BY KAREN A. DAVIS
Journal Staff Writer

PROVIDENCE -- Nancy Whit remembers a time 30 years ago when the housing situation in many neighborhoods was less than ideal.

Residents were moving to the suburbs, leaving some houses empty.

The vacant houses deteriorated and became magnets for crime, threats to safety and symbols of urban blight for the residents who remained.

"There were an awful lot of vacant and abandoned properties in the city at the time," said Whit. "They were firetraps and hazards," particularly around the Fourth of July, when burning vacant houses had become a ritual.

During the mid-1970s, the city kept an annual list of more than 400 properties that it listed as vacant and abandoned. Many were on the South Side, where almost every block had at least one littered lot or boarded-up house.

Rather than sit back and bemoan the blight, a group of residents decided to take action.

The group, which included Berta Phillips, Stan Cameron, Danny Lopes, Robert Fain, Getz Obsfeld and Virginia Point, created an organization that would convert those properties into affordable housing and revitalize South Side neighborhoods.

Since 1976, that's exactly what Stop Wasting Abandoned Property has been doing throughout the city, but primarily on the South Side.

"We don't see ourselves as just an affordable housing builder. We see ourselves as a community builder," Richardson Ogidan, president of the SWAP board, said in an interview yesterday. "People just assume, 'Oh, they build houses. That's good' and that's all we do.But they're wrong."

SWAP's goal of providing affordable housing to low- and moderate-income families does not end there, said Carla DeStefano, executive director of the agency at 439 Pine St., in South Providence.

The organization was created with a focus on revitalizing communities. Over the years, that has meant working in partnership with other groups to provide programs for home building, job creation, summer youth employment, tutoring and neighborhood safety, as well as providing education classes for tenants and first-time home buyers.

The nonprofit agency celebrated its 30th anniversary last night outside the old Earthen Vessel on Gordon Avenue.

Renovation of that building is part of SWAP's most recent initiative -- to create commercial space for rent and sale. Revitalization of the Gordon Avenue area has unintentionally turned out to be a collaborative effort, thanks to projects by the South Providence Development Corporation and the Providence Neighborhood Community Health Center.

In the beginning, says Whit, who has served on the SWAP board since its inception, its founders did not set out to form an organization.

The group of residents and members of People Acting through Community Effort set out to help Berta Phillips do something about the abandoned property next door to her at 65 Ontario St., Whit said.

Phillips and fellow community organizers found the owner of the property and convinced the owner to sell it at a very nominal price -- between $1 and $1,000 -- so a family could get a mortgage that would allow them to buy it and make it livable. In practice, former owners would be able to write off the loss of the house on their taxes and the neighborhood would be rid of a blighted property.

Whit said the project worked so well that residents took the idea to nonprofit agencies in an effort to get them to take it on as a program.

But none did, so "we decided we'll do it ourselves," even though they had no money or no paid staff, Whit said.

"It was a really creative idea," Whit said, similar to the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development's urban homesteading program.

In fact, Whit said she believes that the organization's strong leadership and ability to creatively adapt to changing economic realities have enabled SWAP to survive 30 years as other groups folded.

SWAP went from being a group that matched potential buyers and sellers to one that constructed and renovated homes for sale. That decision was made after the cost of housing increased.

SWAP's accomplishments are many.

In the last 12 years, the organization has invested $36 million in housing on the South Side and soon it will begin construction of its 100th ownership house in 10 years, DeStefano said. Of those 100, 60 were built in the last five years.

DeStefano said SWAP officials foresaw the recent housing boom and acted by buying vacant properties so they would be able to continue building.

Vacant lots on the South Side and throughout the city have now become so scarce that SWAP is having a hard time finding places to build. As a result, it is looking to build houses on smaller lots and to develop condominiums.

"We don't have anyplace to go but up," DeStefano said.

SWAP's contractor mentoring program has trained more than 45 people since it began nine years ago and its graduates are guaranteed work on SWAP projects after their training. The agency has won awards for hiring minority contractors.

In the mid-1980s, the organization began taking on projects that created rental housing, which drew criticism from some who accused SWAP of moving away from its mission of creating home ownership to stabilize neighborhoods.

In October 2001, SWAP pledged to build 25 ownership houses in 25 months and exceeded that goal by constructing 28.

DeStefano, who took the leadership reins 13 years ago, contends that there is a demand for rental units and home ownership and that the organization should be creating both.

SWAP's summer youth program puts 14-, 15- and 16-year-olds to work in minimum-wage jobs with nonprofit organizations and provides programs for them during school vacations.

Ogiban, who has spent 11 years on the board, said he is most impressed that SWAP goes out of its way to make sure its houses blend into the character of the neighborhood, restoring what it once was and not trying to make it into something different.

Ogiban said that no agency in the city is building as many ownership houses as SWAP; the organization is slated to receive an award for its productivity from the city, he said.

"I am convinced that it is our work that prevented gentrification of the South Side," Ogiban said, noting that area could have easily been bought up by outside developers that would have displaced lower income residents. "These neighborhoods are back and working class people are living there."

The organization also does small things to address local issues and instill pride in neighborhoods, such as setting up meetings between residents and the police and installing flower boxes on homes and rental units. DeStefano said the flower box program became so popular that SWAP offered to refurbish the flower boxes of any residents who installed boxes on their homes; this spring, SWAP provided plants to more than 200 flower boxes.

"It's been an interesting ride," Whit said of her 30 years with SWAP. "It's almost been like a family, with everyone committed to making this work We have always had a group of socially conscious and responsible folks who are trying to make change."

kdavis@projo.com / (401) 277-7353