How Does Construct Inc. Balance Building Affordable Housing With Meeting Immediate Needs?
Claire O’Callahan / Berkshire Eagle
“Picture this.
It’s 1969. Millions are marching against the Vietnam war, Black students are demanding the creation of Black studies departments and the nation is still reeling from the assassination of Martin Luther King Jr. In the capitol, President Lyndon B. Johnson is five years into his multipronged “war on poverty.”
Hundreds of miles away in the westernmost corner of Massachusetts, a group of interfaith clergy, laypersons and concerned residents gather in response. What do we need to do to create the most lasting change for our community, they ask each other.
Their answer? Affordable housing.”
“Fifty-five years later, the organization they founded, Construct Inc, remains a fixture of the Southern Berkshire community it set out to serve.
For this edition of my housing Q&A column, I sat down with the nonprofit’s executive director, Jane Ralph, to ask her about the term affordable housing, scarce inventory and balancing building long-term housing with immediate needs. Here are her thoughts.”
THE EAGLE: Can you share a little about yourself and your housing story?
RALPH: I grew up in a small town in Wisconsin about the same size as Great Barrington, but much more rural. I wasn’t particularly aware of housing insecurity at that time, but [later], as a result of my mom getting cancer when there was a lapse in insurance, my dad ended up losing our family home. He worked hard all his life. He was a veteran. He did everything you’re supposed to do and due to an unfortunate circumstance, he found himself without a resource he’d expected to gain equity from to live with into retirement.
So that was my first personal brush with housing insecurity. From time to time, I’ve found myself living paycheck to paycheck in spite of having a college degree and a master’s, and reasonably good nonprofit jobs. But the cost of living, especially now, is just so expensive.
When my partner and I were looking for a home to buy after moving to the Berkshires for me to take this job, we weren’t originally planning to look in Pittsfield. I’m glad we did because we love our neighborhood. As we started to look, even pre-COVID, it just became more and more clear that evenAnd then of course, for my professional career, I’ve worked in and around housing and homelessness most of my career.
THE EAGLE: Construct Inc. has been a fixture in the Berkshires for decades. How have the issues Construct seeks to address changed throughout that time and how has the organization itself morphed to keep in step?
RALPH: I’ll start out with the way we haven’t changed: We’ve always been deeply rooted in the communities we seek to serve and in which we find ourselves. We are solidly community based and always were.
[In 1969, our founders] decided to focus on affordable housing and the need for it here in the Berkshires. It’s continued to be a challenge. I think that’s true of many communities where there’s a mixture of populations, where there are folks who’ve lived here forever, there are folks who’ve moved here for all sorts of reasons including second-home owners. And there’s a mix of rural and more urban mentalities, even though it’s a rural, small-town area.
I think Construct has done a good job of evolving and pivoting to meet the needs at any given time. Thirty-five years ago, Construct started to look at, it’s not just providing a space for people to live; we really need to pay attention to the people who are living in those spaces. We absolutely need to get them housed, but then what are the wraparound supports that all of us need at different times? We often talk about vulnerable populations needing supports, but we all do. Some of us are really fortunate to have those networks of social support, of family support very naturally. And some of us have to look elsewhere for it. So Construct really tried to step up to help folks to do what we now call navigate the systems of support that are available.
THE EAGLE: Let’s take a step back for a minute. When we’re talking about affordable housing, what do we mean by that? How does Construct approach affordability? Who do you serve?
RALPH: That’s a key part of what we’re looking at in our strategic planning. The reason that we do what we do is that we really envision a South Berkshire community with homes all of our neighbors, our staff, our volunteers, our community partners can afford, and that’s inviting to the vibrant community that we really value here. Newcomers, folks who’ve been here for a long time, older folks, folks who are homeless — the whole community.
We really are trying to get away from any separation of what that means. Because, again, we all need housing that is affordable, and the way we define that is you’re not paying more than 30 percent of your income on housing. We can’t serve everyone in the community, and not everyone needs our support, so we tend to focus on those who have low to moderate income. Mostly on the low end, but part of our vision is to work with folks at moderate income because it’s getting harder and harder for those folks to find rental or home ownership that is affordable.
THE EAGLE: A big part of the work you do is building permanent affordable housing for income eligible folks. Do you see the county’s persistently low housing inventory as the root of the housing crisis?
RALPH: I don’t know if it’s the root of the problem, but I do think that being able to address the need for more housing, creating more housing, keeping people housed affordably if they’re in places that they’re temporarily struggling to maintain — I think that makes everything easier.
Housing is a social determinant of health. If you have other health concerns, but are sustainably housed in a decent, affordable place within a community, then those other health needs are going to be much easier to meet. So I think it’s foundational.
THE EAGLE: In addition to permanent affordable housing, Construct also offers transitional housing, rental assistance, microloans and emergency funds. Can you speak a little about these resources and, more so, how Construct balances building long-term housing with meeting the immediate housing needs of the community?
RALPH: That is a great and very timely question because the needs in both areas are exponentially more than they were pre-COVID. We really are looking very strategically at how we stay centered and grounded to be able to do both those prongs in the South Berkshires because both are essential.
Many people will say you can’t build your way out of a housing crisis and at first I took issue with that. I wasn’t sure that was true. It seemed like a bumper sticker answer that maybe wasn’t accurate. But COVID really taught me that it was. The least expensive way for us to make sure that people are housed is to keep them housed where they are when the housing inventory is so small.
So pre-COVID we probably did about $10,000, maybe less, in all of our financial assistance we did per year. Then COVID hit and we immediately recognized that there was going to be a need for a much larger infusion of cash into the system for folks to remain housed. Yes, there was an eviction moratorium so folks were safe temporarily, but in the South Berkshires most of the landlords are “mom and pop.” If they don’t get the rent, they don’t pay the mortgage, and then there isn’t a landlord there. So we worked really hard to maintain the financial stability of both the tenant and the landlord wherever we could. Yes, it’s tenant assistance, but it’s also always landlord assistance, and it’s also, in a connected way, employer assistance.