The Boston Tenant Coalition protested evictions and skyrocketing rents before a hearing on affordable-housing issues held last Thursday at Boston City Hall Plaza.
Roberta Jones had one question for Boston city councilors. “Where is the money?” the Dorchester resident repeatedly asked municipal leaders.
Jones, 53, was just one of dozens of Boston tenants and housing advocates who spent hours testifying at a hearing of the council’s Housing Committee last Thursday. Frustrated by listening to city and state leaders talk about fiscal restraints that will mean cuts for housing and other services and programs, Jones hammered away at councilors, demanding to know what is being done with taxpayers’ money.
“I refuse to believe that a state like Massachusetts … can have so many people living in … decrepit housing,” she said. “I have a problem with that as a taxpaying citizen of Massachusetts.”
Just like Jones, dozens of tenants – young and old; black, Latino and white; from Boston neighborhoods as diverse as Allston-Brighton and Roxbury – urged leaders to spend more to preserve and create more low-income housing and help put a cap on skyrocketing rents.
Several also pushed for the immediate passage of a $509 million housing bond bill, which is currently stalled in the state Legislature. If passed, the bond bill would release money to renovate, preserve and create thousands of affordable housing units across the state.
Tenant groups praised Boston leaders for filing a home-rule petition that would keep rents from rising at housing developments built with federal money, but said that statewide legislation needs to be passed to protect residents living in the so-called expiring-use projects.
In the midst of budget planning for the next fiscal year, the Housing Committee held the meeting to hear from residents about affordable-housing needs. Councilor Maura Hennigan, who chairs the housing committee, said there will be a series of hearings before the budget is finalized and approved.
Hennigan said councilors expect that this will be the first year the Boston budget will have a line item dedicated to affordable-housing expenditures.
“We don’t know how much that will be,” said Hennigan, after the two-and-a-half-hour meeting.
Last week, Mayor Thomas M. Menino gave a preview of his budget at a meeting of business and community leaders, talking about possible tax increases, but not discussing specific budget cuts that would affect city services. The budget will be presented to the City Council in about a month, and must be approved by the council July 1.
Talk of budget cuts on the city and state levels have made housing advocates nervous during the last few months.
Rents in some Boston neighborhoods have soared to $1,600 for a one-bedroom or two-bedroom unit, twice as high as what a city renter earning the median income can afford, according to the Boston Tenant Coalition. The group estimates that 42 percent of the state’s households pay more than 30 percent of their income for rent.
‘Greedy Landlords’
The Boston Tenant Coalition, a network of grassroots tenant and neighborhood groups, organized a rally before last week’s hearing, with protesters holding clotheslines with T-shirts and other clothing featuring eviction notices and statements such as “Stop Rent Gouging.” Fliers with the headline “The Dirty Laundry of the Boston Housing Crisis” were distributed to evening commuters.
The hearing held after the rally drew members of various tenant associations and community development corporations.
“Much more needs to be done at all levels of government,” said Kathy Brown, a Jamaica Plain resident and housing coordinator for the Boston Tenant Coalition.
The coalition is behind a campaign to build or preserve 10,000 units of low-income rental or cooperative housing by 2005.
Several residents took aim at what they called “greedy landlords” and real estate investors who have built or are currently constructing luxury housing developments that are squeezing out longtime residents in neighborhoods like South Boston and even Chinatown.
Sam Lo of the Chinese Progressive Association, which represents residents of Chinatown, aimed sharp criticism at developments like Liberty Place, Millennium Place and Kensington Place – all of which border Chinatown.
With the average median income of a Chinatown resident hovering around $10,000 a year, Lo said residents – many of whom are immigrants – could never afford to live in those new luxury units where rents for a one-bedroom unit are as high as $2,600 a month.
“What we need is housing that working people can afford,” said Lo.
At least two people who testified said they were homeless, while others said they feared they would be on the streets soon.
Others said they were frustrated because units for very-low-income people were being replaced with units for moderate-income people, or mixed-income developments that only set aside a very small portion for those with the lowest incomes.
Hearing all these people testify, Roberta Jones said she felt lucky that she still has an apartment. When the 27-unit apartment building on Elm Hill Avenue in Dorchester where Jones resides was purchased last year, the new owner was considering raising rents.
Jones and her fellow tenants met with the landlord and came up with an agreement that allows for modest increases in her rent for the next five years. The landlord can continue to charge higher, market-rate rents to tenants who have federal subsidies, said Jones.
Jones, who pays $600 for a one-bedroom apartment, said tenants with Section 8 vouchers pay more to live in the same building. Jones said the rent for a two-bedroom apartment that was vacant and filled when the new owner took over is $1,250 a month.
“How can you ask someone to pay that much in Dorchester?” she asked.
While Jones’ son, who lives in Maryland, pleads with her to move there because housing is more affordable, the longtime Boston resident refuses to leave.
“I was born and raised in Boston. I want to die in Boston,” she said.
