Mary Ellen McCormack Public Housing Redevelopment Project
Enhancing Lives at Mary Ellen McCormack Public Housing
Background
Located in South Boston, Mary Ellen McCormack (MEM) is an 80-year old deteriorated public housing development that is home to more than 1,000 racially and ethnically diverse low-income families. Starting in 2022, MEM will undergo a $1.6 billion redevelopment to be converted into a mixed-income, mixed-use community where deeply affordable units for current MEM residents will be mixed in along with the market-rate units throughout the whole site and in every building. BCSSW is a core member of a multi-sector partnership between the Boston Housing Authority, the MEM Tenant Task Force, the commercial developer WinnCo, and the United Way to create an evidence-based integrated social service model for the redeveloped community.
Project Overview
Employing insights from a nascent knowledge base from prior mixed-income redevelopment efforts across the United States, Drs. Samantha Teixeira and Rebekah Levine Coley (Boston College Lynch School of Education and Human Development) will work with partner organizations to engage residents, limit displacement, and amplify existing community strengths to build a vibrant mixed-income community with enhanced health, social, and recreational services that promote and support resident well-being and positive child and family outcomes. This project has the potential to develop an innovative model that links partners from multiple sectors, including community residents, business, and government with academic researchers to improve the practice of public and affordable housing provision for economically disadvantaged families. This partnership can also serve as the base for broader interagency collaborations in relation to the development of coordinated service provision systems for residents of the redeveloped MEM community.
Approach
Drs. Teixeira and Coley have begun work with MEM residents, including a participatory action research study with youth who identified neighborhood strengths and stressors. Youth-reported stressors include severe deficits in housing quality, rising neighborhood crime, fear of victimization, while strengths include the protective role of community connections which have become strained in the face of community instability, violence, and drug use. These findings were replicated in a survey of 300 residents and review of Boston Housing Authority administrative data. With partial support from the National Institute on Minority Health and Health Disparities, Drs Teixeira and Coley will engage 600 families—with ~356 children (< 18) and ~112 youth (18- 24)—across five years of redevelopment. The goal is to document residents’ current service usage and needs, which will help identify gaps in services and unmet needs to inform final redevelopment plans. This knowledge will directly contribute to the design and provision of services in the newly developed property, and to target these services to residents most in need.
Project Scope
356
Children
600
Families
5
Years of development