Project to create Boston construction jobs

Posted on March 3, 2015

Boston Housing Authority’s Whittier Street Public Housing Development in Roxbury is part of a Plan for Transformation for the site and surrounding neighborhood, which will create Boston construction jobs.

“We really want to improve people’s lives in a comprehensive way through housing but also through insuring they have the supports they need to learn, grow, and improve their economic circumstances,” said BHA Administrator Bill McGonagle. “This Plan, if implemented, would transform Lower Roxbury and the lives of the people who live there.”

The plan is highlighted through the four key areas below:

Housing: a plan that will bring $300 million in new housing investment, replacing 200 units of deeply subsidized housing and adding 350 new units of moderate and market housing, totaling 550 new units of housing, to create a vibrant new mixed-income neighborhood which will not displace current residents.

The community collaboration strives to transform the Lower Roxbury neighborhood in and around Dudley Square and in particular the Whittier Street public housing development. It takes its name from the federal Choice Neighborhoods Initiative, which promotes community development through a focus on neighborhood, housing and people. BHA embarked on this initiative after receiving a $300,000 Choice Neighborhoods Planning Grant through the US Department of Housing and Urban Development.

Neighborhood: a plan that is knitted into the broader Roxbury Master Plan, with targeted investment in infrastructure, public safety, walkability improvements, and community facilities that support and emphasize breaking the isolation of Whittier Street residents.

People: a plan that addresses community transformation and opportunity and not just physical improvements, where the Whittier community is a connected community whose members enjoy a broad spectrum of quality programs and services, and have tangible pathways to educational and economic opportunity.

Jobs and Economic Opportunities: A Project Labor Agreement that will create hundreds of good-paying union construction jobs as well as increased opportunities for public housing and low-income residents to enter into the Building Pathways program, which provides pre-apprenticeship training and guaranteed placement within the building trades following graduation.