Urban Neighborhood Homes LLC operates throughout the Commonwealth of Massachusetts with all of its work in Community Reinvestment Areas (CRA).   A project where tremendous resilience and commitment to community was clearly demonstrated was at 16 Hancock Street in Uphams Corner.  This property housed a notorious corner store that was finally shut down after a brutal murder on its doorstep.  When the block of stores was purchased, it housed a mix of businesses.  As plans to rejuvenate the store fronts progressed, an electrical overload in one of the tenants’ storefronts destroyed the block causing an estimated $500,000 in damages. 

As related in the Dorchester Reporter (Peter Stidman August ’08),  the partners jumped immediately into action  - offering to set up temporary quarters for the Los Americanos Barbershop in a trailer on-site and arranging a salvage operation and move for the computer repair shop.  The partnership funded the renovations out-of-pocket and continues to invest heavily of its own funds.

Now that the block is operating again, scores of new jobs have been created and a vibrant corner has been rejuvenated.  The area has been made safer and the community has benefitted.      

In 2008, when the City of Boston and several local CDC’s (Community Development Corporations) requested help in acquiring REO, Urban Neighborhood Homes, LLC responded and worked to fill the pipeline with distressed properties that rather than destabilizing neighborhoods could be converted to owner occupied affordable rental properties.  Some of the most dramatic transformations and reversals of fortune were in fraudulent condo conversions of three deckers that Urban Neighborhood acquired and reassembled with its own capital for return to homeownership by the local Community Development Corps.  This assistance was invaluable and, soon, Urban Neighborhood was asked to lend its expertise and capital to effect change in other needy communities statewide.

One of the problems that pervade the inner cities is the lack of training and employment opportunities.  Urban Neighborhood responded to a request by a Boston based CDC and provided jobs to 10 of the participants in it re-entry program for ex-offenders.  90% of the work is not part of any ‘funded’ program and the employees are paid market rate and given the opportunity to build a middle class career in the building trades.  In recognition of this, Urban Neighborhood is an approved HUD Section 3 employers.  It is committed to using local suppliers and labor, wherever it works, to complete good projects in the community, for the community, by the community.