Codman Square NDC Foreclosure Symposium
September 8, 2010, 9am-11am
Location: 31 Erie Street, Dorchester, MA 02124
Dear Friends and Colleagues,
We are pleased to invite you to attend Codman Square NDC’s Foreclosure Symposium on Wednesday, September 8, 2010, from 9:00am to 11:00amin Codman Square. The Symposium will be held at the Codman Square Erie Ellington Community Room (31 Erie Street, Dorchester, MA 02124).The title of this symposium is “Developing a Coordinated Response to Maintain Neighborhood Stability.”
Codman Square NDC has been closely monitoring foreclosed properties, formerly foreclosed properties, and investor activities in our service area in order to better respond to and address the foreclosure crisis faced by our neighborhood. Our efforts focused in large part on the impact of investor ownership in our community. We alsosought to determine if there were any streets that had particularly high foreclosure rates looming in our service area, as a means of proactively addressing issues of neighborhood decline. Over 600 foreclosed and formerly foreclosed properties within CSNDC’s service area have been tracked since September 2009, and a report detailing our findings, “Foreclosed Neighborhoods and Fragile Streets: Codman Square and the National Crisis,” will be formally released during the event.
Most importantly, the symposium will serve as a forum for the exchange of ideas among housing practitioners, policy makers, legislators, and community members about how to best respond to the foreclosure crisis in our service area. We will be asking panelists to respond to our research, as well as to provide their own perspectives and recommendations, as a means of bringing attention to this important issue and to formulate key strategies to help minimize the negative impacts of foreclosures in Codman's service area. Panelists include:
- Evelyn Friedman, Director of the City of Boston’s Department of Neighborhood Development (DND)
- Joe Flatley, President and CEO of the Massachusetts Housing Investment Corporation (MHIC)
- Aaron Gornstein, Executive Director of Citizens' Housing and Planning Association (CHAPA)
- LaRayne Hebert, District Director of Neighborworks America
In addition, the event will be moderated by special guest Kalima Rose, Senior Director at Policy Link and coauthor of the recently released report, “When Investors Buy Up the Neighborhood: Preventing Investor Ownership from Causing Neighborhood Decline.”
We eagerly anticipate your presence and participation in this critical discussion. For further information or to register for the event, please respond to Dana McQuillin at
617-825-4224 x135 or (RSVP by September 3, 2010).
Regards,
Gail Latimore
Executive Director
Codman Square Neighborhood Development Corporation