There are five new houses on the blocks along Ada and Simpson Streets on the Northside. They’re part of a two-pronged development approach — building new houses that are meant to remain affordable for 99 years and rehabbing houses already there — undertaken by Kalamazoo Neighborhood Housing Services.
New homes for the future, plus KNHS work rehabbing four other homes, are intended to stabilize some of the struggling blocks of the Northside. The effort has “changed the personality of the neighborhood,” says Beth McCann, Executive Director of KNHS.
Before work got underway, McCann says the neighborhood’s reputation was “not great. It was one of the toughest neighborhoods, we were told. And had a lot of disinvestment. And so we put a lot of money into the rehabs, and we built the new builds.”…