A community development corporation in Boston’s Fenway neighborhood is suing the owners of the neighborhood’s 173-unit Burbank Apartments over plans to convert the affordable housing community into market-rate housing.
The Burbank Apartments had been part of a program begun by HUD in the 1960s which offered cheaper mortgages and other subsidies to developers in return for guaranteeing that their building would remain affordable for the 40-years term of the mortgage. That mortgage is due to be paid off this spring, and owners Robert and William Kargman of First Realty Management have announced their intention to withdraw the Haviland Street community from the affordable housing program in April.
Current tenants would be eligible for affordable housing vouchers which would enable them to remain in their units, but new tenants would pay market rates. The units make up 10 percent of affordable housing in the neighborhood, according to Sarah Horsley, civic engagement director for Fenway CDC.
Fenway CDC and the Burbank Apartments Tenants Association have been agitating to keep the units affordable, staging several public events with various city officials and nonprofit groups. The suit is the latest move in the battle, and was filed on behalf of the groups by Greater Boston Legal Services on behalf of Fenway CDC, the Massachusetts Coalition for the Homeless, and several individual tenants.
"Burbank Apartments and similar developments in the Fenway have helped to create an ethnically and economically diverse neighborhood," Dharmena Downey, executive director of Fenway Community Development Corp., said in a statement. "Burbank Apartments in particular has been a model of stability and diversity that contributes to quality of life in the neighborhood at large."
"We’re doing this now because we haven’t been able to break through [to the landlord]. This is really important housing in the Fenway. It’s nearly 10 percent of the affordable housing in the Fenway, and without subsidized housing this neighborhood is not affordable to low- and moderate-income people," said Downey.
The suit argues that the Kargmans’ withdrawal of the units from the federal subsidy program constitutes a violation of Massachusetts discrimination laws, which prohibit discriminating against people with subsidies, and will have a disproportionate effect upon low income residents, families with children, people of color, the elderly and disabled people.
