Mt. Washington Group Wins $475,000 Anti-Poverty Grant

Haverhill’s Working Cities Team.

Haverhill’s Mount Washington Neighborhood will benefit from a $475,000 Working Cities Challenge grant aimed at closing a “social and economic opportunity gap” between it and the rest of the city.

A new group, called Mount Washington Alliance, comprised of governmental, non-profit and private organizations, represented Haverhill, and helped the city become one of five to be awarded a grant Wednesday by the Federal Reserve Bank of Boston. The premise behind the grant, as WHAV first reported last November, is groups that “work together” have a better chance of reducing poverty and achieving other goals.

“I want to congratulate the winners of the Working Cities Challenge. Collaborative leadership is at the heart of this competition, and these five cities demonstrated significant capacity to reach across sectors and advance efforts on behalf of low-income residents in their communities,” said Federal Reserve Bank of Boston President Eric Rosengren. “I look forward to following the progress in the communities in the coming months and years.”

Besides Haverhill, other cities receiving $475,000 grants over three years are Lowell, Pittsfield, Springfield and Worcester. Last fall, the cities were among 10 in Massachusetts to receive $15,000 each to strengthen their bids in the competition.

Mount Washington Alliance will use the money and related technical assistance to “improve employment, education and an array of neighborhood conditions including housing, health and safety. Residents will play a prominent role in shaping and evaluating the work of this Alliance,” according to the federal reserve.

The alliance was said to be composed of residents of Mount Washington, mayor’s office, Haverhill Public Schools, Rehoboth Lighthouse Full Gospel Church, Northern Essex Community College, Fantini Baking Company, Community Action, Merrimack Valley Workforce Investment Board, Merrimack Valley Music and Arts, Team Haverhill, Mann Consulting, Haverhill Bank, Pentucket Bank, POSE, Urban Kindness, Greater Haverhill Chamber of Commerce, Merrimack Valley Planning Commission, Emmaus, Veterans Northeast Outreach Center, St. James Church, Jaffarian Toyota, Tilton Elementary School, Haverhill YMCA, Girls Inc., Haverhill City Council, and Massachusetts 2020, a statewide educational group.

“Together with our partners in the private, philanthropic and non-profit sectors, we are proud to leverage greater resources to support and prepare communities for success,” said Massachusetts Governor Charlie Baker. “The Working Cities Challenge elevates local leadership, amplifying solutions from the community level to increase cross-sector collaboration and improve economic outcomes for low-income residents.”

Mount Washington is defined as a two-square-mile area near the top of Washington Street. It has about 11,000 residents. It includes Swasey Field—scene of a double-shooting last month between purported rival gang members. A 16-year-old was charged with the crime that left two people with non-life-threatening injuries.

Grant money comes from a consortium of partners including the Commonwealth of Massachusetts, the Massachusetts Competitive Partnership, the Doris Duke Charitable Foundation, the Kresge Foundation, the Barr Foundation, the Smith Family Foundation and Living Cities. The winners of the competition were selected by an independent jury that does not include the Federal Reserve Bank of Boston.

A celebration of these five cities’ initiatives takes place July 18 in Boston.

3 thoughts on “Mt. Washington Group Wins $475,000 Anti-Poverty Grant

  1. A few years after the death of President Lyndon Johnson a reporter asked his widow, Lady Bird Johnson, what her impressions were of the Great Society welfare programs initiated by her husband. Shockingly, she admitted that LBJ had admitted to her before he passed of his disappointment with how citizens viewed the government assistance provided through those programs as a way of life, not as a stop gap measure as he had intended it to be. LBJ must be rolling in his grave in seeing something like this donation. The adage that if you give something away for free you are sure to attract more people wanting it is alive and well. Need proof? Just this week there was a public notice in the Eagle Tribune of The City of Lawrence Summer School Lunch Meals Program. This year Lawrence schools will be providing breakfast AND lunch daily at 28 different locations in the city. 28!!!! When this program first began it started out at just a couple of locations.

    In Haverhill city officials are thrilled with this donation!!! They couldn’t be happier promoting the farce that somehow this money is actually going to change someone’s life. As loyal liberals they, as you would expect, completely ignore the public policy implications of what the problems are in that neighborhood to begin with. But the hacks get face time as do-good heroes fighting for the little people, and THAT is all that matters. And how interesting is it that this time they get help from outside of government to sell the fraud??

  2. “Federal Reserve Bank of Boston President Eric Rosengren. “I look forward to following the progress in the communities in the coming months and years.” –

    Sure he does. He’s another Ivory Tower academic living out of a textbook. Has anyone looked at The Federal Reserves track record over the past 30 years? Let’s forget about every economic crisis that they not only missed, but were in fact, were and still part of the problem. No? See what The Fed has done. If any reader here can’t grasp what secular change is, and how it will impact you and your families, then good luck to you, you’ll need it.

    https://research.stlouisfed.org/fred2/graph/?g=4BAv

    “Mount Washington Alliance will use the money and related technical assistance to “improve employment, education and an array of neighborhood conditions including housing, health and safety.” –

    Interesting, especially in a city as poor as Haverhill, even more so since there’s about a $20K income disparity from inner-city Haverhill to going across the bridge into Bradford. Is this group suddenly going to create some jobs that will make up this disparity, in a state that leads the nation in income disparity? Good luck, because Beacon Hill politicians have solidified that it remains through crony capitalism, and you can thank Haverhill’s own Rep. Brian Dempsey for doing his part. Any questions? See that 2001 was the last year incomes peaked in this state, and we have never returned, as the latest Census income data is showing Massachusetts will again fall further into the economic abyss for anyone, or any household that earns under $94K per year, the $150K-$159K cutoff is flat, meaning you’re treading water. These are the economic cutoffs of income destruction via Fed Consumer Survey and SS wage receipts.

    https://research.stlouisfed.org/fred2/graph/?g=4C95
    https://www.ssa.gov/cgi-bin/netcomp.cgi?year=2014
    http://www.federalreserve.gov/econresdata/scf/scfindex.htm

    “we are proud to leverage greater resources to support and prepare communities for success,” said Massachusetts Governor Charlie Baker.” –

    Charlie should enjoy his one term as Democrats can float a terrible candidate next time around an win easily. I also love when politicians talk about leverage, The City of Haverhill, The Commonwealth of Massachusetts, this country, corporations, and households are buried in it. These debts are never going to be paid off, and neither political Party have any will to change that. Unfortunately, like through all of history, debt(s) do in fact matter, and just because The United States is the winner in the least ugly contest globally, we’re already hearing from our on Federal Reserve what’s coming next.

    For any politician that is reading this, take a good look as the math of things is coming home to roost. The over $19 trillion has gone from doubling from every nine (9) years, to eight (8), now closing in on seven (7). That’s not opinion, that’s grade school mathematics, in an era where 5% GDP is over, we now barely get 2%, and that’s with deficit spending.

    https://research.stlouisfed.org/fred2/graph/?g=4y1R

    It will be interesting to see exactly how these monies are spent. Not sure The Mount Washington Alliance realizes that low-income & the poor in this country are finished. Legislation and policy are now effecting the true middle class, and no amount of money or good will will change that, legislation has solidified this paradigm. As for the truly wealthy, their money never reaches the economy, it is kept at the top, and there it stays. There are only so many planes, yachts, and real estate they can buy, while the rest stays internal in legacy trusts for their families. How do I know? Because I did it for a living. Any questions can be seen below, and thanks to the “Panama Papers”, my old firm is ground zero in Boston/Massachusetts for sheltering the super wealthy monies.

    https://offshoreleaks.icij.org/nodes/293360