Development upends stable communities
Hub must protect the vulnerable
Anyone who says that gentrification isn’t ripping apart the fabric of some of our most vulnerable communities must have their head in the sand.
Unchecked and uncontrolled and unreasonable gentrification is literally contributing to a city of haves and have-nots on a number of fronts. Residents are literally getting priced out of their own neighborhoods.
Unfortunately, the creation of more housing without regard to affordability continues to contribute to neighborhood instability caused by overt and subtle forms of gentrification.
Ride through Roxbury and check out the empty “luxury” housing in this mostly low-income community. Longtime renters are seeing their rents quadrupled. Housing continues to be foreclosed at greater numbers. Meanwhile, developers are attempting to shoehorn in market-rate housing and denigrate historic areas with what amounts to the construction of stick houses. Thank goodness the Highland Park and Roxbury communities are familiar with these tactics and are pushing back hard.
Drive through Southie, past the newly built, highend Seaport District, which is catapulting area prices for housing through the roof. The Carmelite nuns are selling Marian Manor, a nursing home that cares for a predominantly senior population. Marketers are already prepping for a big return on investment. One has to wonder where the frail and elderly whose living and health care is subsidized will end up. East Boston is the newest frontier for development, with its sizeable immigrant community hardly able to afford the astronomic prices for new development.
It is beyond disingenuous for anyone to suggest, as some do, the “benefits” of gentrification, by proclaiming that when higher-income people come into an area, it will mean better and greater city services to the residents. Tell that to the hundreds who face and will continue to face rampant homelessness and displacement as a result of wholesale gentrification. I hope the unbridled gentrification of the South End in the ’80s proves to be instructive in developing a plan that, rather than gentrify and segregate neighborhoods, something that does not make Boston look good, creates opportunities for housing that benefits all without displacing anyone.