In my work as a ChesterSemester Fellow with the Chester Community Improvement Project, my work over the past two semesters been in assisting CCIP in their work of revitalizing the housing stock in Chester. Part of this work has included going with Ms. Annette, the director of CCIP, to speak with residents about ways that their homes need improvements. Sometimes these improvements take the form of fixing mold in the ceilings, sometimes it looks like repairing a roof, like it looks like redoing a paint job on the outside of the house, or like installing a porch light and security camera. The other part of CCIP’s work that I sometimes will help to organize data for is the programs where CCIP tries to help residents become homebuyers through programs walking them through the more complicated processes.
With all the work that CCIP does that attempts to “revitalize” the housing of Chester, either through home beatification efforts like I described above, or through building new neighborhoods with nicer homes, there is a lot of connection that can be drawn to the fear of gentrification that we discussed in the fall semester of this course. If all this work is done of getting Chester to look better on the outside, then that will likely attract new buyers into the area and make the values of property and rent around the city increase. Although this is a valid concern, I think that the way CCIP goes about this work of revitalization makes it so that there is a very low risk of any real gentrification happening. Particularly, the work of CCIP is very focused on the current residents of Chester. Revitalization work is being done, but it is focused on improving the homes of current Chester residents, and efforts to bring in homebuyers are done by educating preexisting residents of Chester on how to go about the buying process. Part of this education process is discussing what housing discrimination can look like, which makes me think of all the ways that racial capitalism works to keep Black and Brown people in the lower classes of society. However, this focus on existing residents being the ones to buy houses is consistent with one way to combat gentrification that we routinely discussed in class, which was to keep property in the hands of Chester residents as much as possible, as to avoid the potential of these residents then being pushed out of the city. Driving around with Ms. Annette to the actual houses of these residents has shown me just how much care CCIP is putting into the revitalization of housing, and I am confident that CCIP’s efforts will not lead to any form of gentrification. I also admire the way that CCIP is doing work in a way that considers how racial capitalism will be working against so many residents of Chester, and although CCIP’s efforts will not be the thing to dismantle racial capitalism, it might make the conditions easier to live under for Chester residents.
From my work with the Chester Community Improvement Project, I have learned a lot about the importance of revitalization through this focus on existing residents and community members. If invited to discuss Chester’s needs for the future, I would advise that Mayor Stefan Roots and the City Council of Chester actually put more of a focus on the revitalization of housing in the city. Although CCIP’s efforts are very important and they are doing a very good job of the work they are doing, the organization itself is very small, and can only do so much work in its operations. If the efforts of CCIP were able to be replicated on a larger scale, but still with the same care of centering Chester residents in the revitalization efforts, then the many benefits of CCIP’s work would be able to be realized on a larger scale without the negative effect of gentrification. The first steps to implementing programs like this might look like creating more city-led programs to assist first-time homebuyers. I believe there would even be a way for the city to create more housing for new residents that would not push out current residents. There is already a lot of housing in Chester, it is just that much of it is vacant because it looks undesirable to both current and new residents. If new housing was built, but there were still programs focused on the assistance of current residents, then the housing in Chester would begin to be desirable and revitalization would begin to pick up on its own.