TotalChild’s Wellington Heights housing renovation effort hits 3-year mark

CEDAR RAPIDS — Two ambitious ideas have converged on a tumbledown nuisance of a little house, and it's made a big difference here for one tree-lined block and the neighborhood it is part of.

Last week, a new for-sale sign went up outside 617 17th St. SE in Wellington Heights at what is the three-year mark since not-for-profit Four Oaks and its Affordable Housing Network Inc. (AHNI) subsidiary launched a $6 million initiative called TotalChild.

The project — half its goal is housing transformation — is closing in on its target to buy more than 100 rundown residential properties in an 18-block piece of Wellington Heights with a plan to renovate most of them for sale or rental.

The initiative also is helping to build some new homes and fix up those owned by others.

The 103-year-old, three-bedroom place with original wood floors at 617 17th St. SE is one of program's 89 acquisitions to date. However, the TotalChild program's rescue of the house and its $88,481 of renovation work would not have been possible but for a second local initiative, said Anne Gruenwald, president and chief executive officer at Four Oaks.

The house also is the first one that the city of Cedar Rapids's SAFE-CR nuisance abatement program, which started in October 2013, identified to be boarded up because of the extent and persistence of its disrepair and filth.

'I can't tell you how critical it's been and how appreciative we are that the city put SAFE-CR in place,' she said.

Nine of the properties that TotalChild has purchased in the past three years have been demolished because their dilapidated condition made it impossible to bring them back to life.

Dave O'Clair, Four Oaks's facilities director, said the 17th Street SE home was a close call.

'It was bad. I can see why the city shut it down,' O'Clair said.

But the home's owner agreed to give the house to TotalChild in trade for the program's willingness to pay a few thousand dollars in back property taxes on the place, and the renovation proceeded.

Across the street, Paulette Duke, who has lived at 610 17th St. SE for some 40 years and reared her family there, said she witnessed firsthand how the house at 617 declined over the years, then plummeted into decay. At the end, people would sneak through windows to stay inside after the city had boarded the doors shut, she said.

'Then all of a sudden, 'Bang,'' Duke said as AHNI's renovation effort started up. 'We sat here and watched them literally take the house apart from the inside. …

They did a wonderful job. They did magic, that's what they did.'

Renie Neuberger, executive director of Four Oaks's Affordable Housing Network, said she anticipated that the newly renovated 17th Street SE house, which comes with down payment assistance for an income-qualified buyer, would be sold in a few months.

Earlier this year, a few local landlords and city government critics tried unsuccessfully to gut the SAFE-CR nuisance program at the Iowa Legislature, and the TotalChild housing initiative also has had some critics as it has dared to intrude into Wellington Heights's housing marketplace.

'There have been some critics, 'Gruenewald said. 'But the majority of Cedar Rapids appreciates this historic neighborhood and the slope of decline we're now trying to turn around — to stabilize home prices and make the neighborhood safe.'

Four Oaks and its Affordable Housing Network subsidiary launched the housing component of its TotalChild program in Wellington Heights because some of the children and families with whom Four Oaks works live in the neighborhood.

'For a lot of the kids and families we serve, the lack of safe housing is really one of the factors that is keeping them from being successful,' Gruenewald said.

Aside from housing, TotalChild has a goal to ultimately work in intensive fashion with 1,400 children and their families, following the children through age 18. To date, more than 800 children are in the program.

Gruenewald said she can 'feel' the positive changes in Wellington Heights since the TotalChild housing initiative began three years ago. Visually the properties the program is involved with are in better shape, Habitat for Humanity also is fixing up properties and some homeowners on their own are doing the same, she said.

She said neighborhood crime numbers also are down. Police calls for service to the neighborhood have declined 25 percent, from 3,233 to 2,445, in the first five months of 2015 from the same period a year ago, according to Police Department figures.

'You can tell people feel safer,' Gruenewald said. '…

When you walk through the neighborhood, you can tell people don't feel like they need to keep their kids inside like they did when we got this started.'

Program goals

• Revitalize 18-block area in Wellington Heights

• Increase single-family home ownership

• Reduce population density, which is almost three times higher than city average

• Acquire 100 or more residential properties of the 602 in project area

• Collaborate with Habitat for Humanity to fix up exteriors of 40 more homes

• Provide renovation funds to 50 other single-family home owners

• In total, 35 percent of properties will get some help

Source:

Affordable Housing Network Inc.