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Building a Balanced Community: Jubilee Housing
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18336 |
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MODERN THOUGHT
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10 / 1990 |
3,861 Words |
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Robert O. Boulter
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Seldom in recent history have events so changed communities in the United States as the riots of the late 1960s. The Adams Morgan district of Washington, D.C., was one community ravaged by those riots and their aftermath. Formerly among the most affluent neighborhoods in Washington, it was only two blocks west of one of the major riot corridors of April 1968. By the early seventies, once elegant apartment buildings had become deplorable slums and many of their occupants were among the poorest in the city. Weakened by the physical destruction, community bonds within this neighborhood were shattered by the mistrust and hopelessness that pervaded the squalor. Many residents who could afford to move and saw no hope for the area did, in fact, leave.
Exceptions to this exodus were members of a socially active ecumenical congregation, the Church of the Saviour, who had operated a small coffeehouse called the Potter's House on a major thoroughfare in the midst of these dwellings since 1960. Refusing to move away, they instead chose to rally around a vision of service and investment to reinvigorate the decaying environment. Through the one-to-one contact of their outreach programs, these volunteers achieved a firsthand awareness of the squalid living conditions of their neighbors.
A small group of church members began to explore the possibility of directly influencing the housing that was available. In 1973 they negotiated the purchase of two occupied apartment buildings totaling ninety apartments within a block of the Potter's House and formed a nonprofit housing corporation called Jubilee Housing, Inc. The purchase of these buildings was but the beginning of a herculean effort to physically revitalize these structures, an undertaking that would require tens of thousands of volunteer-hours. The challenge was not only to eliminate 947 housing code violations but also to win over the hearts of the residents - virtually all black and lower-income - who viewed the volunteers with mistrust and suspicion and assumed that they, being white and middle-income, were there only to make a profit and would eventually evict the poor.
Trust was built very slowly. Perhaps the greatest avenues for communication between the two groups were children's programs that the volunteers offered to the community. Time and again, a parent who appreciated the efforts the volunteers made with the children agreed to help with the renovation project. Gradually, this resident involvement in the cleanup, fix-up activity evolved into the formation of resident councils to address the concerns of the building occupants. Eventually, a resident was hired to manage both buildings.
Corporate Volunteerism
Jubilee Housing was in its fifth year when the extraordinary volunteer effort attracted the attention of the Department of Housing and Urban Development (HUD). An innovative grant was made available for renovation and expansion. It was hoped that additional funds could be provided by corporate supporters so that the non-profit organization could hire a construction manager. This hope was realized to its fullest degree. Jim Clark of the Hyman Construction Company offered to bring together companies with appropriate expertise for Jubilee's new projects, and Jim Rouse, of the Rouse Company, made a commitment, in turn, to hire and contribute a manager to coordinate this corporate
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