When the Honorable Dina Fein (retired) was appointed in 1999 to serve as a judge with the Housing Court, Western Division, she was living in Northampton with her family. She’d previously been practicing as a lawyer, mostly doing personal injury and consumer protection work.

“I’d gotten to know the housing court as a lawyer and felt strongly that it was a court environment that I could fit into. I learned a tremendous amount while serving,” said Fein, who hung up her robe in 2021. “I became a judge when my children were young. We owned a home at that point, and my kids grew up in that home. So, my life as a mother intersected with my role as a judge in which I spent lots of my time evicting other people from their homes in a way that really brought the meaning of homeownership, in particular the value of it, into a very sharp focus.”

The Honorable Dina Fein (retired) speaking at the groundbreaking event for City of Homes in Springfield, October 2024

This focus was honed over years of observations from housing court, especially the trying circumstances that parents faced in raising children—many of which, Fein was acutely aware, could be mitigated by the stability of homeownership.

“I saw mothers who were fearful of their neighbors. Who were without support. Who didn’t know whether their child with special needs was going to have to take his Individualized Education Plan to a different school altogether the following year. Who needed to move every six months. Just never being able to get that sense of security and reassurance that you’re doing right by your family. That is really what I hang onto when I do this work,” said Fein of Way Finders’ City of Homes initiative, which she has spearheaded since 2021.

At the heart of the initiative is a new process coined “special attorney receivership” that Fein envisioned and made operational, thanks to a host of funders and collaborative partnerships. The idea came to her while she presided over normal receiverships, an often lengthy process in which distressed homes are placed in the hands of a receiver at the request of the city to address sanitary code violations and are often auctioned off to the highest bidder—frequently becoming part of someone’s rental portfolio.

What if, Fein hypothesized, the statute could be changed to allow for easier transfer of blighted properties to a nonprofit that is committed to rehabilitating and selling it affordably to a first-time homebuyer?

“I started noticing the intensive work being done by municipalities, their law departments, the court receivers, lawyers, etcetera, in dealing with blighted property. I thought, ‘Hmm, we could be doing more here with receivership,’” said Fein. “It seemed to me that it could be leveraged to correct code violations and turn an uninhabitable property into a habitable one, while also supporting a municipality’s strategic goals for neighborhoods and housing. A double bang for the buck kind of thing.”

Shown from left: State Housing Secretary Ed Augustus, Rep. Orlando Ramos, Rep. Carlos Gonzalez, Way Finders President and CEO Keith Fairey, MassMutual Foundation President Dennis Duquette, Judge Dina Fein, Ret., MassHousing’s Beverly Estes-Smargiassi, and Springfield City Councilors Michael Fenton and Victor Davila.

Fein was confident her idea was a good one, but it wasn’t the time—or her place—to act.

“A judge is in a reactive role, by definition. Parties turn to the court looking for outcomes. It was not my role to change what the petitioner wanted or drive the policy behind the use of the tool. But that doesn’t mean I wasn’t learning and thinking about it,” said Fein, who resolved to revisit the idea in retirement.

And she did, commencing a three-year journey that proved trickier at times than anticipated. She served as the connective tissue in pulling together the disparate people and systems—city officials, nonprofit staff, code enforcement officials, city lawyers, receivers, court personnel—needed to make the model work. The supporters and funders of City of Homes are many, and most notably include the MassMutual Foundation, MassHousing, Baystate Health, and the City of Springfield.

“Its vision is really a projection of my own experiences as a mother,” said Fein. “The investment [in homeownership] is in improving the lives of families at many levels. From the wealth that is built for generations to the health benefits, physical and mental benefits, of living in a redeveloped home versus a home with mold in it.”

At the October 2024 groundbreaking event for City of Homes, at 24-26 Los Angeles Street in Liberty Heights, Housing Secretary Ed Augustus’s remarks helped shed perspective on the initiative’s unique origins and growing impact.

“I want to thank Judge Fein for her leadership. It’d be enough to serve on the bench and do that kind of public service for many years. But to see and learn while you’re on the bench and understand issues and challenges, and not just talk about them or complain about them, but to actually turn it into language that, because of the dedicated legislators that Springfield sends to Beacon Hill, help make sure is in the Affordable Homes Act,” said Augustus. “It’s a $5.2 billion bill, with 49 policy changes. One of those policy changes came from Judge Fein.”

First City of Homes property in Springfield, MA

To have an idea come to fruition and gain public support is gratifying, confirms Fein, who is now at work scaling up the special attorney receivership model at both the state and national levels. So, too, is the realization that her judicial career was just the right preparation for her to take on this effort.

“But the best thing about the groundbreaking event was hearing essential partners and participants say in front of each other, ‘We’re here to stay!’ I thought that was really important,” said Fein. “My hope is that the public sector is increasingly persuaded by data to invest in this kind of work. Not just for the immediate returns on investment, but also for the returns that flow in time. The stability of having your kids in the same school year after year, the support of neighbors, the generational wealth building.”