Marking “413 Day” back in April, local leaders also marked a milestone in Springfield — a fresh $1 million from the state for Way Finders via the state’s “Neighborhood Stabilization Program.”
It complemented the group’s latest efforts in the city — its City of Homes Initiative — that’s been taking blighted properties and rehabbing or rebuilding them, making them ideal for first-time homebuyers. Way Finders CEO Keith Fairey recently toured one of those new two-story properties off Union Street.
"This property has been vacant… for over a decade - it's off the tax rolls, creating blight in the neighborhood, creating a place for bad things to happen," he said of the two-story house. "Now this is going to be a place where people can raise their children, a place where people can find and have comfort — where people can go forward from here every day and contribute to the city of Springfield and beyond."
Springfield isn’t known as the City of Homes for nothing. A 2018 study found almost 62,000 housing units existed in some form in the city, with 68% said to be either single-family homes or duplexes.
But, as for an actual housing plan: the city hasn’t had one in quite a while, said the city's housing director Gerry McCafferty.
That’s what she told WAMC earlier this year, during one of several forums devoted to the topic.
"Springfield has not had a housing plan since I've been here, which is 20 years," she explained during an April 22 forum. "People at one of these [forums] were reminding me that, in the 90s, there was a plan. I'm not familiar with it."
There’s been no lack of developments in the city — projects involving Way Finders and other groups like Home City Development as well as the state itself have been ongoing, adding affordable and market-rate housing at various scales.
But with so many moving parts, McCafferty and others say a fresh blueprint for improving the housing stock and ensuring the city’s investing in the right efforts is needed.
It’s why they have been collaborating with New York planning firm CZB.
"When the city is spending money — how are we spending money? When we're regulating things — how are we regulating them? When we're doing code enforcement, when we're doing sort of any of the variety of things that attach to housing..." she said. "Having kind of a single vision of where we're going and a vision that we've thought through beforehand, so we're not making decisions on the fly."
Residents who viewed the preliminary findings back in April said they are not great, but not surprising.
Without giving specific numbers, several city maps reveal dozens upon dozens — if not hundreds — of properties with active code violations and tax delinquency, clustered up in some of the city’s most densely populated neighborhoods.
The South End, Six Corners, Old Hill, Upper Hill and Bay neighborhoods sport some of the larger clusters, as does Forest Park. Kathy Post, who helps lead the Forest Park Civic Association, said it’s not shocking — even if it's not clear what actions need to be taken.
"I think there are problems with code enforcement — that's a huge thing in housing. I mean, we've had all this stuff go on with absentee landlords, like Springfield Gardens," she said. "But I also know that there's a delicate balance in trying to keep housing open and affordable, and if you condemn too many buildings, you're pushing people out."
All the while this year, a new housing plan has been coming along.
There’s a hope to have a plan done by the fall. However, this past week, city leaders got a taste of what’s to come — and sorting out the aforementioned trouble properties is just part of what’s going to need to happen.
Charles Buki of CZB was frank during his assessment at a July 9 city council subcommittee meeting.
"There's too much s--- going on in the city," he said. "There's too much garbage that just sits around. There's too much graffiti, there's too much garbage, there's too much noise — there's too many folks on motorcycles screaming through at different hours. There's too much quality-of-life crime that makes it a really s----- experience for your average resident to walk out of their home and to their car and feel good about it..."
Speaking to council leadership, Buki emphasized that, after spending time in the city analyzing at least 36,000 “residential structures” and more, analysts found a number of factors that point to a “weak housing market,” not the kind of “hot market” real estate websites might occasionally claim.
Older housing stock, high crime and numerous properties with “low-quality upkeep” might mean cheaper units in many cases, but it is to a point now where low demand in parts of the city is adding up, creating spiraling issues that could translate to less growth and tax revenue for Springfield in general in the years to come.
"The conditions become vital because they are effectively a billboard for your city. Every time somebody is new to your city and they visit the city, they're looking around and they're looking at the conditions and ... those conditions project an image," he explained. "A really good strategy has to think carefully about how these pieces fit together."
It’s not all doom and gloom. Buki said his team is “bullish” on Springfield in general. But solutions aren’t going to be cheap. Calling the current code enforcement efforts in the city “broken,” Buki said revamping that system as well as installing a rental property registry are steps in the right direction.
While noting code enforcement has been the subject of complaints —allegedly targeting certain neighborhoods — Springfield City Council President Tracye Whitfield said the need for reform is real.
"I want you to keep giving it to us plain [and] real. This is the information that we need. We need to know what's going wrong in the city, so that we can improve what is going wrong in the city," she said. "I'm not trying to bash anybody, but I still don't think Springfield is doing the best that we can, so that we can grow to the capacity that we need to grow..."
Additional housing plan forums, as well as a draft, are slated for August. More information can be found here.
Focus Springfield contributed to this report.
