TENANT AND COMMUNITYGROUPS HIGHLIGHT DISPLACEMENT CRISIS

Highlighting the crisis of low-income families at risk of displacement and high homeless numbers, tenant, homeless and community groups are asking Mayor Martin Walsh to increase affordable housing resources and earmark more funds to keep working-class and lower income residents in their homes and in the City.  Over 100 residents attended Speak-Out about the housing crisis and delivered a petition to the Mayor urging him to expand the Inclusionary Development Program (IDP) and target resources to neighborhood stabilization.

What:     Speak out and Delivery of Inclusionary Development Program (IDP) petitions
When:    March 18th, 11am-12 noon
Where:    City Hall Plaza

Residents from the Fenway, Chinatown, Roxbury, Jamaica Plain and Dorchester shared their stories and delivered a petition with over 900 signatures to the Mayor, urging him to expand the Inclusionary Development Program (IDP) and to direct current and future funds from that program as well as City-owned land to house Boston’s low-income and working class residents in order to stabilize the communities. Cabinet Chiefs, Sheila Dillon, Chief of Housing and the Department of Neighborhood Development, John Barros, Chief of Economic Development, Felix Arroyo, Chief of Health and Human Services, and Joyce Linehan, Policy Director for Mayor Walsh came down to City Hall plaza to accept the petitions from the president of Massachusetts Senior Action on behalf of the Coalition and pledged to work with the groups on examining current and other possible policies that address the housing and the displacement crisis affecting Boston residents and neighborhoods, including exploring potential changes to the City’s Inclusionary Development Policy.

    Organizers from the Boston Tenant Coalition, Right to the City, Fenway Community Development Corporation and others cited a recent study that named Boston the most rapidly gentrifying city in the country as well as the fact that over 35,000 low income families and individuals are paying more than 50% of their income on rent, placing thousands of Bostonians at risk of homelessness.

“If we want to keep Boston as a vibrant world class city, we ought to help keep existing working families and individuals on low or fixed incomes in their communities and homes.  Boston's Inclusionary Development Funds are a tool to support development of affordable housing.” Says Darnell Johnson of Right to City Boston
Chinatown organizers cited ten different buildings where tenants are facing eviction, and activists noted the severe impact of luxury development on destabilizing their neighborhood.
“The IDP funds have helped to build affordable housing in lower costs neighborhoods throughout Boston. Unfortunately, the manner in which the Policy has been implemented by the BRA has unintentionally lead to economic segregation in the Fenway and Chinatown, where only the rich can now afford to live. We need an improved IDP to address these new conditions”, said Dharmena Downey, Executive Director of Fenway CDC.

The Inclusionary Development Program was created by former Mayor Menino’s Executive Order and requires that market-rate and luxury housing developers make 15% of the proposed units on site affordable, or build them off site or pay approximately $200,000 (per unit not built) into an affordable housing fund. Community leaders say that this fee is far from what it costs to create an affordable unit and the on-site “affordable” units are in fact unaffordable to most Boston residents.
The group is calling for expansion of the Inclusionary Development Program and to direct current and future funds to low-income and working class  residents Specifically: 1) increase the number of affordable units that a developer must build on site or ; 2) increase developers’ “buy-out” fee to cover the true costs of developing an affordable unit; 3) target affordable units and funds toward tenants who are most in need (below 80% of Area Median Income, or $75,520 for a family of four); 4) target a portion of those funds to the neighborhoods most affected by this luxury development; and 5) Use Boston and neighborhood median incomes as a standard for allocating affordable housing resources.
Advocates called for examination of Boston income data rather than simply the Area Median Income figures utilized by HUD, which includes data from some 120 cities and towns, many of which are high-income suburbs.
 “We have tenants from ten different buildings in Chinatown right now who are facing the risk of displacement due to luxury development, escalating rents, ownership turn-over, and lack of real affordable housing,” said Karen Chen of Chinese Progressive Association
Dwayne Tyndall from Fair Housing Center of Greater Boston spoke to the fair housing implications of the policies.

 Robert Terrell of the Fair Housing Center of Greater Boston and longtime Roxbury resident in the press release emphasized the fair housing issues at play. “It is essential that the City of Boston use the resources provided by this policy to develop housing for those of us with the lowest incomes because they are the people most vulnerable to changing market forces. This policy also plays a major role in helping the City fulfill its obligations under the Fair Housing Act to fight housing discrimination and build a more inclusive city, as clearly stated in the City’s Analysis of Impediments to Fair Housing Choice. We call on the City of Boston to do everything in its power to improve, upgrade and extend its Inclusionary Housing Policy”.

Kathy Brown of the Boston Tenant Coalition, further adds “We see this as a serious fair housing issue when no median income Black, Latino, Asian, or tenant can afford the ‘affordable housing’ with the IDP units and some of the proposed uses of the fund

The Housing advocates look forward to offering proposals to the City on how these IDP funds can be used to help further fair housing in Boston and help address the issue of displacement, helping those families and individuals most at risk and are hopeful that the new Mayor and the administration will work with the coalition. “We have several additional concrete ideas of how the City could utilize its affordable housing funds & city land to help house the City’s homeless, near-homeless, and working class residents,” said Brown of the Boston Tenant Coalition. “We look forward to working collaboratively with the new administration to realize these goals”

Boston’s Real Housing Affordability Crisis

We are hearing a great deal these days about how hard it is for the “middle class” to be able to afford to live in Boston (e.g., Paul McMorow, “A Boston of rich and poor, with no middle class,”Boston Globe, 10/1513; the City’s Housing Boston 2020 report; the Boston Foundation’s 2013 Housing Report Card).  Everyone knows that the rich are doing well, but some are also claiming that the housing needs of the poor are largely being taken care of through subsidized housing so the greatest needs are among the “middle class.” 

Yes, some middle income households are facing affordability challenges in parts of Boston, but let’s get some perspective.

Boston is rightly proud that its share of “affordable” housing (public housing, privately-owned subsidized and income-limited units, and tenant-based subsidies) is the highest – at 22 percent - of the 25 largest cities in the country.  This is the (more or less) half full portion of the glass. 

The empty portion of the glass, though, includes nearly 37,000 renters with incomes of less than $20,000 a year, and another 19,000 with incomes of $20,000-35,000,who are paying over 30 percent of their incomes for rent because they do not have housing subsidies.  These households disproportionately contain people of color, and those not of color are mostly elderly white women.  In total, more than half of all renters in the city are paying over 30% of their incomes for rent.  And these numbers of course do not include the homeless individuals and families, with the number of homeless families having reached a record level in the state.

The City’s own Housing Boston 2020 Report acknowledges that 46,000 households – one in every five in the city -- spend more than 50 percent of their income on housing, including “23,000 very low income households [who] are paying more than half their incomes for housing and are considered at risk of becoming homeless.”  Given changes in current subsidized housing stock, it seems clear that the number of very low income households with extreme rent burdens will only grow. Over 4,500 units of currently affordable housing are at risk of loss as a result of expiring affordability restrictions or subsidy contract terminations just through 2015, with many thousands more at risk in subsequent years. Moreover, as a result of federal sequestration, the Boston Housing Authority may be forced to pull rental assistance from 500 low-income families who now depend on this assistance to pay their rent.

Yet the City’s plan is to add just 5,000 income-restricted, long-term affordable units between now and 2020, Resources that could be used to increase this number are to be diverted to the city’s “middle class” housing plan. For example, the City’s 2020 Report calls for what seems likely to be millions of dollars in City assistance to 300 “middle class” homebuyers annually “to facilitate better access into some of the higher cost neighborhoods where the middle class is largely priced out”

What is the meaning of “middle class” in this context?Boston sits in a sea of high income suburbs.  “Middle class” in the city of Boston does not correspond to the same income range as it does for the metro area as a whole, even though policy makers often apply the metro numbers to the city.  The reference point is the median  income for the metro area computed annually by the US Department of Housing and Urban Development based on family households only (“family” for this purpose excludes people living alone as well as 2-or-more people living together but unrelated by birth, marriage or adoption).  The HUD metro Boston area median family income is currently about $95,000.  “Middle-income” generally refers to those with income of between 80% and 120% of the metro area median. For metro Boston, the range is about $75,000 to $115,000 for a family of four in 2013 (scaled up and down for larger and smaller household sizes).  This is the income range that is  the new policy focus.

By contrast, the median family income in the city of Boston is only $65,000.  However, half of all households in the city are non-family households (mostly singles with income lower on average than families). The median household income in the city is just $54,000.  In these terms, Boston’s middle class actually consists of households with incomes of about $43,000 to $65,000 for a four-person household.Many of these are part of the city population with genuine affordability problems, but they are not the same as the “middle class” that are increasingly the object of concern and policy initiatives.

In short, yes,some households with incomes of over $75,000 are indeed priced out ofthe most expensive parts of the city.  They face challenges, but their situation is not dire; it is not a crisis.  Meanwhile, tens of thousands of other Boston households haveultra-low incomes and no housing subsidies; their plight is dire; this is a crisis.Unless and until their needs are met, there is no moral justification for already-limited public resources being diverted from this task.

Michael E. Stone

U Mass Boston Professor Emeritus

of community planning, public policy and social justice

michael.stone@umb.edu

March 18, 2014