Eastie residents deserve voice in Suffolk Downs

Residents of East Boston have only to drive by South Boston to see what their neighborhood could become once the luxury units start moving in.

It starts small — a high-end condo here, an upscale restaurant there. And bit by bit, rents skyrocket to levels unaffordable to local residents — many who’ve lived there for years — and their home turf becomes virtually unrecognizable.

Gentrification — it helps the city grow and thrive thanks to new money and projects, but too often at the expense of blue-collar and low-income residents who can’t keep pace with luxe prices.

As the Boston Herald reported, East Boston residents are concerned about development plans for Suffolk Downs. Boston-based HYM Investment Group wants to transform the defunct 161-acre horse-racing facility into a mixeduse community spanning Boston and Revere — the largest development of its kind ever in the region. More than 70% of the housing would be located in Boston and the developer has committed to creating 1,430 income-restricted units that will be affordable to people earning between 50% and 90% of the area median income. All of those units would be located in East Boston.

“This will cause massive, massive displacement. When we see one luxury condo tower of six units go up in East Boston, the whole block’s rents go up. Imagine when 10,000 units of luxury housing pop up,” said Andrew Del Castillo of Vida Urbana.

He and other residents and activists delivered a petition to Mayor Marty Walsh, signed by more than 1,100 people, demanding 10,000 apartments planned for the Suffolk Downs development be restricted for people earning 30% of the area median income, or $23,800 a year for a single person.

The developers claim the 20% affordable housing set-aside is “record-breaking for the city. This will be the largest amount of affordable units created in the city from a single project,” said Thomas O’Brien, HYM co-founder. The developers are committing to 13% affordable units on site and to fund an addition 7% affordable offsite elsewhere in East Boston. And BPDA spokeswoman Bonnie McGilpin said the proposal surpasses the city’s mandate that 13% of housing in new developments be income-restricted.

O’Brien said meeting the residents’ demands would cost upwards of $1.5 billion.

Which sums up the issue in a nutshell. Developers spend big bucks to build, and recoup those costs with luxury rents. No development, no new revenue for the city.

But high end development has a domino effect. One swank building begets another, until there’s another chic new nabe with multiple Starbucks and few familiar faces.

Stephen Mahood, who has lived on Jeffries Point on and off for a decade, worries the immigrant and working class residents will see greater displacement without more protections.

“We need apartments that are more representative of what the community earns,” he said.

Residents want housing protections, the city wants revenue and growth. We’ve seen this movie before, and we know who usually comes out on top. But while residents may not have economic muscle, they do deserve to be heard. They live here, work here and call their slice of Boston home.

East Boston residents should have a voice in how their neighborhood changes.