Dudley Street Neighborhood Initiative

Author: Erika Leuchte

Short Summary

The Dudley Street Neighborhood Initiative (DSNI) focuses on community empowerment and control. DSNI is a vehicle for amplifying community member voices, empowering the youth, developing the neighborhood without displacement, and creating better access to resources.

Website address: https://www.dsni.org/

Location: Dudley Neighborhood of Roxbury, Boston, MA, USA

Executive Director: John Smith

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Profile

The Dudley Street Neighborhood Initiative (DSNI) ensures that residents control their neighborhood and have access to resources by building leadership who can champion community issues. DSNI serves all residents of the Dudley neighborhood of Roxbury, Massachusetts.

DSNI’s four main areas of focus:

Development without displacement: DSNI empowers their residents to become leaders in the neighborhood and in the City of Boston to drive anti-displacement policy. DSNI supports neighborhood development through improvements in access to public services and resources, improvements to neighborhood schools, access to healthy foods, opportunities to build wealth, and organizing community-wide cultural events.
Youth Voice: DSNI partners with youth-led organizations across the City of Boston to empower young people and engage them in the organization's goals. DSNI ensures youth voices are represented and encourages youth leadership throughout its initiatives.
Neighborhood Development: DSNI engages in the development and preservation of land and housing through Community Land Use Planning and Community Land Trusts (CLT).
Resident Empowerment: DSNI empowers residents through civic engagement, leadership opportunities, and member recruitment and retention strategies.

DSNI is the leader of community development initiatives in Dudley, serving all 24,000 Dudley residents, whether they are members of DSNI or not. DSNI has partnered with developers to build 300 homes, rehabilitate 300 homes, and build a town common, gardens, urban agriculture, parks, and playgrounds. DSNI has 3,000 members, consisting of residents, businesses, not-for-profits, and religious organizations. Members pay a sliding-scale annual membership due.

DSNI's values:

Collective Resident Leadership and Control
Community Political Power and Voice
Mutual Shared Accountability and Responsibility
Vibrant Cultural Diversity
Fair and Equal Share of Resources and Opportunity
Development Without Displacement

Their mission statement: “The Dudley Street Neighborhood Initiative's (DSNI) mission is to empower Dudley residents to organize, plan for, create and control a vibrant, diverse, and high-quality neighborhood in collaboration with community partners.” (source)

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Governance

DSNI’s board is compiled of and led by residents of Roxbury. Board members are democratically elected by the community members. DSNI has increased civic participation, economic opportunity, community connections, and opportunities for youth. This contributes to a main goal of the initiative, which is to increase community engagement and investment in the neighborhood. Specifically, the community has put great investments into their youth, who then invest back into the community through future leadership roles.

Projects

Fairmount Cultural Corridor: Collaborative effort of residents, artists, community organizations and businesses to support vibrant, livable neighborhoods in a local creative economy. This is achieved through the collection of intergenerational stories, training of residents in oral history and sharing of the stories of the residents.
Neighborhood Voices: Engages multiple generations in the documentation and promotion of the stories of families that moved to the neighborhood in the decades following WWII and rebuilt the community across diverse racial, ethnic, and linguistic identities. The goal of this project is to capture the neighborhood history, to capture the resident’s diverse life stories, to arm the next generation with the neighborhood history, and to inform the understanding of present and future challenges.
The Greater Boston Community Land Trust Network: Supports current and development of new community land trusts (CLTs) for resident-led planning and long-term, collective control of land. Removed land from the market and gives the power permanently back to the community. Land is used for affordable housing, economic development, urban agriculture, and open space. This empowers and protects neighborhoods at high-risk of or currently undergoing gentrification.

YOUTUBE TElaNRPBXP0 A short video history of DNSI.

Friends & Partners

Community land trust network host and members:

Boston Farms CLT
Boston Neighborhood CLT
Chinatown Community Land Trust
Comunidades Enraizadas CLT at GreenRoots
Dudley Neighbors, Inc.
Highland Park CLT
Somerville CLT

Community land trust founders and community groups:

Alternatives for Community and Environment*
Boston Food Forest Coalition
Boston Tenant Coalition
Chinese Progressive Association*
City Life/Vida Urbana*
Fairmount Greenway Taskforce
Mattapan United
New England United for Justice
Resource Generation
Right to the City Boston
Roxbury CLT
Tufts University Urban and Environmental Planning Program*
Urban Farming Institute*

Finances

One third of DSNI’s annual budget is provided by the government; the other two thirds are provided by corporate and foundation grants, events, individual donations, and earned income. DSNI qualifies for donation tax credit. The land trust receives support from community development partners.

Origin Story

Although the roots of the initiative date back about 35 years, DSNI was officially established in 1993 by Dudley neighborhood residents, seeking to reclaim their disinvested neighborhood when Boston had given up. DSNI brought neighbors together to form a comprehensive plan and a shared vision for a new, vibrant urban neighborhood. DSNI gained eminent domain authority to ensure the organization could develop without displacing its residents. Now, “the once garbage-strewn lots have been rebuilt with quality affordable houses, parks, playgrounds, gardens, community facilities, and new businesses” (source). DSNI has increased the neighborhood's civic engagement, economic opportunity, community networks, and opportunities for youth. DSNI has created a diverse community in language, race, ethnicity, and age. DSNI has made the investment in their youth a priority and that has led to the youth investing back into their community.