Why Should Delaware Care?
Two years ago, Wilmington laid out a plan to inject the East Side with $18 million to combat blight and offer affordable housing to the neighborhood that has historically been home to more than a thousand Black residents. As the state grapples with a deficit of 19,400 affordable housing units, signs of progress on that plan are in demand.
Wilmington’s East Side has seen its fair share of change throughout the years. Like most places in the United States, it’s had ups and downs.
It’s home to more than 1,500 people and the site of a new cycle of affordable housing developments aiming to bring more homeownership to a community that’s been fraught with blight and vacant units.
In 2021, the city received more than $55 million from the federal American Rescue Plan Act (ARPA) to combat the economic and public safety impacts of COVID. Mayor Mike Purzycki chose to invest about $22 million of that sum into an ambitious plan to overhaul housing in Wilmington – much of it into the city’s oft-neglected East Side.
As the stimulus funding flows, however, the clock is ticking to get all of it spent and people into homes by the end of 2026.
A number of vacant units are under renovation by the Todmorden Foundation in Wilmington. | SPOTLIGHT DELAWARE PHOTO BY NICK STONESIFER
What’s been built?
Of the $22 million earmarked for a “Neighborhood Revitalization Plan,” $18 million was targeted for projects in the East Side – a community largely east of Walnut Street.
Housing developments on Bennett and Lombard streets received more than $7 million in ARPA funds to build new affordable units.
Richard Przywara, the CEO of the Todmorden Foundation, an offshoot of the Woodlawn Trustees that develops affordable housing, called the ARPA program a “brilliant public policy investment.”
Between Todmorden and Woodlawn, they received $4.8 million for construction of new homes.
To date, Woodlawn Trustees has built 28 units and has 37 more under construction. Each unit costs about $150,000 to renovate, according to Przywara. He said 19 families have moved into homes constructed or renovated by the city’s ARPA grants.
Decisions on whether to add air conditioning, how to remediate homes with lead paint and updating utilities are points of spending and consideration, Przywara said.
When it comes to construction or renovation, Przywara said the money doesn’t get sent right to construction and it’s often a reimbursement. He said contractors often don’t have the liquidity to buy all of the materials in a build.
So, a company like Woodlawn will bridge the necessary funding upfront and apply for a reimbursement through ARPA.
Kevin Smith, CEO of Habitat for Humanity of New Castle County, said it received $3 million to repair 141 homes in the East Side and begin a 12-home development on Bennett Street.
According to Smith, much of the repairs done by Habitat include fixing roofs, furnaces and utility issues.
A caveat to the ARPA agreement is that all funds must be obligated for spending by Dec. 31, 2024, and spent by the end of 2026. If the funds aren’t used, they must be returned to the federal government.
As of mid-June, more than $6.5 million in East Side funding remains unspent.
According to Mayor Purzycki, any unspent money is the “worst thing we could do.”
He said it’s important to invest in the city’s physical infrastructure and build a foundation for the future.
The revitalization plan was introduced during Purzycki’s second term as Wilmington’s mayor, and a project he believed needed a specific focus. He said he didn’t want the funds to be lumped in with a larger spending plan on citywide improvements.
“I’ve always believed that if you try to do everything, you get nothing done,” he said.
But not all of the money from the Neighborhood Revitalization Plan has gone to the East Side. More than $4.2 million was allocated to projects in Northeast, West Side and Southbridge for different housing and community projects.
As Purzycki gets ready to leave office this year, the continuation of development in the East Side is something he said he supports. But for it to continue, it’s going to depend on the finances and goals of the next administration.
The future of East Side development should include more community input, according to Harmon Carey and prevent Black residents from being pushed out of the community. | SPOTLIGHT DELAWARE PHOTO BY NICK STONESIFER
State of the East Side
Wilmington’s East Side is historic.
For jazz buffs around the country, it’s the home of Clifford Brown, a musician who’s been memorialized with an annual festival in his name.
For history buffs, it’s one of Wilmington’s oldest communities, dating back to the 1600s. In the 1950s, it was a predominantly Black working-class neighborhood with Black-owned businesses, lawyers, dentists and doctors.
And for Harmon Carey, a historian and host of Wilmington’s first Black-owned radio station, WHGE 95.3 FM, it’s where he was born and has been connected to for almost his whole life.
Carey, who will be 88 in a few weeks and lived in Wilmington during segregation, went to school on the East Side and spent time at playgrounds with friends at night after white families left.
When he was a child, he was with a group of friends walking through the East Side when he saw a “For Sale” sign. He remembered his friends making jokes about someone “getting ready to get put out.”
But as he approached the home, he realized it was his home with the sign out front, and his family never owned their home. After that day, Carey said he’d never rent again, and he didn’t. He’s lived in his home in the Northeast for more than 55 years.
For artist K.O. Simms, homeownership is something that goes a long way in a community. He’s lived in the East Side for 19 years on a street with majority homeowners. He said when people own the neighborhood, it builds pride in where they live, as opposed to renters who may come and go.
Simms has lived in the Northeast and West Side in Wilmington, and said he’s enjoyed living in the East Side the most. There’s a sense of camaraderie he feels in his neighborhood and notices people taking care of their homes and interacting with each other.
Simms helped to paint a mural at the corner of Taylor and Pine streets, and said since the mural has gone up, he’s noticed reduced crime. But when it comes to the new housing, Simms said it doesn’t address East Side’s drug problem.
“It has removed the crime from that area, mostly because there’s nothing there now for anyone to use as a fortress for whatever activities they had in mind,” Simms said.
East Side has plateaued, Simms said. One way to change this, he said, is to improve the ratio of homeowners to renters.
Charly Bass, the owner of the Jerry Deen’s restaurant, also said she believes the neighborhood has hit a “standstill.” She recalled a period in the 1980s and 1990s when she was growing up in the East Side.
She remembers businesses, beauty salons and restaurants all over the East Side and going to school with the children of the businessowners. Bass said she would run around the neighborhood without a second thought.
Bass left Wilmington for a few years and returned to an East Side where homeowners had left and many of the Black-owned businesses she had known were “washed out.” When she made her return in 2021, she had concerns with the amount of violent crime.
One area of the East Side that remains “out of control” is its amount of blighted homes.
But Bass noticed where new construction is happening, crime has dwindled down. The prospect of more homeownership in the East Side means more people taking care of their own property and community, she said.
“Making new homeowners is going to create a whole different narrative and culture for this East Side,” Bass said.
Completed units on Bennett Street are awaiting their first residents. | SPOTLIGHT DELAWARE PHOTO BY NICK STONESIFER
Community input
When it comes to the future of the East Side, community input is important. Carey said the promotion of events around planning and future developments could be more widespread.
Another part of future developments Carey said he doesn’t want to see in the East Side is Black residents being pushed out. Part of this means ensuring the affordable housing is actually affordable for people seeking to buy.
Who better to build for us than us?
Charly Bass, East SIDE BUSINESS OWNER
Going forward before development, he said he’d like to see the community included in more discussions. Carey also said he would want to see more information and resources to help East Side residents finance these new homes.
“I think the attitude is that they feel that they know what’s best for us, so we have little opportunity to participate in the planning,” Carey said. “I think that’s unfair, and there ought to be something done.”
Bass also said more community involvement is important in developing the East Side. Bass has her own development company and four properties on the East Side.
She purchased the properties using Community Development Block Grants and other grants to renovate and resell them to the community. Many of the homes she said were in “really bad shape.”
Bass said she was able to accomplish this through education through the Jumpstart Wilmington program and said she’d like to see more opportunities for people to learn what she did.
“It just holds more value when we have stake in our own communities, because we got to live here and we got to run our businesses here,” Bass said. “So who better to build for us than us?”
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