NASHUA – Ask the people who live at the Bronstein Apartments what they think about their home, and many say it ranks far down on a list of places they’d like to raise their families.

“A lot of people want to leave,” Bronstein resident Marilyn Roig said. “They have problems with neighbors. The crime has been so high around here. They want to find a better place. They feel uncomfortable.”

Ask Housing Authority staff members about the development, and they agree that few of the low-income residents would have moved there in the first place, given the choice.

“It’s really sad when we are told, ‘My son comes home and his friends can’t come over and play’ because their parents find out they live at the Bronstein Apartments,” said Lynn Censabella, executive director of the Nashua Housing Authority. The stigma “still exists. It’s sad when a parent says, ‘I don’t allow my children out to play.’?”

But ask housing advocates about Bronstein – composed of 25 three-bedroom units, 19 four-
bedroom units and four five-bedroom units – and they’ll tell you the complex is a “valuable resource.”

“Four- and five-bedroom units are golden,” said Maggie Fogarty, Economic Justice Project coordinator for the American Friends Service Committee. “Three-
bedroom units are very valuable, but the market is not giving us four- and five- bedroom apartments and certainly not at rates that are affordable to low-income households or low-wage workers.”

The difference in opinions underscores the unique and complicated future for the Bronstein housing complex, as political and community forces wrestle over the decision to let the complex stand or tear it down.

Meanwhile, the families living there wait for answers.

Developers known for building affordable apartments for low-income families in New Hampshire agree that affordable multiple-bedroom units are hard to find.

“That’s a loss” if the Bronstein Apartments are demolished, said Bill Caselden, owner of Great Bridge Properties. “It’s not necessarily a huge loss, but the biggest thing that apartment units like that have that you don’t have being replaced in the market today are larger family units, four- and five-bedroom units. Nobody develops four-bedroom units anymore.”

Ironically, the apparent value of Bronstein, with its 23 four- and five-bedroom apartments, may also be cause for its razing.

For years, Housing Authority and city officials have said the development is too crowded to be suitable housing for so many large low-income families – about 200 residents total, half of them children – who live packed together on just 4 acres.

“I think policies of the past, where they always would congregate poor people into areas, is a failed policy,” Mayor Donnalee Lozeau has said. “I don’t think it’s good for the people that live in those circumstances, and one of the few places in Nashua where it really calls our attention to that is the Bronstein Apartments.”

The Nashua Housing Authority has more success with its smaller, duplex-style units, Censabella said.

“It’s not about the quality of the housing there,” said Censabella, referring to Bronstein. “I think that when you have three-, four-, five-bedroom apartments and 200 people living on a very small piece of land, it makes it very difficult to gain a sense of community when you don’t have access to a backyard or places that are safe for your children. There’s a lot of little feet over there on a very small parcel of land.”

‘Poorly placed’

For 40 years, Housing Authority officials have echoed that there are too many feet – small and large – beating on Bronstein property.

And because of its location, on the edge of the busy and crowded Tree Streets neighborhood, people tracking through the neighborhood who don’t necessarily live there are partially to blame.

Over the years, the Nashua Housing Authority has poured millions into Bronstein face-lifts, inside and out, including landscaping projects, to build pride among residents for their homes and their yards.

As recently as 2009, Bronstein residents even stepped up to help the housing authority write a KaBOOM! grant that got a $70,000 playground built on-site.

But one needs only to visit Bronstein to see that few of those projects have been successful long-term, if at all.

Boxed in by three busy downtown streets and an iron rod fence, Bronstein’s six brick-and-mortar, row-style buildings share front yards facing Central, Myrtle and Pine streets. Their backyards share large, communal lawns and playgrounds – notorious, some residents say, for finding buried needles, condoms and other garbage.

The common areas, where run-down grass struggles to survive, mixed with packed patches of dirt, as well as Bronstein’s basketball court, are shielded from public view because of two apartments and a Head Start building lining Central Street, offering an enticing place for trouble to start, residents say.

“It’s poorly placed,” Censabella said. “It’s been poorly placed from the get-go.”

Case in point: a highly publicized brawl last fall of more than 100 people, which originated near the Bronstein Apartments, and carried over to Central and Ash streets. Five people were arrested and three were taken to city hospitals with stab wounds, head wounds and a broken arm.

But that doesn’t mean the “drama” necessarily comes from those who live there, residents say.

“The problems don’t start with us,” said Jorge De Leon, who grew up at the Bronstein Apartments before returning with his own family as an adult. “It’s just that people see an area that is basically a closed-in area. … No matter how much they say they try to keep the city safe, that area is where anything can happen and nobody will say anything, because nobody wants to be a snitch and nobody wants to rat on anybody.”

Within the horseshoe-shaped development, children ride their bikes or scooters and play games of tag in the open areas, and the children’s playground gets more use than others in Nashua.

“We can’t grow grass over there. We can’t sustain trees over there,” Censabella said. “I want for families to have their very own garden, to have small barbecues in their backyard. It’s a different sense of a community when you feel part of a neighborhood, but you’ve got this housing that is very apart.”

Because units are grouped in six long rows, it’s tough to tell where one family’s yard stops and the neighbor’s yard begins.

It’s common for someone to track across one person’s lawn to get to somebody else’s house.

On the rare occasion when someone does apologize for the encroachment, it will warrant nothing more than a surprised laugh, a shrug and a “whatever.”

Separate but equal?

To know how Bronstein compares to the 12 other public housing developments in Nashua, one would have to know where to look.

The others’ success comes partly in the fact that many Nashuans wouldn’t identify other units in Nashua as public housing, Censabella said; scattered, duplex-style apartments don’t stick out like Bronstein, behind its iron rod fence.

Take sites such as Atwood Court, which has six semi-detached buildings with seven three-bedroom units.

Each unit has a designated backyard, although tiny, separated from its neighbor by an alleyway. There’s enough space for families to set up a grill and for people to sit on their designated stoop areas in their backyard. And the end of the Atwood neighborhood is a city park with a playground, plus a designated parking area for Atwood residents.

Then there are the two duplexes on Flagstone Drive in north Nashua, which resemble every other home on that street.

They contain four units of three-bedroom apartments, individual driveways, basements and large front yards. In the summer, there are picnic areas set up out front, and at one, a Little Tikes house.

On Lake Street, two rows of buildings with eight units each –
split among two-, three- and four-bedroom apartments – overlook Sandy Pond with large decks off the back. The eight families who live there share a large common green space, and one tenant has even built a community garden.

“They have their own space,” said Sarah Brisk, a public housing program manager who works for the Nashua Housing Authrority, speaking of the scattered sites. “They’re smaller. They fit in with the community. People will drive by and probably not even know that they’re a public housing development, so I think there’s less of a feeling of scrutiny.”

“We do find that some of our scattered sites, residents tend to maintain their residency for longer periods of time,” Censabella said. “I think they just feel like they’re in their own little townhouse as opposed to a larger development of 100 units.”

That’s not to say Bronstein is the only public housing development with dozens of large families living in tight quarters.

Maynard Homes, a family development in the Crown Hill neighborhood, has double the number of family units Bronstein has – 100 total – with about 240 people living there, according to the Nashua Housing Authority. It’s spread over Major Drive, Burke and Ingalls streets, along with 10 more units of elderly public housing and 50 units of non-elderly disabled public housing known as Vagge Village.

But Maynard Homes’ 100 units are split into 12 row-style buildings of mainly two- and three- bedroom apartments, plus a few four-bedroom apartments, so the families living there are smaller and the population density is arguably less. Plus, the homes have much larger yards and a clearer property distinction than Bronstein has.

“This works,” said Scott Costa, assistant executive director at the Nashua Housing Authority. “Plenty of room to kick the can.”

The next largest family development is Ledge Street Homes, on 11th Street, which has 20 units of three-bedroom apartments and 10 units of four-bedroom, plus a Head Start location and a playground built through a grant acquired through the Housing Authority and the city.

The six row buildings have five units each, and once again, a much clearer split from one family’s yard to the next.

Drive down 11th Street in the middle of the summer and you’ll see clotheslines hanging in tenants’ backyards, lawn furniture out and gardens in bloom.

“There’s sometimes car traffic, but no one cutting through your area,” said Brisk, comparing it to the horseshoe-style buildings and communal grounds at Bronstein.

And if turnover is any indicator of satisfaction, numbers show that families tend to find more permanent homes in the scattered sites than they do in the larger developments.

This year, through July, for example, Censabella said the Bronstein Apartments had six turnovers and Maynard Homes had 10.

Ledge Street Homes on 11th Street had just one, however, but many families tend to prefer it because of its location directly across from Ledge Street Elementary School, Censabella said.

In comparison, between all the scattered sites combined – Forge, Fossa, Rochette, Lake, Atwood, Fairmount, Whitney and Pine – there were only six turnovers last year, Censbella said.

“It doesn’t necessarily mean every resident is going to want smaller, scattered sites,” Censabella said. “Some might want a smaller development of 30 units. I think most families just want to find their own apartment and to have their own landlord and not have to necessarily live in a large development, and to have that choice.”

Maryalice Gill can be reached at 594-6490 or mgill@nashuatelegraph.com. Also, follow Gill on Twitter (@Telegraph_MAG).

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