Urbanities,
Vol. 4
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No 2
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November 2014
© 2014
Urbanities
5
population is 89 percent white and mostly lower to middle class. Chestnut Lane itself has
become a symbolic battlefield in a NIMBY struggle over the character of a community.
The community is located in a town with slightly over 25,000 residents. During the
1970s, a declining economy caused several problems to befall this community. With the
closing of two factories that were integral to prosperity, there followed joblessness and the
general social malaise that comes with it. Homelessness, addiction, alcoholism and street
crime began to take root in the area. Many houses were left vacant and fell into disrepair.
Later, the area was to experience an influx of federally subsided housing.
During this time of hardship, one of the ways that the town council attempted to
alleviate their new financial burdens was to accept stipends allowing state-run transitional
residences to enter the town. Throughout the 1980s and 1990s, the town began to deteriorate
and de-gentrify. During the tech boom of the 1990s, the town saw its white-collar population
relocating to different regions.
By 2000, there were six halfway houses in the town. The State departments in charge
of corrections, and of health and addiction services funded most of these houses. Two of them
were work-release houses, where former inmates could work at jobs in the community while
returning to the home at night. The work-release houses were run by the state department of
corrections to provide housing and to monitor the actions of ex-offenders leaving prison. The
other houses specialized in housing drug offenders who were sentenced to a halfway house as
an alternative to traditional prison.
During the time when halfway houses were being opened, the federal government also
assisted several ‘Section 8’ (public assistance) tenants in migrating to the area to fill the
numerous housing vacancies in the town. Although the new migrants were more plentiful than
the residents of the halfway house, the impact of released offenders in the town seems to have
affected the residents more than the migrant population. ‘The poor people don’t bother me
any. They are plain people like everyone else’, said Robert, a local Caucasian man of age 52,
he added, ‘These people from prison though, they’re not like us’.
It is true that Chestnut Lane is located in a neighbourhood where crime and
victimization were practically unheard of until the 1970s. A local political official described
this town as an ‘idyllic place during the 1950s: All the stores were open on Thursday and
Friday nights. There were community dances. The Fire Department put on a dance and the
Police would put on a dance at the armoury. There was a community centre. And the Elks had
a big fair in their back yard and that was great place for the young people to get connected.’
(Quote from Jacob, a former town councilman).
Other residents, however, when asked about the history of the town are hard pressed to
remember a time when the town was like this. They are distraught over the halfway houses
that they perceive as a blemish on the town’s quality of life. ‘My grandpa used to say this is a
real bedrock town and when you see people... criminals... in here who don’t have to work to
pay rent or anything I suppose you know it’s gone downhill’ said Jared, a local man of age 32.
