A Plan Comes Together

Like most hospitals in the last few years, Princeton couldn't find enough local, highly-trained registered nurses and professionals to adequately care for its patients. So the hospital looked for the best help overseas - nurses from the Philippines .

"Philippine nurses have an excellent reputation worldwide," says hospital nursing director Steve Sherer. They are well-trained, speak English and must pass stringent examinations similar to ones used in the United States , he says.

But changes in already-lengthy immigration laws, especially after 9/11, meant waiting for the nurses for nearly three years.

Meanwhile, Faulkner had been working with Arlington-West End Neighborhood President Keith Aaron to talk about how they could revitalize the community. They were impressed by houses that non-profit developer Frank Dominick of Outreach International was building in the nearby Rising-West Princeton neighborhood.

"We have a program here, that if anybody works here and wants to buy a house in this neighborhood, we'll pay five percent of the total cost of the house," Faulkner says. "If they don't work here," he pauses, then smiles, "well then, they need to come work here, and then they get the five percent!"

Faulkner collaborated with Aaron and Dominick about buying houses in the areas immediately adjacent to the hospital campus and fixing them up. Faulkner wouldn't say exactly how much the hospital spent.

But Dominick says the hospital's money paid for the complete renovation of four houses. One had a roof that was caving in; a family was living in it before Princeton bought it. He says Faulkner wondered if it could even be saved.

"This was not just putting paint on something and calling it new," Dominick says of the work done on the hospital's houses. His workers fixed roofs, replaced old water and sewer lines, upgraded old electrical and air systems, and, in some cases, tore out walls to better use space. Three-bedroom houses with one bathroom were converted to have two bathrooms.

Faulkner and the hospital "put in the resources to restore the original quality to these homes, when the market would say, 'This is not a wise investment because the dollars can't come back.' . . . It doesn't make economic sense, but it makes community-impact sense," Dominick says .

"It takes somebody with the vision to see what the neighborhood can be. The hospital has taken a lead in investing in a way that puts the community, and families who are going to be part of this community, first. And to see what was really blight on the neighborhood - to see the condition some of these houses were in and to see them now - is tremendous," he says.

The affable Faulkner turns serious and says in a matter-of-fact tone, "We were not happy just fixing a couple of houses. What we want is a neighborhood."

Then Faulkner got an idea.

"We wanted to do this for the neighborhood but at the same time we needed nurses, so it seemed like a road that came together at the sane time," he says. "To help these folks new to our country and help them get established, why not put them in a house around the hospital?"

So he struck a deal with the Filipino nurses: if they came to work for Princeton , they could live in the houses near the hospital, rent free, for about a month. Families who didn't have cars could walk to work, and those living nearby could get there quickly on icy or snowy days.

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