Neighborhood Housing Services of Jacksonville Inc.
Richard C. Harrill, Executive Director
1610 N. Main St.
PO Box 3386
Jacksonville, Fla. 32206
(904) 355-1248
(904) 353-3397 fax

This fine organization goes a step beyond rebuilding houses: It's setting out to rebuild a community.

Mobilizing federal HOME funds, Community Development Block Grant money and mortgage loans in the private sector, NHS seeks to build economic, racial and ethnic integration in Jacksonville's reemerging Springfield neighborhood.

This large (144 city blocks, 1,800 residents) section not far north of downtown has fallen on hard times in recent decades, suffering both white flight and "green" flight. More than 200 of its houses are dilapidated and vacant, and most businesses fled the neighborhood along with its middle class.

But Springfield has some unusual advantages, too, and NHS hopes to be able to use them to help turn the neighborhood around. Springfield's many fine old frame houses, many dating back a century or more, have earned it a place on the National Register of Historic Places, and the first tendrils of gentrification are already making themselves felt in spotty private-sector rehabilitation, scattered shops and stores to serve a returning middle class, and rising property values.

A reviving downtown and the arrival of a new National Football League expansion team that will be playing within walking distance of Springfield will help the neighborhood's economic boom build steam; and NHS intends to see to it that gentrification creates a neighborhood for everyone rather than merely shifting poor residents off to newer slums.

One of a network of Neighborhood Housing Services programs linked in the Neighborhood Reinvestment Corp., Jacksonville's NHS differs from many, Harrill says, because of its conscious effort not to build "villages with fences" but to integrate races and ethnic groups and people of varied incomes in a single community. The proof is in the numbers, he says, pointing to $10 million in loans in the past five years, of which two-thirds went to low-income families and 41 percent to African-American families, a happily multi-social and multi-cultural balance sheet.

NHS accomplishes this by aggressively pursuing a three-part program:

1. It provides "financial facilitation" for homeowners and quality residential investors in its community. It provides housing counseling and works with individuals to help them realize their dream of home ownership. Although it's necessary to have SOME job or source of income to own a house independently, Harrill says that prospective Springfield homeowners can generally qualify for a home purchase through creative financing if they can budget a little as $300 a month for housing costs.

In addition to leveraging federal housing money, NHS overcame traditional redlining by negotiating a consortium arrangement with five local banks. In a creative, model variation, NHS persuaded the banks to meet as a group to make loan decisions, with experienced NHS staff joining in the loan process as agent for the consumers, rather than simply sending hopeful home owners to deal with the bankers on their own.

2. NHS also purchases, rehabilitates and sells properties (and hopes to move soon into new-home construction as "infill" housing on vacant lots).

3. Working with corporate and community volunteers, NHS provides free housing rehabilitation aimed at keeping poor, elderly residents in their homes.

Founded in 1979, NHS moved rather slowly during its first 10 years, relying entirely on Community Development Block Grant money, which essentially limited its activity to rehabilitation projects for residents who already owned their own homes. After Harrill arrived in 1987, the group shifted focus to more flexible HOME funds and began aggressively seeking local bank mortgages and an end to redlining.

Between 1979 and 1987, Harrill says, the group loaned just $700,000. Since 1989, it has put 350 families into housing and made loans totaling more than $10 million. Operating out of an attractive, historic white-frame house, one of the few remaining on Springfield's Main Street business district, NHS makes it happen with a staff of seven and a budget of just $275,000.

All the feature stories on @GRASS-ROOTS.ORG's pages are reported and written by Robin Garr, a prize-winning journalist who has visited more than 500 innovative grassroots programs in all 50 states since 1990.

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