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Caroline Street Apartments -Collaborative for Supportive Living
Overlay the development's conditions with the problems facing
elderly public housing: how to accommodate an aging population? There are over
700,000 seniors in public housing, more than half live below the poverty line.
These seniors are disproportionately female, living alone, facing nutritional,
recreational, mobility, and medical problems.
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The New Bedford Housing Authority acquired the Caroline Street
Apartments in the 1970s. This apartment complex was not built by the Authority,
but built by a private contractor and then turned over to the Authority
(commonly called a "turnkey" development.) A relatively small development (64
residential units in six buildings, with a separate community building),
Caroline Street had problems almost immediately.
By the 1990s the problems were
overwhelming: insufficient neighborhood and site drainage led to regular site
flooding in heavy rain storms - so prevalent was the flooding that six
apartments were permanently unusable. Roofs, siding, hot water, electrical,
heating, windows, doors, sidewalks - all were a problem for this development
and its residents.
All is compounded by an
increasing inability to perform daily living tasks and the concurrent burdens
of increased isolation. The Authority determined that the guiding idea for
Caroline Street Apartments revitalization would be “supportive”
living for the elderly within the Authority’s management capabilities.
In order to devise a strategy
and address these problems, a collaboration led by the Authority quickly
evolved. Working with the Authority has been the Department of Housing and
Urban Development, the City of New Bedford, the Caroline Street Tenants
Association, the Senior Service Network on the South Coast of Massachusetts,
and a private sector partner, Peabody Properties, Inc.
of Braintree, Massachusetts.
Major funding was secured through HUD's HOPE
VI Program. Caroline Street was one of the Nation’s five elderly HOPE
developments in 1999: a public housing experiment designed to evaluate
alternate approaches to revitalization. Caroline Street was the first to open
its doors after revitalization. The official opening was on October 10th,
2003.
Now in the place of chronic flooding,
deteriorating buildings, crowded community space, growing isolation and worry,
there is renewed hope. "Aging in Place" is not just a catch phrase, but a real
possibility. The community building has been more than doubled in size, with
extraordinary provisions for nutrition and activities to support the
Authority's residents and the surrounding neighborhood. Rough sketches have
become concrete and brick. Now there is a stable and rich environment for this
senior development and the surrounding neighborhood.