Help Is On The Way For Homeowners to Make Their Property Lead Safe
Senator Reed, Congressmen Kennedy and Langevin and Mayor Cicilline encourage qualified homeowners to apply for federally funded lead-remediation grants through the City of Providence

 
U.S. Senator Jack Reed, U.S. Congressmen Patrick Kennedy and Jim Langevin and Mayor David N. Cicilline this week announced that the City of Providence has begun accepting applications for grants and loans for lead remediation of Providence homes.  The initiative is being funded through $5.5 million the City received for lead remediation from the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development (HUD) thanks to the “outstanding leadership” of Senator Jack Reed and members of Providence’s Congressional delegation.  The news conference took place at the home of a Providence family whose house is suspected to be badly in need of lead remediation.

 

“Lead poisoning of children is a grim fact of life in America’s older cities, and it is one of our most urgent and correctable problems,” said Mayor Cicilline today.  “As a community, we have a fundamental responsibility to keep properties lead-safe for our children and to eliminate lead-paint contamination in our neighborhoods.”

 

The Mayor applauded the leadership of Senator Reed, in the United States Senate, for his consistent support of the Lead Hazard Control programs and the creation of the Urban Lead Hazard Reduction Demonstration Program, to fight lead poisoning in communities with the highest rates of lead poisoning in children.  Last year, Senator Reed spearheaded a letter to the Senate Appropriations Committee’s Subcommittee on Transportation, Treasury, the Judiciary and HUD, requesting at least $195 million for lead hazard prevention grant programs.

 

“I am pleased to have secured this $5.5 million in federal funding to help Providence boost its Lead Hazard Reduction Programs,” said Senator Reed, a member of the Appropriations Committee who created the Lead Hazard Reduction Demonstration Program in 2003.  “This money will help parents protect their kids from lead hazards that may be present in their homes.  It is a smart investment in the health and development of our children and a wise investment in our community.  We have undertaken a collaborative effort at the federal, state, and local level to strengthen Rhode Island's lead abatement programs, eliminate children’s exposure to lead, and improve public education efforts.  I applaud Mayor Cicilline for getting the word out that this money is available and for using it to put people to work removing lead hazards from hundreds of homes and apartments.”

 

“Children continue to be at risk for lead poisoning, particularly in many older homes,” said Congressman Patrick J. Kennedy.  “Although the incidence of lead poisoning has decreased dramatically in the past several years, according to the Rhode Island Department of Health, 388 Rhode Island children were poisoned for the first time in 2007 – 198 of those in Providence.   I commend the Mayor for his vigilance in making sure the city’s children are safe and promoting this important program so that families and landlords can remediate their homes.”

 

 “As we know during these difficult economic times, protecting our children’s welfare is a top priority, and that includes securing a healthy home for them and their families,” said Congressman Langevin. “In addition to this funding secured by Senator Jack Reed, I am also proud that the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act, which the Rhode Island Congressional delegation supported, includes additional funding for a lead-based paint abatement program to make our homes safer.”

 

The $5.5 million dollars will be distributed to landlords and income-qualified homeowners as forgivable grants and zero-interest, deferred loans.  The money is targeted for such work as repairing/replacing lead-affected windows, walls, ceilings, doors, doorframes and staircases.

 

To qualify:

Any homeowner who earns 80-percent of the AMI (Average Median Income) or any landlord whose property is in the City, and within the following Census tracts: 1600, 1700,1800 and 3100 – the neighborhoods of Silver Lake, Hartford Park and Mt. Hope.

 

Application Process

To apply, you must call the Department of Planning & Development at 401. 351. 4300 ext. 408 or visit www.providenceplanning.org and click on Housing, to download and complete an application. Applications will also be mailed out to those requesting one, by calling that same number.  Once the form is completed, applicants should call Planning & Development to make an appointment to determine eligibility.   At that point, eligibility will be determined and staff will identify other programs and services applicants may be eligible for. An assessment and specifications for the remediation work will follow, with a professional contractor identifying requirements, and work assigned to contractors to complete. At the conclusion of the work, the City’s Lead Inspector will conduct additional tests at the site to ensure there are no unsafe lead levels, and a free, one-year Lead-Safe certificate will be issued.

 

Costs

Qualified homeowners will receive forgivable grants for 50-percent of the cost of the project (if they live in the home for 5+ years,) and 0-percent interest, deferred loans due for the remaining 50% of the costs, due at the time the property is transferred. Non-owner occupied will receive forgivable grants for 25-percent of the project costs (must keep property for 5+ years) and 75-percent 0-percent interest deferred loans due upon transfer of property.  In both cases, if property is sold prior to five years, the amount will be pro-rated.   

 

Spreading the word

In an effort to inform as many people as possible about the lead-remediation initiative, Mayor Cicilline directed his staff to work with CLAP to disseminate a bi-lingual, informational pamphlet offering detailed information about the program.  The pamphlet will be distributed through community agencies, recreation and community centers, banks and housing agencies.  Residents may also obtain a copy of the pamphlet from the Department of Planning and Development and the Mayor’s Office of Neighborhood Services.

 

The Mayor credited the hard work and persistence of community groups, such as RI KIDSCOUNT and Childhood Lead Action Project (CLAP) for raising awareness about the dangers of lead poisoning, and Attorney Jack McConnell for successfully prosecuting lead paint companies.  He also thanked ClearCorp for their work in remedying and preventing lead poisoning in Providence and for their partnership in this initiative.

 

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 PBN reviews Operation Opportunity "tech-related" goals

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

The Providence Business News looked at Operation Opportunity: Mayor Cicilline's 18-month economic action plan this week from the perspective of the business person (http://www.pbn.com/stories/40409.html). The piece paid particular attention to the plan's "tech-related" goals" that could boost the city’s information technology and digital media sector," particularly:

• Facilitate development of new biotech incubator with state-of-the-art wet labs in Jewelry District
  
• Launch economic development dashboard website
  
• Make $5 million in loans available by recapitalizing Providence Economic Development Partnership (PEDP) fund.
  
• Finalize site plans for wind turbines.
  
• Implement executive order so that all new municipal buildings are LEED or CHPS (schools) certified.
  
• Give every parent an online data dashboard to monitor their child’s daily progress.
  
• Implement 21st-century science and math curriculum and tools.
  
• Open a career and technical academy to provide best job training facilities in the state.
• Double the number of online services, including renewal of business-related licenses
   
  To review all 30 of the Operation Opportunity goals, visit www.providenceri.com/opportunity 

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Mayor Cicilline to Launch Annual Lecture Honoring the Late Senator Claiborne Pell
Nationally recognized leader in urban development to kick off March 3rd event at Hotel Providence

Mayor David N. Cicilline today announced that the first annual Senator Claiborne Pell Lecture on Arts and Humanities will be held on Tuesday, March 3 at 5:30pm in the Ballroom of Hotel Providence, 311 Westminster Street.  Mayor Cicilline established the annual event in honor of the late Senator for his extraordinary work championing education, the arts and the humanities. 

 

“Senator Pell was an extraordinary statesman and a true a visionary who had a tremendous impact on arts and culture in our nation,” said Mayor Cicilline.  “Two of his most notable achievements were the creation of the National Endowment for the Arts and Humanities and the Pell Grants that created education opportunities for countless students.  This annual lecture and symposium will enable us to honor Senator Pell’s lasting legacy while exchanging ideas and best practices on the best ways to strengthen our vibrant arts and cultural community.”

 

Guest speaker
Jeremy Nowak, President & CEO of the Reinvestment Fund and a nationally recognized leader in urban development, is the guest speaker.  Nowak’s recent publications examine the role of art and culture in neighborhood revitalization, policy options for distressed cities and the role of development finance for older industrial cities.  He is currently a Fellow at the Aspen Institute and a member of Harvard University’s Kennedy School Executive Session on transforming cities through civic entrepreneurship.

Creative Providence cultural plan
The program will begin with a presentation on Creative Providence: A cultural plan for the creative sector by the Department of Art, Culture & Tourism Director Lynne McCormack and Craig Dreeszen, a nationally recognized cultural planner and consultant.  Mayor Cicilline launched Creative Providence in September 2008, a collaborative planning effort to explore ways to strengthen Providence’s position as a leading arts and cultural destination.  The initiation of the strategic planning process followed the release of an economic impact study conducted by Americans for the Arts that revealed that Providence’s arts and cultural organizations generate nearly $112 million in annual economic activity.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

The following symposiums, which will be held throughout March, will bring together participants from the local creative community to build on the findings of Creative Providence: A cultural plan for the creative sector:

Foster resilient cultural organizations
March 4 | 9 am - 12 pm | Providence Performing Arts Center, 220 Weybosset Street
Organizational response, recovery, and readiness in the face of current and emerging conditions

 

Creative economic development
March 4 | 5:30-8:30 pm | Durkee, Brown, Viveiros & Werenfels Architects, 111 Chestnut Street
Understanding the creative sector’s contributions to Providence’s economy and quality of life

 

Create conditions for Providence’s creative workforce to thrive
March 9 | 2-5 pm | The Dirt Palace, 14 Olneyville Square
Sustaining individual artists, writers, scholars + designers as a matter of civic pride

 

Increase community access and cultural participation
March 12 | 5:30-8:30 pm | The DaVinci Center, 470 Charles Street
Exploring gateways into Providence's many cultures and wide range of creative practices

 

Raise public awareness of arts and humanities
March 17 | 1-4 pm | International Institute, 645 Elmwood Avenue
Rethinking advocacy, marketing, and cultural tourism to increase opportunities for participation and engagement

 

Educate for lifelong creativity
March 24 | 9 am – 12 pm | New Urban Arts, 743 Westminster Street
Developing creative thinking and practice in youth for 21st-century global citizenship

 

Providence business, educational, civic and cultural leaders and creative professionals are encouraged to attend. The event is free.  However, registration for each event will be limited on a first come, first served basis. Please visit www.creativeprov.org or call (401) 421-2489 x456 for more information.

 

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Mayor Around Town

 

Mayor David Cicilline greets 88-year-old Duke Lossini, a Providence mill owner, redeveloper and manufacturer, on Wednesday February 25th at the ribbon cutting and open house of the former American Multiple Fabric Company on 91 and 121 Hartford Avenue.  Lossini, who also heads up Tel Realty, which has owned the newly renovated mill for over 50 years, plans to keep the building a center for light industrial users and artists.  Lossini’s manufacturing company, the Eli Group, still operates out of the 3rd and 4th floors of the mill.  For more info, click here.

  

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Mayor Cicilline joined Ray Dewhirst (Vice President of Development and Real Estate of the Boston Sports Club), Laurie White (President of the Greater Providence Chamber of Commerce), general managers and staff of the Boston Sports Club (BSC) for the grand opening of their downtown facilities on 10 Dorrance Street today.  At the event, the BSC announced a commitment to city wellness and invited the public to experience their downtown or east side facilities free of charge on Wednesday March 4th.  For more info, click here. 

 

 

 

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Feature: My Neighborhood
Hope's Torchbearer in Wiggins Village  

All the talk these days of a grim economy might be a drain not only on people’s wallets but on their spirits as well.   It's not always easy to stay positive in the face of adversity.  For Roy Bolden of Wiggins Village, trying times didn’t just suddenly appear when the housing market took a nosedive. In this tight-knit community, neighbors have never given up on hope, always on a mission to find ways to turn adverse situations into positive realities for their families.

 

At 25 years old, standing 6’5” tall, Bolden’s youthful energy about Providence is infectious and commanding, especially when asked about how he envisions his beloved home city to be in his lifetime.  Together with a group of his young neighbors and friends, Bolden is steadily blazing a trail that he hopes will lead to brighter days for his community and beyond. 

 

He sat down with City News at the Cora Brown Community Center to talk about the formation of People United For Change, and the lives and stories of the people who inspired its inception.

 

How long have you lived in Providence?

All my life – I was born and raised here.  I grew up in Washington Park on California Avenue.  My grandmother, Joy Long, lived on Vermont.  We used to have a little group back then called the Vermont Ave Posse back in the early 90s, and that’s really where I came from! Later we moved to Lexington Avenue, Rushton Street – that area – and then we made our way over to Gilmore Street, and now finally to Wiggins Village since the summer of 1997.

 

What do you like most about your neighborhood?

What I like most about it is the potential.  See, the one thing about Wiggins is that it’s closed-knit and there are a lot of young people out here, and a lot of older people too who the young kids look up to.  I think what happens in such a tight-knit place like this is that people can identify with each other’s needs easier.  Everyone knows each other here and so if you get one person involved, you can get everybody. 

It’s not as violent as most places.  It’s real peaceful, with beautiful scenery.  Winn Residential, who manages this place, really does a good job keeping the place up.  It’s a real nice place to hang out in the summer too because there are so many barbeques where people get together, enjoy good music and good neighbors.  Also, it’s close to downtown.  Wiggins Village to me is a beautiful place just because how accessible everything is. 

 

Tell us about the neighborhood group that you recently helped to form in Wiggins Village.

Since I’ve been here, it’s been a challenge to see young people go through a culture of violence and seeing them get their dreams shattered.  I noticed that there were a lot of young people here but there weren’t a lot of things for them to do recreationally.  We used to have a football league a couple of years ago that would play games against different communities every Saturday afternoon.  But as we got older, that wore out.  And I noticed that some of those young people who would’ve been in the football league were out here not doing some of the right things.  Something deep inside me called, and said, ‘Roy, you have to take it to another level and unite all the people here and do stuff for the whole city.’  That’s when People United for Change began.

 

There was an old program run by a friend years ago called Operation Destroy and Rebuild Wiggins Village.  It was designed to destroy the negative images associated with young inner city kids, like that they don’t wanna do anything or they just wanna be violent or that the only opportunity they got is if they were ‘slingin crack-rock’ or they have a ‘wicked jumpshot’ – which comes from a rap song.  But that’s the stigma and a lot of these kids start thinking that they can’t get out unless they become rappers or athletes, nothing educational or positive. 

 

So a few of us got together and formulated an idea.  I’m a big fan of the constitution and so one night, as I was alone, I wrote down a preamble to what we could do here in Wiggins.  It says “When in times of change, it becomes necessary for a community to come together and to take responsibility to maintain a livable and recreational environment.  It is necessary for the people of that community to separate themselves from the destructive patterns that have created a culture of violence, a culture of hopelessness and a culture of shattered dreams.  We the members of Wiggins Village do establish our declaration of responsibility …” 

 

That was our whole mentality – to present a new way of doing things and also to be an example of what young people in the inner city could be when they come together to create change. 

 

What inspired you to do this?

First I would say that my inspiration truly comes from my faith in Jesus Christ.  I’m a sworn disciple, but not just that, I’m also inspired by my faith in Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., Pastor Jeffrey Allen Williams of Cathedral of Life Christian Assembly, CCRI Professor of Sociology Wayne Solomon – there’s so many people but who these men represented to me are men who critiqued my character.  As I grew as a student and as someone who attended church, they were the men who chiseled me up. 

 

From the spiritual side, Pastor Jeff was like a father, encouraging me and supporting me.  When I was a student I asked a lot of questions about sociology and Prof. Solomon was the man who urged me to stretch my mind and told me once to never come to a place and leave the same.  He said you always want to leave a place different than when you came in and the mind is like a muscle that needs to be stretched and worked out, if not, it won’t develop.  And Dr. King, of course, through his speeches and life’s work pulled America’s soul out of the fire of racism.  So these are the people who inspired me to do what I’m doing but not only that – my grandmother, a retired educator, always encouraged us to be a part of things.  My mom, as well, has always held me up.  They are the ones who inspire me.

 

So why do you think it’s important for others, your neighbors and peers, to be as involved as you are?

Because People United for Change and Roy can’t be who we ought to be unless we have neighbors who are also who they ought to be.  There’s an old saying that goes, “No man is an island, entire of itself … any man's death diminishes me, because I am involved in mankind;” so I felt that in theory, the only way we could do anything here is to involve everybody.  It couldn’t just be Roy or just Wiggins Village because what then happens when we’ve made our neighborhood into the place we want it to be? What happens to places outside of us, to other neighbors in Providence – at Chad Brown, at Hartford Projects, Manton Projects, and so on?

 

We’re going to put to rest those things that had terrorizing effects on the community and say no to those things that caused bad behavior, created stigmas, caused teen pregnancies, teen violence, and delinquency.  Look, we have more people locked up when they should be getting ready for college.  We have more people laying in the graveyard who might have been able to find the cure for cancer.  We said Yes We Can in Providence, as President Obama would say, and we decided that we could do it here!  We decided that Providence could be the place by which other cities around the nation model themselves. 

 

What are your hopes for the future of your community/neighborhood?

I believe Providence could be a place where communities can grow and can act together on issues – being able to disagree but not going crazy on each other.  Providence can be the torchbearer, the example for all inner cities across America, where it can happen.  Many people said Yes We Can, but I want them to say when it comes to Providence, Yes They Did and so can we.  With our city being so small and with having such beautiful leadership I think that all Providence has to do is connect with itself, instead of being fragmented into different pieces. 

 

I believe that Providence can go from being one of the places with the highest levels of poverty amongst children to being a place where poverty was eliminated because everyone wrapped their arms around each other and gave back.  I think the best way that we can accomplish this is to eliminate egos and really examine the issues, and ask ourselves, ‘Alright, Providence, what do we want?’ and know that the eyes of the future are looking back at us and are praying that we see beyond our time. 

 

When I say this, I don’t think I’m just speaking for myself, I think I’m speaking for those who can’t speak for themselves – I promise, that if Providence believes in the young people of this city, and stop shooting them down, give them a chance, we would’ve given Providence its greatest boost into achieving the hopes we carry.

 

During the interview, Bolden shared his aspirations to study constitutional law or public administration, and combine it with a degree in divinity or theology in the future.  In honor of Black History Month, he and his neighbors have hosted several weekly events at Wiggins Village to commemorate the rich legacy of African Americans from slavery to the  Oval  Office.  This Friday, a culminating event will take place in the neighborhood.  For more info, email Roy.

  

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