As decades of discriminatory policies and practices continue to fuel America's affordable housing crisis, less than three miles from the MIT campus exists a beacon of innovation and community empowerment.
“We are very proud to continue MIT’s long-standing partnership with Camfield Estates,” said Catherine D’Ignazio, associate professor of urban sciences and planning. “Camfield has long been an incubator of creative ideas focused on improving their community.”
D'Ignazio co-leads a research team focused on housing as part of the MIT Initiative to Combat Systemic Racism (ICSR) led by the Institute for Data, Systems, and Society (IDSS). The group studies the unequal impacts of data, AI, and algorithmic systems on housing in the United States, as well as how these same tools could be used to address racial disparities. The Camfield Tenant Association is a research partner that provides insight and relevant data, as well as opportunities for MIT researchers to solve real challenges and make local impact.
Formerly known as “Camfield Gardens,” the 102-unit residential complex in Roxbury, Massachusetts, was one of the pioneering sites in the 1990s to enter the U.S. Department of Housing and of Urban Development (HUD) aimed at revitalizing dilapidated public housing across the country. It also served as a catalyst for their collaboration with MIT, which began in the early 2000s.
“The program gave Camfield the money and energy to demolish everything on the site and rebuild it, as well as allowing it to purchase the property from the city for $1 and take full ownership of the site,” says Nolen Scruggs, a master's student in MIT's Department of Urban Studies and Planning (DUSP) who has worked with Camfield for the past several years on ICSR's housing vertical team. “At the time, MIT graduate students helped launch a program to bridge the “digital divide” which later evolved into the technology lab that still exists today, continuing to enable residents to learn computer skills and things they might need to help out. »
Because of this first collaboration, Camfield Estates contacted MIT in 2022 to open a new chapter of collaboration with students. Scruggs spent a few months assembling a team of students from Harvard University, Wentworth Institute of Technology and MIT to work on a housing design project to help the Camfield Tenants Association prepare for its impending housing needs. redevelopment.
“One of the things that has been very important to the work of the ICSR housing vertical is the historical context,” says Peko Hosoi, a professor of mechanical engineering and mathematics who co-leads the ICSR housing vertical with D'Ignazio. “We didn’t get to where we are now in housing in an instant. A lot of things have happened in the United States, like redlining, predatory lending, and different ways of investing in infrastructure that add important contexts.
“Quantitative methods are a great way to examine macro-scale phenomena, but our team also recognizes and values qualitative and participatory methods, to get a deeper picture of the real needs of communities and the types of innovations that can arise from the communities themselves,” adds D’Ignazio. “That’s where the partnership with Camfield Estates, led by Nolen, comes in.”
Find creative solutions
Before joining MIT, Scruggs, a proud New Yorker, worked on housing issues while interning for his local congressman, House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries. He called residents to discuss their housing concerns and to learn about affordability issues that made it difficult for low- and middle-income families to find housing.
“This behind-the-scenes experience set the stage for my involvement at Camfield,” says Scruggs, recalling his early days at Camfield conducting participatory action research and meeting with Camfield seniors to discuss and capture their concerns.
Scruggs says the biggest problem they've tried to solve with Camfield is twofold: creating more space for new residents while helping current residents reach their end goal of homeownership.
“It speaks to some of the broader issues that our group at ICSR is working on in terms of housing affordability,” he says. “With Camfield, it's about determining where people with Section 8 vouchers can move, what their limitations are, and what barriers they face – whether through large technology systems or individual preferences coming from owners.”
Scruggs adds: “The discrimination these people face when trying to find a house, locking it up, talking to a bank, etc. – it can be very, very difficult and discouraging. » Scruggs says one attempt to combat this problem would be to hire a social worker to help people through the process — one of several ideas emerging from a Camfield collaboration with the FHLBank affordable housing development competition .
As part of the competition, the Scruggs team's goal was to help Camfield tenants understand all of their options and potential trade-offs, so they can ultimately make informed decisions about what they want to do of their space.
“Very often, redevelopment projects do not guarantee that people will return. » said Scruggs. “Specific design proposals are made to ensure that the structure of people’s lifestyle is not disrupted.”
Scruggs says tentative recommendations discussed with tenant association president Paulette Ford include replacing the community center with a high-rise building that would increase the number of available units.
“I think they’re thinking very creatively about their options,” Hosoi says. “Paulette Ford, and her mother before her, always referred to Camfield as 'a helping hand', with the idea that people come to Camfield to live until they can afford their own home locally.
Scruggs' other partnership with Camfield involves working with MIT undergraduate Amelie Nagle as part of the Undergraduate Research Opportunities Program to create programming that will teach computer design and coding to children in the Camfield community – in the same TechLab that dates back to MIT and Camfield's first collaboration.
“Nolen is really committed to community-led knowledge production,” D’Ignazio says. “It was a pleasure to work with him and see how he uses all of his urban planning skills (GIS, mapping, urban design, photography, and more) to work in a respectful way that highlights community innovation.
She added: “We hope the process will result in high quality architectural and planning ideas and help Camfield take the next step towards realizing its innovative vision.” »