We know it takes a village to raise a child.

How, then, does one raise a village?

In the case of the Brockton Housing Authority (BHA), which has spent a decade revitalizing the Pleasant Prospect Neighborhood, all it took was a little HOME cooking and many hands making hard work.

Two decades ago, Brockton had its share of blighted areas. To remove them, numerous buildings were demolished and a park was created. Still that left several vacant lots needing desperate attention.

What to do with the empty spaces? City officials quickly realized that putting homes there for working families was the answer.

The Brockton Redevelopment Authority (BRA) and the BHA, a longtime Housing Authority Insurance Group member, stepped up and used federal HOME funds to build the first homes on North Warren Avenue. Over time, the Old Colony Youth Build Program, Habitat for Humanity, the Brockton Interfaith Community, and select members of the private market joined in. Now, 40 homes stand in places where once only trash, tires, construction debris, needles, condoms, and crabgrass thrived.

As one housing advocate put it in a memo released by the Brockton Housing Authority, “Are you planting house bulbs in that neighborhood?”

The BHA estimates that the private development in the Pleasant Prospect Private neighborhoods is worth over $4 million, while the BHA’s Pleasant Prospect Home Ownership Development program’s property value is worth nearly $1.8 million.

Take a look at the pictures to see what was accomplished.

Or, consider the words of BHA Director of Facilities and Housing Management Owen Ahearn.

“We oversee a lot of properties and we try to ensure that our properties look better than the surrounding properties,” Ahearn said. “In this case, we took an area that other people were not interested in and brought it back.”

Why?

“We’re invested,” Ahearn said, “and our roots are there. We want them to know we are going to be there for them and take care of our own. We take ‘Clean up the City’ day seriously and have taken it upon ourselves. To keep Brockton beautiful, we invested our own time.”

Ahearn is a veteran of the housing game with a background in real estate management. Still, he’s young enough to have young children running around the house. He’s an industry professional trying to marry tried and true methods with innovation.

“The Brockton Housing Authority is changing over to asset management,” Ahearn said. “Public housing people can learn from the private real estate sector.”

And, Ahearn insists, Housing Authority Insurance Group members should be learning from one another.

“I once worked for a state agency,” he said. “We had to educate housing authority directors and their staff on state leases. When housing authorities come to a class like that, they learn from other directors. They learn about their operations.

“HAI Group is a great way to communicate physically and electronically about operations. It has been a great learning experience for me personally.”

One lesson Ahearn absorbed while in Brockton is to never quit searching for answers when the question is, “how do we provide safe, affordable, decent housing?”

“Years ago we were going to do a Hope 6 grant,” Ahearn said. “Instead, our Executive Director Richard Sergi worked with the mayor and the city on a different alternative. We took a depressed area, the Walnut Turner Prospect neighborhood, and brought in Youth Build to build homes. The housing authority built single-family homes and duplexes to strengthen other areas within the neighborhoods. Other investors and homeowners saw the community spirit and revitalization and bought in to lift the neighborhood up.”

Often newspapers and TV news programs report that people are apathetic about the plight of others.

In Brockton, that’s not the case – at least not when the Brockton Housing Authority has a say in the matter.

“You are always housing people,” Ahearn said. “Our job is to provide safe, affordable, and decent housing. Not only are we doing that, we are taking a neighborhood that needed cash and energy to bring it up.

“It has been a team effort between the housing authority, the mayor’s office, the community, private investors, and the state.”

See, it does take a village.