About Us

The Coalition for a Better Acre (CBA) is a membership based community development corporation dedicated to resident empowerment and sustainable community revitalization for current and future residents of Lowell. We promote healthy, vibrant neighborhoods by developing resident leaders, affordable housing and economic opportunities, and by responding to community needs through collective action.

Local residents, small business owners and church leaders formed CBA in 1982, in response to a city-sponsored plan to raze and rebuild the Acre’s Triangle neighborhood. The plan would have displaced low-income families and replaced affordable housing with market-rate housing and commercial spaces. CBA successfully opposed the city-sponsored plan and went on to launch many other successful organizing campaigns and programs. We strive for Lowell’s neighborhoods to be affordable, vibrant and diverse, places of choice where residents are engaged leaders, and where local stakeholders work in partnership to build family and community assets.

Over a quarter century after CBA's first acquisition of a derelict tenement, CBA is now a professionally-staffed Community Development Corporation with a portfolio of nearly four hundred rental apartments and 33 retail and light industrial spaces. In addition to CBA's real estate development activities, the Home Ownership program has helped 220 low-income families purchase homes since 1999, and most recently CBA in partnership with Community Teamwork, Inc has created the Home Preservation Center, which since inception in 2008, has provided support to over 450 homeowners facing foreclosure.