By Wheeler Cowperthwaite, Published September 26, 2024
“PROVIDENCE – Jennifer Hawkins stands on King Street in Providence. To one side are a series of income-restricted housing units her organization built, King Street Commons, a result of a new direction she took. To the other side is a former factory that, around the same time, was turned into apartments.
When Hawkins started as the CEO of One Neighborhood Builders in 2017, she reoriented the nonprofit, especially to focus on building apartments at single sites, rather than the previous tactic of scattered buildings in a neighborhood. The King Street development was one of the first under the new direction she took the organization.
King Street is important to Hawkins because, before the apartments went up, the factory converted and work done on the park, King Street was entirely closed by Jersey barriers, turning it into an impassable city road lined with illegal dumping, marking a blighted area.”
[…]Hawkins transformed the organization, changing its name, the model of development and the strategies of how to holistically deal with the housing crisis while keeping the through line of its vision.
“At the core, we’re a community development organization, a place-based organization, that addresses economic mobility, health equity challenges, principally through the development of affordable housing,” she said. “If you don’t have safe, stable housing, the rest of your life goals will not be realized.”
[…]When Hawkins became CEO in 2017, replacing Frank Shea, now the CEO of Women’s Development Corporation, she decided the organization needed a different direction. Olneyville Housing Corporation and Community Works Rhode Island combined to form One Neighborhood Builders two years earlier, in 2015.
“I made the decision to focus on single-site developments,” Hawkins said. “Using just one parcel to maximize, as opposed to the scattered approach.”
Moving to a new development model meant hard conversations within the organization, as many of the parcels identified as being big enough for development were outside of One Neighborhood Builders’ original neighborhood, Olneyville.
“The difference is, instead of the time and expense of cobbling together enough units to make a viable project, you purchase an acre of land and you can do 40 units there,” Hawkins said. “Construct a single apartment building, or 30 townhomes in a row, is easier than the challenge of wrestling a title from zombie owners during the height of the foreclosure crisis.”
