Westhab's community development work aims to improve the quality of life in distressed neighborhoods. Our work currently (2007-08) centers on neighborhoods in Yonkers and Mount Vernon, New York and Norwalk, Connecticut.

Our holistic approach includes:

Helping underserved communities have their voices heard through community organizing;

Providing quality neighborhood programs; and;

Planning and implementing physical improvements including affordable housing, open space and retail opportunities for the community.

In Southwest Yonkers

Westhab has a long-standing and ongoing commitment to the residents of Southwest Yonkers, where our Housing Programs and Services offices are headquartered. Our most intensive community development work in Southwest Yonkers is focused in Nodine Hill, where:

• Work with residents, business owners, city and county government, and other nonprofits to identiry, prioritize, and implement strategies to address the multiple needs of the neighborhood.

• Serve on the steering committee of the US Department of Justice's Weed and Seed/initiative for Yonkers Third Precinct (which encompasses Nodine Hill), which combines law enforcement and social services in a coordinated effort to remediate problems in the neighborhood.

• Opened a drop-in community center in August 2006, the Elm St. Neighborhood Center that serves as the "safe haven" for the Third Precinct Weed and Seed initiative. It provides wide-ranging academic, social, life-skills, arts, recreation, employment, leadership, advocacy, and cultural heritage learning for the 175 neighborhood schoool-age children and young adults who use it.

• We are advocating for, initiating, funding, and constructing physical improvements to the neighborhood, including the completed public stairway that connects Elm St. and Riverview Terrace, the renovation of storefronts on Elm Street and the new tot lot (opening Spring 2008) for play and rest for families with young children.

•Are opening a Neighborhood Resource Center at the entrance to the Nodine Hill neighborhood on Elm Street (Spring 2008), to provide referrals and onsite mental health, emergency food, financial, housing, and employment services.

•Are developing and building new affordable homeownership and rental housing, and renovating existing rental housing. The condominiums we plan to build represent the first homeownership housing to be built in the neighborhood in recent memory.

 

 

On Mount Vernon's South Side

Several years ago Westhab took the lead to revitalize the severely depressed "Third Street Corridor" of Mount Vernon, a formerly thriving business district that fell into decline, with many vacant, boarded-up businesses and a sense of hopelessness in the neighborhood. Westhab began hosting community meetings with neighborhhood residents, merchants and City representatives, which led to greatly increased activity on the part of the Mayor's Third Street Task Force. Priority areas were identified and work began-e.g. the City installed new lighting and sidewalks and committed money to upgrading the facades of neighborhood buildings. Westhab also took the lead in establishing and producing an annual arts festival.

Our employment and training program's Community Resource Center, is located in the heart of this area, at 49 E 3rd Street. It provides walk-in and by-appointment services, including access to computers with internet access for job searching; career exploration and skills assessment; and information and referrals.

 

We gut-renovated three adjoining buildings and created a beautiful new 20 unit affordable apartment building at 129 S 4th Avenue.

 

 

 

 

We plan to build a new affordable rental apartment building specially designed for families that consist of grandparents (or great grandparents) and the grandchildren they are raising. The building will also house a brand new Mount Vernon Boys and Girls Club.

We opened the PEAK (Promoting Excellence and Achievement in Kids) Center, a safe haven for teens and young adults at 49 East Third Street, adjacent to the Community Resource Center. It serves 100 neighborhood youth with academic support, a computer lab, and life skills, arts, and other enrichment programs.

In Norwalk, Connecticut

Our new affiliate, Westhab in Connecticut, is working with the City of Norwalk's Redevelopment Agency to develop a Master Plan for a section of Norwalk's West Avenue Corridor. Our goal is to identify strategies for achieveing in-fill development, the perservation of affordable housing and streetscape improvements there. Once accepted by the Common Council, this plan will become the basis for revitalization of the neighborhood.

The City hired Westhab to provide technical assistance to North Walke, its Community Housing Development Corporation. Over the course of the next year we expect to complete the neighborhood outreach, market analysis and research necessary to create the Master Plan for a predominantly residential site, which has been desingated as a Neighborhood Preservation Area to protect the character, scale and design quality of the neighborhood.

In the following two years we expect to oversee the design, site plan and zoning approval processes for two neighborhood-based redevelopment projects there, and work with North Walke to implement these projects.
___________________________________________________________

To inform and guide our community and economic development work in Yonkers and Mount Vernon, we created two subsidiary corporations several years ago, Westhab in Yonkers, Inc. and Westhab in Mount Vernon, Inc. Both are led by diverse Boards of Directors, which include local bankers and attorneys; current and former city and county officials; community activists; clergy; residents; and several Westhab, Inc. board members.