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Affordable Woonsocket
01:00 AM EDT on Sunday, September 25, 2005
Woonsocket has its share of mill-rehabilitation projects, some with units affordable to lower-middle- and low-income people. Yet even more remarkable is its "affordable housing" built anew. Among the latter is Heritage Place, across the Blackstone River from downtown.
Heritage Place's 43 units will rent for $180 to $850 a month. (Sorry, they're all taken!) They should be ready by the end of the year. Residents will be able to shop beneath their apartments in 10 commercial establishments. And they won't starve: Champs Diner, a Woonsocket institution, has been moved to the site, and there will be a Dunkin' Donuts drive-through (walk-through for residents), which may qualify as the most attractive in Rhode Island.
This mixture of uses is the real innovation at Heritage Place. With mixed-use zoning stupidly illegal in many places, Woonsocket deserves credit for encouraging it. And no one will be surprised that the heavy lifting is being done by the Woonsocket Neighborhood Development Corporation. The WNDC received a $6.9 million loan from Citizens Bank, the first in Rhode Island from a $200 million fund to help nonprofit housing developers in New England.
Citizens Bank deserves applause for that. Helping also with the project are the Rhode Island Housing and Mortgage Development Corporation, the Rhode Island Housing Resources Commission, and the Local Initiative Support Corporation/Rhode Island.
In fact, Citizens was joined by NBC 10 in July in naming the Woonsocket Neighborhood Development Corporation a "community champion," for its part in building affordable apartments. The agency has built almost 150 apartments and houses, for nearly 500 families and individuals -- making a big dent in the city's urgent need. The signal WNDC achievement is revival of once-dilapidated Constitution Hill, also near downtown.
Affordability has become so rare in Rhode Island's housing market that all should pitch in to abet it. And that is happening in Woonsocket.
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