New Plan to Aid Housing Renovations

A new program to upgrade deteriorated low-income rental housing in Cambridge by providing home improvement funds for property owners and tenants got underway last month after a year of planning and fundraising.

The Neighborhood Apartment Housing Service (NAHS), incorporated in January as a cooperative venture by Cambridge tenants, property owners and bank representatives, is the second part of a five-point housing initiative proposed last year by Mayor Alfred E. Vellucci to the Cambridge City Council.

The program will grant renovation subsidies and issue loans below the market interest rate to rent-control tenants in neglected buildings.

Before NAHS, low-income residents were unable to finance improvements because they could not meet the underwriting criteria of most banks, according to Michael H. Rosenberg, housing director for the Community Development Department.

Turn of the Century Housing

Over 75 percent of residential structures in Cambridge were constructed before 1900, and nearly 700 buildings show signs of major deterioration and structural deficiencies, according to a study conducted by the Community Development Department in 1977.

Vellucci last May denounced the conditions of neglect as "the recipe for fire, and called for the creation of the new rehabilitation program.

The new program "is not a vehicle for condo conversion gentrification," Rosenberg said yesterday, but an attempt to insure the "continued liveability" of low-income housing by correcting code violations and structural defects.

"We're not talking about frills," agreed Dick Brescia, an owner representative on NAHS. "This is the serious nuts and bolts of decent housing," he added.

Priority neighborhoods for rehabilitation are those with the highest concentration of low-income housing, such as East and North Cambridge, Wellington-Harrington, and Cambridgeport-Riverside.

NAHS will also promote energy conservation and weatherization improvements, officials said yesterday. "For many low-income residents," explained Rosenberg, "fuel costs are getting to be as high as rent."

NAHS will be funded partially through state funds, Cambridge block grants, and private fundraising. In addition, the national Neighborhood Reinvestment Corporation, created by Congress in 1978, will contribute $50,000 as a start-up grant to initiate the program.

Rent increases to pay for the rehabilitation work will not go into effect until all work is completed and inspected, and subsidies will be available in some cases from the Cambridge Housing Authority. Rent rates will most likely not increase to beyond 30 percent of the resident's income, Brescia added.