BTC Reporter [Vol. No. 1, Issue No. 2] July 2002

• 300 Rally for Rent Control!
• Chinatown; The Liberty Place Development, Master Plans, and Definitions of “Affordable’
• The Path of a ‘Home Rule’ Petition

---

300 Rally for Rent Control!

On Saturday June 15th approximately 300 people from throughout the city marched and rallied to support the return of rent control and tenant protections. Despite the rain, the people marched from Jamaica Plain through Egelston Sq. into Grove Hall to demand that housing be recognized, and protected, as a human right. Banners and signs showed strong representation from many parts of the city, including Chinatown, Dorchester, Jamaica Plain, Roxbury, East Boston, Fenway, Allston, South Boston, Mattapan and other areas of Boston where people are organizing and refusing to be gentrified out of their communities.

The majority of the speakers represented tenant associations, including those presently working to save their homes, including Freida Yoder, an active leader of the Lourdes Ave. Tenant Association, currently fighting eviction from her home in Jamaica Plain by the owner, Samia Companies.

Also speaking out were members from the Nazing Court/Seaver Street Tenant Association in Roxbury, who have just secured a contract that guarantees them 99 years of continued below market rate affordability. Each of the speakers spoke of the need to restore rent control and tenant protections, and of the immense human consequences that the loss of these things has meant over the past 7 years.

One speaker, Vicky Coleman from the Mass Coalition for the Homeless, spoke saying, “I was working, but my rent got so high that my family was homeless for a year. I just found another place to move into, but, while I was homeless, I met families that had been homeless for three years, and there was no place for them to go”.

Speakers also talked about the Expiring Use Enabling Act Bill, which would preserve 16,898 Section 8 HUD subsidized homes that are at risk now, or will be jeopardized in the next five years. Despite the bill having overwhelming support, the Speaker of the House Thomas Finneran has blocked it from coming to a vote. The deadline for a vote to take place is July 31, the end of the legislative session.

There was a strong and repeated message throughout the march and rally supporting the need to organize into tenant associations to protect homes.

Also speaking were homeowners, who spoke in support of rent control as a means of stabilizing neighborhoods in which they are a part of, and chose as the places to raise their families. They spoke of the community and social investment of community residents, property owners and tenants, as the measuring stick of the value of their homes.

> See the BTC's current proposal

Chinatown; The Liberty Place Development, Master Plans, and Definitions of “Affordable’

Chinatown, like many other neighborhoods in Boston, has developed a master plan which sets community standards for development within that area. The master planning process is a formal process in which neighborhoods work, together with the Boston Redevelopement Authority, to define community guidelines for future development of their communities. This is a complex multi year process, that becomes a guideline for the city. Part of the role of the Boston Redevelopment Authority in the Master Plan process is to insure that developers follow the laws and respect the final plans produced by the communities. The planning process involves community members being informed about development issues such as zoning. Zoning is regulation and law that establishes the charicteristics of building based on what’s best for the environment of a community. One of the charicteristics that zoning controls is the height of new construction.

According to the zoning regulations of Chinatown, no buildings can be built over 10 stories high. Liberty Place is a huge development project that the Boston Redevelopment Authority is accepting as a proposal of what’s to be built in Chinatown. Liberty Place clearly violates the zoning regulations because it is going to be 28 stories tall. The excuse that the developer is using to get a varience from this zoning law on height and density is because of his land acquisition costs.

This development project does not fit within the goals and vision of the master plan, which is intended to preserve the this working class community, the social, cultural and political center that Chinatown represents. It is mostly luxury housing, which will not be financially accessible for the residents of Chinatown. Boston has an inclusionary zoning policy that states that new development which utilizes any public funding provide a small proportion of units that are catagorized as affordable. The current proposal for Liberty Place includes 44 out of 439 apartments defined as ‘affordable’.

But affordable for whom? The average annual income of current Chinatown residents is $12,500. Inclusionary zoning will provide ten of the apartments would be subsidized low income housing. Twenty units would be affordable based on an annual income of $31,164, and the remaining affordable fourteen aptartments would be priced for households earning between $42,000 and $62,000. The other 395 apartments would be at the full luxury market rate, and have a significant impact on the stability of the Chinatown community. This would be happening at a time when, citywide, rents are so high that a person needs to earn $24.03 per hour to afford a two bedroom apartment.

Despite what is happen throughout the city, community development does not have to equal displacement. A good way to start a new trend would be by respecting the Master Plans.

In order to regain rent control in the city, Boston must regain the right to make the decision at a city level, by getting approval from the State Legislature through a ‘home rule’ petition. This is what the steps to this process are;

1. Submitting the home rule petition to restore rent control, and passage of the home rule petition by the Mayor and the City Council during the fall.
2. By early December, 2002, the home rule petition is submitted to the State Legislature. The petition from the city becomes a Bill at the state level. The first public hearings about restoring Boston’s right to independently vote on rent control will begin, on the State level, in spring, 2003.
3. The State Legislature, the Senate and the House of Representatives, hopefully will vote on the Bill granting permission to Boston to reinstitute tenant protections and rent control after the hearings, during the summer of 2003.