Home Ownership a Possibility in Revitalized North End

Families who believe they have the least possibility of home ownership now have a chance at exactly that, thanks to the transformation of 17 outdated or poorly maintained housing units into top-notch condominiums in Middletown's North End by the Nehemiah Housing Corp.

Seven buildings in the Green, Ferry and Rapallo neighborhood are on the market for $85,000 to $120,000 — for two-, three- and four-bedroom condos, specifically offered to residents who make 60 percent or less than $84,000, the median income level for the Greater Hartford area.

"For a lot of these, the mortgage is the same as what your rent is," North End Action Team director Izzi Greenberg says.

And today, interested folks are invited to tour the condos built with ultramodern construction during an open house from 1-3 p.m.

Residents may remember the dramatic move of the onetime Methodist church built in 1853, formerly 9-11 Liberty St. and now 47 Rapallo Ave., on Jan. 12, 2008, in the middle of the night, creeping along its two-block path at one inch per hour.

NEAT and Nehemiah Housing have worked together to effect better living conditions in the city's North End for more than a decade. "We've been very close partners for years," Greenberg explains.

"NEAT and Nehemiah essentially have very similar missions. NEAT's mission is really to use a grassroutes approach to improve the quality of life, so it's really bringing people together to create a collective voice for pushing change."

That means a whole lot to longtime residents of this once depressed section of the North End.

On a tour Friday, Greenberg pointed out the grassy area between 43-47 and 49 Ferry Street. "This area right here, this was known as ‘The Alley.’ This was the site of notorious drug dealing 24 hours a day for a long, long time."

Cleaning up something so entrenched in the neighborhood was the work of dedicated, courageous residents.

"People who move in here now," Greenberg explains, "they wouldn’t even know … the people who worked in this neighborhood, the residents who came together to make the change to get this housing built, to push the Green Street Arts Center, all the development that has happened here has resulted in a total transformation of this neighborhood to the fact where you wouldn’t even know that’s the history of it if you’re coming in with fresh eyes."

And to prevent dishonest and neglectful landlords — a hallmark of this community's past — Nehemiah Housing requires certain provisions. "It's set up in your mortgage that it has to be owner-occupied," Greenberg says.

During the building process, the contractors worked to maintain structural integrity whenever possible. So certain elements of the original buildings — some dating from as early as the 1700s, Greenberg says — remain, such as portions of the foundation.

"You have the joy of living in this beautiful old structure but those convenient amenities like having tons of closet space," Greenberg says.

"One of the really interesting things about the quality of the units is that all the exterior was done with a product called Hardie plank," explained William Vasiliou, director of the Middletown Housing Authority.

"It's actually a concrete base material and it’s essentially impervious to moisture problems, paint peeling. It’s very expensive, but it’s a very high-quality product and you’d never presume it would be on this type of a unit. You see it on very, very upper-end units; you see it very often in the South where there’s a lot of moisture; beach houses."

So, for the cost of what most North End residents are paying for rent, they could own their own state-of-the-art home.

“Say you take [a condo priced at] $85,000 and you assume a 4-percent mortgage," Vasiliou says. "That’s going to cost you $3,300 to $3,400 a year, so you’re going to be an owner. It would cost you $350 a month plus the condo fee, plus your taxes. That’s going to cost you $550 a month … you need [a salary of only] $24,000 to be able to afford this, so the numbers, they’re really where the numbers ought to be for home ownership.”

See the Power Point which details the transformation, including before and after photos, here.

To find out about the open house, see http://northvillagemiddletown.org.

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