Housing Prices High, Stock Low, and Who’s It For? with Julie Orozco

This episode aired on 11/06/24 on WICN 90.5FM

In this episode of Public Hearing, I sit down with Julie Orozco, Executive Director of Abby’s House, a key Worcester organization supporting housing for women and children. We discuss the city’s housing challenges, reflect on our shared experiences in Leadership Worcester, and explore how art, diversity, and advocacy shape a vibrant, healthy community.

Key Topics:

• Intro to Julie Orozco and Abby's House
  • Julie’s journey to becoming the first Black executive director of Abby’s House, which supports women affected by domestic violence with housing and resources.
• Housing Crisis and Accessibility
  • Julie highlights the gap between local wages and rental costs, addressing systemic issues in Worcester's housing market that make it difficult for residents to afford housing.
• Economic Development and Commuter Strategy
  • We critique Worcester’s commuter-focused strategy, which has impacted housing affordability for long-term residents.
• Art, Community, and Placemaking
  • Drawing from our Leadership Worcester experience, we discuss the essential role of art and cultural spaces in creating safe, engaging communities.
• Advocacy and the Importance of Diverse Communities
  • Exploring how resilient, mixed-income neighborhoods support Worcester’s growth and the role of diversity in fostering a healthy community.
• Dinner Table Conversation Starter
  • As election season has been here, Julie prompts listeners to think about what exposure they may be missing when considering the health and diversity of their community—and how this may shape their views and votes.

Chapter Markers:

• [00:00:00] Introduction
  Overview of Public Hearing’s mission and today’s guest.
• [00:02:00] Meet Julie Orozco
  Julie’s background and her work-life balance reflections.
• [00:04:00] Abby's House and the Mission
  Mission, impact, and housing challenges at Abby’s House.
• [00:06:30] Housing Affordability in Worcester
  The disconnect between wages and housing market rates.
• [00:09:00] Worcester's Economic Development Strategy
  How commuter-focused growth impacts local affordability.
• [00:15:20] The Role of Art in Community Building
  Importance of accessible art and placemaking for community safety and engagement.
• [00:18:45] Need for Mixed-Income Neighborhoods
  The essential role of income diversity in sustainable communities.
• [00:25:40] Closing Thoughts and Call to Action
  Julie’s “dinner table” question about diversity, exposure, and voting.

This episode of Public Hearing is packed with honest insights into the challenges and opportunities facing Worcester, particularly around housing and affordability. I hope you join me on this journey as we unpack what it means to build a thriving, inclusive city.

Tune in every Wednesday at 6 PM on WICN 90.5 FM or wherever you get your podcasts. Let’s keep the conversation going on what we can do to support every student’s success in Worcester and beyond!

Learn more and follow at QueerForCities.com/PublicHearing

Created & Hosted by Joshua Croke.
Our Audio Producer is Giuliano D'Orazio.

Available anywhere you listen to podcasts.

Transcript

Housing Prices High, Stock Low, and Who’s It For? with Julie Orozco

[00:00:00] Joshua Croke: Hello, Worcester and the world. You're listening to Public Hearing on WICN 90. 5 FM. Worcester's only NPR affiliate station or wherever you get your podcasts. Public Hearing is a podcast and radio show about Worcester, the second largest city in New England. And as Julie Bowditch said on our first episode back, we are a real ass city and it's time we start acting like it.

[00:00:21] I'm your host, Joshua Croke. I'm a queer urbanist and Worcester resident working at the intersections of social justice, co creating thriving communities through equity centered design, and cultivating creative innovation ecosystems across the commonwealth. Public Hearing is a project of Queer4Cities, an initiative out to make queer a joyful norm.

[00:00:40] You can learn more about our work at QueerForCities.com. I'm really excited to have a friend and community rock star, Julie Orozco, here with us today. Julie, thank you so much for being here. For listeners who might not know you, can you give us a quick hello, an intro, to start? Like, imagine you're at, like, a social event where you have no clue, the person that you're talking to, how your passions or work is gonna overlap.

[00:01:05] Like, what's the, what's the hello? 

[00:01:06] Julie Orozco: Yeah, hey, hey, hey. First of all, take over of the Julies. I love that Julie was your first and I'm your second, so that's amazing. Hey, Julie. All right, so what would I say? I'd probably, you know, honestly today, like in this moment today, what was top of mind for me in terms of like who I am.

[00:01:27] I'm really in like my mother's space right now. So my son turns 18 next month, which is, how do I have an 18 year old? That does not make sense, but it also is my reality. He's graduating from high school this year and He's just a pretty awesome kid, but I'm in this like very interesting space of like excitement and anticipation about his next phase of life, coupled with total fear and overwhelm about his next phase of life.

[00:02:01] So like, that's been really sort of a space that I've been in a lot in terms of identity just in that real mother space. But I guess if I were to say other things about, like, myself you know, I'm in a really, like, really wonderful space in my life right now, so I I'm really happy in my relationship.

[00:02:21] Really happy in my social spaces. I am definitely sort of a, I'm, I am a Leo. And I feel like I totally take on, like, the full lion. Like, when I am working, I am working. And when I am relaxing, I am deeply relaxing. And that has really been sort of the core of my life. So when I'm on the go, I'm doing it and when I'm not you can definitely catch me in like a six hour comatose nap.

[00:02:49] So 

[00:02:49] Joshua Croke: I Totally feel that entered and I might need to take some tips from you because I am a Gemini sun in Aries moon So I am just like all over the place all the time so finding that balance between work and rest and social life come kind of all are a amalgamous ball sometimes so So you also are the executive director at abby's house and for Listeners who might not be familiar with the work could you give that kind of quick overview as to the the focus of your work the Who you're supporting?

[00:03:26] And some of the challenges that you're you're facing in that work. 

[00:03:29] Julie Orozco: Yeah, You know really Proud and honored to be the executive director at Abby's House. I started there in June of last year, so I'm a smidge over a year at this point. I'm the first black executive director that the organization has ever had, and that feels really important to me personally, but I think it also feels really important to where we are as an organization in terms of, you know, we have, always been an organization that's had a focus on women.

[00:04:03] And I think that we've always been an organization that has had itself concerned about the rights of all people, but in particular vulnerable people. And the way that, you know, the board was really deliberate in their hiring around wanting to be clear about an approach to diversity, equity, inclusion.

[00:04:27] And so it's, you know, Abby's house in its current state. We are An organization that supports women with or without children, specifically around housing. And so we currently are sort of, I always call it a campus. We have four properties all in the Crown Hill neighborhood, all walking distance.

[00:04:52] One property is the original property that was Abby's house in and of itself. And that property today is our shelter. Which went under a, massive renovation. The building was a duplex and we had always been in a state of one side of the building was shelter and another side was two residential apartments.

[00:05:13] The renovation made it all one building. So we doubled in capacity in terms of who we can shelter and we also made it accessible, so we now have an accessible room, bathroom, and the entire first floor is accessible. So that building is still there, and then we have three separate properties of affordable housing, two of them for single women and one of them for women with children, all two bedroom units.

[00:05:40] And so the real mission for Abby's House is, you know, focused on women and homelessness But I think beyond homelessness, it's also around, you know, for women, the, the greatest driver of homelessness is domestic violence. In particular, intimate partner violence, and so, you know, coupled with our mission around housing, it really sort of has this underlying piece of focusing on trauma and intimate partner violence and women's empowerment and all that good stuff.

[00:06:13] Joshua Croke: Well, and thank you for the work that you do and, You know, you can't turn on the news today without housing being a topic of conversation. And we are feeling that, I think, really acutely here in Worcester and across the Commonwealth. Massachusetts is like the most expensive state to live in in the country right now, and that is not being managed particularly well.

[00:06:34] And I know personally, I've experienced my partner and I lost our last apartment. apartment to a house fire last year. And when we had to relocate, we could not find something comparable that was not double the rent that we were paying at our last location. And so I, and, and we're in a very privileged position.

[00:06:56] In the city, you know, we're both employed we are a you know, we were able to move We had an incredible network of community members who like our friend who's a real estate agent stepped right up and was like hey I'm gonna get you connected Thanks, Lori For you know finding housing because even that I've talked to people who are like even just finding housing.

[00:07:17] Julie Orozco: Yeah 

[00:07:18] Joshua Croke: Even if you have the ability to pay is very, very difficult. So let's talk about housing. 

[00:07:23] Julie Orozco: Do you have a soapbox for me anyway? Perfect. You know, It's so interesting. I feel like one of the, as, as much as I talk about the fact that a big driver of homelessness for women is sort of DV and intimate partner violence, there's a message that over the last year that, that I've been at Abby's house, that I've really been trying to drive home, which is that we don't have affordable places, affordable safe places for people to live.

[00:07:54] And so at, you know, at Abby's house, for example, even if we get somebody in shelter and stable, when it comes to that point of like, all right, now you want to find a place to live, it is a near impossibility. And that for me is like a really sad thing because Worcester is a city that I've grown, I'm not originally from Worcester, but I've, you know, at this point in my life I've been in Worcester longer than I've been anywhere.

[00:08:19] And so it really, for me, is my home, it's a city I love, it's a city I rave about, it's a city that I would say to anybody, oh my gosh, you should live here, there's this, there's that. But when it boils down to it, our housing stock is incredibly low. Housing prices are incredibly high and the housing prices do not match our community members in any way whatsoever.

[00:08:44] And so there's also this statement of like, so do you want Worcester people in Worcester? Or are you speaking to another group of people? Because Worcester people can't live in Worcester. 

[00:08:54] Joshua Croke: Well, I'm interested in your thoughts on this, and I'm going to say something that I feel, you know, might come back to bite me, but this is why we're here talking on public hearing. Yeah, I feel that there has been a really intentional strategy at least over the past 10 years where I've and how I've been deeply involved in the community.

[00:09:10] I came, I grew up in Central Mass. I came to Worcester by way of California to finish my degree at WPI. And when I graduated, I made the decision to stay in Worcester. I was start, I was already running a small business because I started my first consulting business while I was a student so that I could pay for rent and all of those things.

[00:09:27] And I had the opportunity because of my WPI network to have a few projects that were lined up for when I graduated. So I said, Hey, I'm going to stay here and if I'm going to live here, I'm going to get involved. And you and I met through Leadership Worcester, class of 2016. And I want to circle back to that and thinking about like, what are the reflections from that time that we went through that program and got exposed to so many things in the city, met so many people, you know, part of our class was now city manager, Eric Batista, you know, there's so many relationships and things that came out of that, that yeah.

[00:10:03] When in many different directions, but I think for me over the past 10 years, I, and I've said this and I've, and I've tried holding people to account alongside other advocates in the community is that Worcester's economic development. And for listeners, I'm using air quotes. Economic development strategy has, in many ways, been How do we get more folks from Boston to think about coming and moving to Worcester and becoming a commuter city, becoming a suburb of Boston.

[00:10:30] And I have so adamantly pushed back against that strategy, but here we are. A lot of the people in positions of power, I think, have really pushed that strategy. And we're now seeing the fruits of that tree, for better or for worse, and I would argue worse, considering the things that we're talking about.

[00:10:46] Climbing housing prices, like a lack of affordability the disconnection between what jobs are available and what those salaries and what those, you know, what compensation looks like for a large majority of our residents. And the housing options that they have. 

[00:11:00] Julie Orozco: Yeah. 

[00:11:01] Joshua Croke: So that's my soapbox. Yeah. But I'm wondering like what your thoughts are.

[00:11:05] Is that something that you kind of resonate with or, or also are kind of seeing and, and are there strategies that we really should be in this present moment? Cause it's, you know, hindsight's 2020, but we are in this moment now and we have to move forward. What. What are things that folks should be thinking about as it relates to advocacy to make things like housing more accessible?

[00:11:26] Julie Orozco: You know, it's, I think it's so interesting that you talk about the sort of attraction of the Boston commuter. And I remember, you know, a period of time, I don't know if it was during our leadership Worcester days or shortly thereafter, but you know, right around that time, I do remember there being commuters.

[00:11:43] Lots of conversation about, you know, Worcester being sort of, you know, the city right outside of Boston that's, you know, great for the Boston commuters, but much more affordable, better parking, less traffic, all the sort of like lovely things that you want in a city but still accessible to Boston. And I look at where we are now.

[00:12:04] And I know we are, we are doing worse than Boston. Right? In terms of our housing stock is lower than the housing stock available in Boston. Our vacancy rate is you know, we don't have as many vacant units in the city of Worcester as Boston does. And so Even this whole, like, beautiful, magical idea that, like, we'll just attract, like, all these Boston commuters.

[00:12:32] Well, we have no housing to offer them. So what then really is the strategy? And part of what, you know, if you're driving around the city, you're obviously seeing all of these new apartment buildings going up. And so this idea of, like, okay, well, they're addressing the housing stock issue. 

[00:12:51] There is a lot of new housing going in, but I'm constantly left with, who's that housing for? It's not for Worcester, because the wages that people are paid in Worcester and surrounding towns could never afford what's going up in our city. And so , I'm constantly left with that question that I asked before. Who do you want in this city, right? 

[00:13:16] What I've always loved, so I grew up in the Midwest. I grew up in Indiana. I was born in Michigan, grew up in Indiana, and I didn't have, you know, Worcester for me is a really unique city experience. When we were going through Leadership Worcester, one of the things that really stood out to me was all the little neighborhoods. And what it meant to be sort of a part of a neighborhood and a part of a unique neighborhood community.

[00:13:41] All the sort of good and bad that comes with that, mostly good, was my perspective at the time. And so, there's so much that I loved about what it meant to be somebody who lived in the city of Worcester. And in some ways, let's call it gentrification, let's say, Let's call it, you know, outside investors who sort of aren't connected to our city.

[00:14:03] You know, I'm left now with this like duality of, I have this reminiscence of this city that felt more like home to me than the place that I grew up, that is now shifting to an identity that I'm not sure I, I can always relate and connect to. And that's saddening for me. 

[00:14:27] Joshua Croke: Yeah, I, I totally resonate with that and part of me wants to hear more and more stories of people who have had that experience and also look at how do we better amplify that message of like, here's what my Worcester was, here's what I would like my Worcester to be, or maybe it still has some of those things, and here's how I feel we need to really hold ourselves as a city accountable to ensuring that folks who grew up here, who want to stay here, who love it here for X, Y, and Z reasons, don't lose those reasons as to why I love my city.

[00:15:05] Julie Orozco: Right. 

[00:15:05] Joshua Croke: And there are so many, just like, And this is happening all over the country, but I think, you know, I've, I've always said in Worcester, like no matter if we make every right decision or every wrong decision, we are going to experience an economic impact from Boston cause it cannot grow any further east.

[00:15:21] Right. So we could, you know, say, Oh yeah, city hall made all the X, Y, and Z right decisions, or the developers made all these right decisions or wrong decisions. We're going to experience the outgrowth of Boston no matter what. Right. And so. In a lot of the work that I've been involved in, you've been involved in, other advocates in the community have been involved in, is like, how do we build a thriving and resilient city that is about the support of existing residents and connecting them to opportunities that help them experience economic growth alongside the community, and I, I could go on a whole other soapbox about how economic growth is proving to not be like, the number one priority for actually creating healthy and thriving communities. Like, only focusing on dollars is not influencing people's lives in the positive way that a lot of economists think it is. 

[00:16:16] Julie Orozco: Absolutely. You know, I went ahead and ran a little data before I came over. And, you know, one of the things that we look at is, Especially, so there's this whole thing called AMI, which is Area Median Income, and essentially every city and town establishes the Area Median Income on an annual basis.

[00:16:42] And so like at Abby's House, for example, a lot of our housing subsidies are determined by what the Area Median Income is. So let's say, in the city of Worcester. Just because I'm terrible with math, I'm going to use an easy number, but not an accurate number. So let's say in the city of Worcester, area median income was 50, 000.

[00:17:01] That's not accurate. But if it was 50, 000, then what we do is we sort of say anybody who is at 50 percent of that, so 25, 000, could get a subsidy up to this amount to make their housing affordable. Anybody who's at 30 percent of that could get more of a subsidy to make their housing affordable. And so there's meant to be this idea that, you know, we can recognize that there's going to be various income levels and this whole subsidy system to help support that and keep people housed within the city.

[00:17:37] What I really sort of question in terms of where we're at is in the city of Worcester, about 47 percent of renters are below the 50 percent area median income, so half of renters. 

[00:17:55] When we talk about affordability, we think about your housing utilities really not being more than 30 percent of your total income. And so one of the things that we look at with this is like, what would your wage have to be to afford a market rate apartment? Or how many hours would you have to work at minimum wage to afford a market rate apartment? At minimum wage, one person would have to work 66 hours per week to afford a studio. Like, not even a one bedroom. Inefficiency. 66 hours to afford a studio. 

[00:18:36] On the other hand, if we were talking about just like the hourly rate to afford like a two bedroom market rate apartment, you'd have to make over 40 an hour. When we look at what it takes to keep a city thriving, we need people who are going to do all of the jobs that a city requires in order to keep it functional.

[00:19:01] And so it's, it's just, I can't make sense of, you know, we need the folks at the hospitals working in dietary and working as CNAs. We need the home health aides. We need you know, housekeepers. We need all of this stuff, right? We need all of these positions. But we also then don't offer housing that allows those folks to be in our city and do that work at the rates that we currently pay them.

[00:19:25] So it's like something's got to give you know How do we continue to have a city that will have all that it needs in terms of its people in its community if we don't actually offer a place for everyone to live that is not just affordable because one could say, well, there's, there are enclaves of affordable housing in Worcester, but everybody is deserving of both affordable and safe housing.

[00:19:53] And I think, you know, one thing that really stood out to me when we were going through Leadership Worcester together was this idea that communities that tend to do the best are communities that have mixed incomes. And so when we looked at communities that were made up completely of like a housing project or communities that were 100 percent low income that didn't have that diversity of socioeconomic status, you know, we know what the outcome of that is.

[00:20:22] We can see that not only in our own city, but in tons of cities across the U. S. And so it's like, how do we know what best practice is yet, don't follow that? 

[00:20:33] Joshua Croke: Exactly. Well, and so many people are resistant to following those things, especially in higher income brackets because of insert biases here. 

[00:20:42] Julie Orozco: Not in my backyard.

[00:20:43] Joshua Croke: Exactly. The not in my backyard, the NIMBY folks who are like absolutely not. We're facing it right now across the state with the accessory dwelling units that are being put forward and fortunately the governor's office has put down a pretty firm hand related to that. It's like if a community wants State dollars to come into your community.

[00:21:01] You're accepting this accessory dwelling unit things so that we can create more housing, you know, within the state because we know like there is an out push of people leaving Massachusetts because of Not just affordability but because of housing access. 

[00:21:19] We have like six minutes left. We fly through these conversations I want to reflect on leadership Worcester a little bit and think and maybe I'll frame that by way of saying like maybe reflect but like What are other things that you're carrying with you now in the work that you do that might connect to that experience and maybe it's perspective shift that has happened over the, what's been like eight years since you and I did that first return leadership Worcester class together?

[00:21:46] Julie Orozco: It's so cool that you're the person asking me this question, because so when we did Leadership Worcester at that time, I was working for a local nonprofit mostly community based healthcare in all of its various forms. So from primary care to mental health to substance use treatment, and you were coming much more from that sort of like arts and creativity sector.

[00:22:13] In the work that I was doing, right, like I'm, I was sort of 100 percent in the nitty gritty of, you know, my background is I'm a clinical social worker and I was doing primarily behavioral health work and didn't really have visibility into much outside of that. And I was deeply impacted by the arts session. Because I didn't understand previously that it's not like a nice to have. It's a required part of any thriving community. 

[00:22:50] And so that's something. that I've definitely carried with me, you know, when I've thought about, I was just having a conversation, I can't remember with who, but I was talking with someone recently about this idea of safe housing. And that safe housing isn't purely, you know, do you have structural integrity in a building? It's what's the visual of that community, right? Are there spaces that are beautiful and green and creative and sort of, you know, give a sense that that you are safe from a psychological perspective? And I think that there's so much about sort of like art and creativity. that plays into the perception, the internal perception of safety. And so all of this kind of like intersection between, you know, I think that's ultimately what Leadership Worcester was trying to help us see was like, where do these things intersect? And that was a session that I had not anticipated being so meaningful that has really stuck with me. 

[00:23:56] Joshua Croke: That's one of the reasons I fell in love with what we now call placemaking. Is I think for a long time I approached kind of art as a this is a beautiful thing to have in community and I for some time might have separated it from like core community need. Of like if I were to talk about what do we fundamentally need in a community would I separate like murals and the green space and some of these things from like core need and I have been so influenced even in the past handful of years by I recently I do work in springfield now, for for my day job and work with an incredible woman who's leading an organization called the Springfield Creative Cities Collective, Tiffany Allecia, and her and I were having a conversation about this and she was reflecting on COVID. 

[00:24:49] Julie Orozco: Yeah. 

[00:24:49] Joshua Croke: And she was like, in that incredibly difficult time. Yeah. What more and more people connected with to, to survive through that. was art and creativity and culture and that was what really pulled us in through this time. And so art and creativity and tapping into and celebrating the unique cultures that are within especially like a melting pot city like Worcester are so critical to uplift.

[00:25:19] We have like one minute left. So one thing that I'm asking guests on the show. We want folks to like go home after they listen to this and bring something to the dinner table as like a topic of conversation. So what to you is that topic? Like, what's a question that folks should sit with their family, their friends, their community members and explore right now?

[00:25:41] Julie Orozco: We are coming up on an election and a particularly polarizing election. I would think about, in the context of what we've talked about today, that like, healthy community, healthy Requires more than what I might see out of my front window, right? And I think really talking about like, what might I need exposure to that I don't get that I may not realize is helping my community or my neighborhood to thrive because I'm just not exposed to it.

[00:26:17] And what does that mean about where my vote lies, you know? And I'm not gonna say one way or the other where you should land, but I know where I land. And I think it's really important. Again, we need diverse communities with diverse people, diverse incomes, diverse interests, diverse arts. We need, we need diversity so badly.

[00:26:39] Joshua Croke: Julie, thank you so much for coming on Public Hearing. We've been talking to Julie Orozco, Executive Director at Abbey's House and all around community champion. 

[00:26:47] You're listening to Public Hearing. Public Hearing's a show about the second largest city in New England, Worcester, Mass., where we have interesting and timely conversations about issues that impact our community.

[00:26:56] I'm Joshua Croke, the creator and host of Public Hearing. Our audio producer is Giuliano D'Orazio. You can learn more and follow Public Hearing and other projects of Queer for Cities at queerforcities. com. Till next time.