnDevelopment proposal. (The timing of these letters was critical, as the deadline for applying for state funding was March 20, 2008.)

This past August, the DHCD did announce approval for funding for the Winn plan as part of an overall, $142 million state housing package. But Pappas says that funding is conditional, and that it can be revoked upon review by the DHCD. Springfield Forward recently filed an appeal with the DHCD, and Pappas says their claim is being investigated. Furthermore, where once only the Governor’s Office showed any interest in Springfield Forward’s grievance with the proposed deal, Pappas says that U.S. Senator John Kerry and Congressman Richard Neal are now looking into it, as well.

In a statement found on the FPCA website, former board member Russell Seelig – a.k.a. Board member over at Concerned Citizens for Springfield, a.k.a. officer at Longhill Heights, Inc. – issued a statement declaring the state funding approval for the Winn project to be “a major triumph” for Concerned Citizens. “Their next steps are to meet with Citibank and the various 3rd party condo owners [note: CCS would be one of those 3rd party owners, with 5 units] and work out a closing schedule..”

Seelig went on to thank state Representative Cheryl Coakley-Rivera for her help in getting Bay State Medical to donate a building on Belmont Avenue to the CCS, which gave them “the wherewithal to pursue this.”

BATTLING BACK
Meanwhile, Pappas sometimes wonders if any of the pressure being brought by Springfield Forward will make any difference at all in a city with a tradition of “business as usual” politics. He’s seen his civic group ignored, mocked, ridiculed and attacked by critics. A recent controversy involving an alleged comment by Springfield’s Chief Development Officer, David Panagore, which Springfield Forward continues to protest, is the latest such attempt, says Pappas, to sully the group’s image.

Even so, Springfield’s newest civic group (Springfield Forward formed just after a February 24, 2008, meeting on Longhill Gardens) vows to continue the fight for balanced housing in the city. They understand, too, that they need this win to help establish themselves as a credible citizens group. “We’d like to go city-wide,” says Pappas, who sees the low-income housing debate as a springboard to tackling other issues.

But taking on the established players in Springfield and coming out on top would mean accomplishing a truly rare feat: For so many years, now, The Network has operated largely at will, with only the state-imposed Springfield Finance Control Board (SFCB) impeding their way.

This is their city.

Who do the members of Springfield Forward think they are?

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Posted by Bill Dusty on Sep 3rd, 2008 and filed under Cities & Towns, City Hall, Politics. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0. Both comments and pings are currently closed.