BEVERLY — When Dianne White Cerda, a single inner-city Boston mother of four young children applied for public housing in early 1975, nothing was available.
The young woman she spoke with at the agency (it was then the MHFA), with whom Cerda had established a rapport, told her she would keep her eye out because she was expecting something in August. She promised to give White a call.
When the call came, Cerda was told there was a property available in Beverly — a place she’d never heard of.
It was a rainy August day when they first went to see the property, she recounted. “There were no sidewalks, no lawns, it was muddy.”
But the property, she said, was beautiful — it had big, sparkling windows and inside there were yellow kitchen cabinets, orange shag carpets and bright new white walls.
There was a final interview, Cerda said, after which they talked for a few more minutes before the woman paused briefly, then asked, “How would you like to live here?”
Cerda could hardly believe her ears. “Oh, my God!” she said, “It was like I died and went to heaven.”
“Are you kidding?” she asked incredulously. The woman replied, “No, I’m not kidding — you’re welcome!”
“The tears were streaming down my face,” Cerda said.
“And now,” said Cerda, who has lived there ever since, “I still thank God, because I’ve never regretted for one day moving with my family from Boston to Beverly … We’ve had a lifetime of happiness in making this move.”
On Sunday, 50 years later, Cerda, along with sons Michael White and Budd “KJ” Irwin, was there to welcome back dozens of other past and present Northridge Homes residents to celebrate its 50th anniversary.
The Rev. David Michael, pastor of the Beverly Catholic Collaborative, opened the celebration with a convocation, then handed it over to Beverly Mayor Michael Cahill.
Cahill, a Beverly native, never lived at Northridge but he reminisced about how so many more of his friends were from that housing development than from the schools he attended.
Northridge Homes Cooperative — on 14 acres between Sohier Road and Brimbal Avenue, now with a shopping plaza to one side and St. Mary’s Cemetery on the other — was the brainchild and part of a major initiative of Archbishop of Boston Cardinal Humberto Madeiros to promote low-income housing.
Working with the state, he was able to engineer the construction of low-income developments in Lexington, Andover and Beverly.
Northridge was unique, according to Archdiocese archives, in being the first development in the country to offer the benefits of homeownership to families of all income levels under a cooperative ownership program worked out between the church sponsors and the Massachusetts Housing Finance Agency.
That meant that no one owned their own unit, but instead, they became part-owners in the entire 98-unit project by purchasing a “share.”
By state law, 25% of each such development must be low-income, and placement in a unit is not determined by income, but by need.
Arrangements are different for low- and moderate-income applicants, while “market” applicants pay the going price for a unit, depending on its size and condition.
On Sunday, Cerda recalled what it was like moving into the brand-new Northridge. The residents were unsure about how all the rules and regulations would work, but as it started to unfold they began to realize that many of their problems were common problems they needed to solve together.
Regardless of their differences, facing those problems brought the new residents into a common bond. That, she noted, still holds Northridge residents together. They “all have ownership.”
Cerda’s two sons both reminisced about growing up in a neighborhood where everybody was different, but, somehow, still the same. There was always something to do and somebody to play with, they said. Northridge was their neighborhood and, in a sense, their world.
It’s a testament to how well Northridge has worked that, 50 years later, eight of its 10 original residents are still there.
Lucille Ouellette, a 42-year-veteran, said her sister, who has been there since Northridge’s opening, had talked her into moving in.
In 1963 she decided to listen to her sister and move. “It was so affordable!” said Ouellette, who was a single parent at the time, supporting a young child on a teacher’s salary. “It was like Shangri-La.”
Over the years, she said, there were ups and downs, but she never regretted moving to Northridge.
There were a number of glitches in the operation of the co-op early on, she said, plus it took years for the elected board members to learn through experience.
In 2016, the cooperative finally paid off its mortgage, she said, “and there were some really big decisions. There were issues about whether we should sell the property, or stay with the property … and so much that needed to be done, on the outside and on the inside.”
Since then, Ouellette said, they’ve installed new windows, insulation, and central air.
Now Northridge, under Harbor Management, does routine maintenance for the homes. They also have a landscaping company that does weekly mowing and trimming, and plowing and shoveling in the winter “We do have to clean our own parking spaces,” Ouellette lamented.
“Overall,” she said, “it really is a very wonderful place to live… Steve (the Northridge manager) is doing a good job putting in facilities to keep the kids occupied, like basketball and volleyball courts and a new pickleball court.
Terrell Hawkins lived most of his childhood in Northridge. He moved in with his mother when he was 3 or 4, he said, and lived there for 18 years until moving out at age 22 “to be on my own.” He said his mother Perlee Hawkins is still a Northridge resident.
Hawkins, who lives in Lynn and was visiting with his cousin on Sunday, said he had returned to exchange memories with a lot of the friends he had at Northridge.
Most of his fondest memories were “playing basketball and dodgeball and hanging out with (my) friends,” he said.
“There are all sorts of religions in here and all sorts of ethnicities that are all mixed up,” said Steve Dibble, the Northridge manager. “It’s a whole rainbow, and the kids are all playing basketball together, or playing soccer…it’s amazing that everyone gets along so nicely.”
Pamela Poleo, the Northridge Committee chair, said “from the beginning, the concept has been to mix incomes and backgrounds…because they wanted to make sure it became a microcosm of America.
“We’ve been lucky enough to share our lives with all kinds of people and backgrounds and educations and careers and everything, and it seems to work,” she said. “Here we are, 50 years later and it still works.”