FOR CLOSURE!

Old house revamped by This Old House

By JOSH WALOVITCH

del.ico.us | digg it! | reddit!

print | email | 0 Comments

Everyone deserves a second chance, so why not a 140-year-old house in a neighborhood overcome by home foreclosures? For its 30-year anniversary, PBS' home improvement show This Old House partnered with the city of Boston and local development company Nuestra Comunidad in revamping an 1870s-era house in Roxbury.

"This was one of the worst homes we have worked on," says Kevin O'Connor, host of This Old House, who's been behind the scenes and in front of the camera for over 60 renovations.

Vacant and foreclosed for roughly five years, the home was about as inhabitable as an exhaust pipe. A rainfall-induced hole in the roof bore through both the first and second floors, the exterior looked like it was melting and the homeless preferred the pavement to the interior's dilapidated state.

"For the past eight months, we have taken this house from a state of disrepair, structurally, foundationally and in terms of site condition, transforming it into what you see today," says This Old House producer Deborah Hood. "Foreclosures have been such an important topic around America, and Boston identified this house as having some historical and architectural pedigree."

In 2008, after 16 units were shuttered on Hendry Street in Dorchester (about a mile away from the This Old House site), Boston instituted a Foreclosure Intervention Team to counteract the effect of empty houses on a block's character. Last summer, the city announced an $18 million initiative (sponsored by state and federal grants) to help out homeowners with equity and stabilize housing prices.

On Woodbine Street, the cast and crew of This Old House noticed promising renovations nearby since their arrival. "Our renovation has helped, but I don't know if we were the main catalyst behind the recent local developments," said Wellington Construction Company's David Lopes, the contractor on the Woodbine house. Lopes is also a community activist and former project manager for YouthBuild Boston, a program training teens in construction and landscaping. He recruited YouthBuild students to work on the house.

Nuestra Comunidad purchases Roxbury homes and converts them into affordable and livable residences. It collaborated with the city in offering ownership of the Woodbine Street house in a lottery. "We did a mailing of 211 people who had completed first-time homebuyer classes," says Nuestra Comunidad's executive director David Price.

The finished house has been converted into two units. Lanita Tolentino, a 30-year-old professional, already won one in the lottery, and will claim the title to it next month. "I am ecstatic about this opportunity, one which is not often granted," she says.

The Roxbury project premieres on WGBH Channel 44, February 3rd at 8pm.