Oak
  Terrace

 Boston's    Chinatown

Introduction

Ask Jacquie Kay why a group of community activists in Boston's Chinatown decided to build Oak Terrace, and she'll point to a photograph taken just before the building opened in 1995. In the photo, a line of people snakes around a Chinatown block, waiting to apply for a place in the new housing complex.

"The condition was the horrendous need," says Ms. Kay, a founder of the Asian Community Development Corporation (ACDC). "You can flash on this picture of these people just lined up after we announced we were open for applications."

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About 17 percent of Boston's Asian-American population lives in Chinatown, the city's most densely populated neighborhood. Although the area's Asian community had been growing rapidly over the last 20 years, a housing shortage made it impossible for many new immigrants to find apartments in Chinatown.

In the late 1980s, the Asian Community Development Corporation embarked on a quest to remedy the shortage by building more affordable housing in this largely immigrant neighborhood.

Although the growing need for rental housing was the primary motivation for the development of Oak Terrace in the mid-1990s, its construction was also expedited by the city's decision to make public land available for housing in Chinatown.

Making the new housing a reality also required an organization capable of developing such a project in the neighborhood. Although Ms. Kay and Tunney Lee — the then-head of MIT's Urban Studies Department — had served together on the board of the Chinese Economic Development Council (CEDC), another community development organization in Chinatown, both were eager to create a new organization — one that took a more grassroots approach to development.

Mr. Lee, who grew up in Chinatown, had worked for the Boston Redevelopment Authority (BRA) and knew that city-owned land in Chinatown would soon be available for development.

"He said, 'We've got to form an organization that can focus on the affordable-housing needs, but it's got to be with a broader vision of economic development in Chinatown,'" recalls Ms. Kay.

"I think he contacted me because both Tunney and I had served on the CEDC board. We began to get ACDC formed so we could have a legitimate community entity to handle developing an affordable-housing project," she says.

In 1987, the Asian Community Development Corporation became a reality, and eight years later, Oak Terrace was born.

Funding Oak Terrace
Today, Oak Terrace provides housing for more than 300 people on Washington Street in Boston's Chinatown. The 88-unit development is evenly divided among low-income, moderate-income, and market-rate units.

The $13.3 million development has 32 two-bedroom units, 33 three-bedroom units, nine four-bedroom units, and 14 one-bedroom units. The planners included a large number of multibedroom units in the development to address a shortage of family housing in the community.

Funding sources for Oak Terrace included Low-Income Housing Tax Credits through the Massachusetts Housing Investment Corporation, loans from the Massachusetts Housing Finance Agency, the AFL-CIO Housing Investment Trust, and the BRA. The development also received grants and subsidies from the city's Neighborhood Housing Trust.

"Most of the syndication came from the banks," says Ms. Kay. "In fact, I think all the banks were involved: State Street, Shawmut, BayBank, Bank of Boston — whatever was around at that time."

Another key source of funding was the Federal Home Loan Bank of Boston's Affordable Housing Program. The Bank contributed a $250,000 grant and a $250,000 advance through PNC Bank.

Kay says the Bank's contribution to the development was pivotal. "Part of it was an advance, which we really needed," she says. "I think the creativity of the two ways the money came in — the flexibility we could get through the Federal Home Loan Bank of Boston — provided so much more than any other agency, and I don't think I'm exaggerating.

"I remember it was so key for us to get that money, and in both forms. We would never have been able to accept the loan stage if we didn't have the grant to help us. So the fact that they came in-tandem really helped us," she says.