A coalition of 13 housing organizations and advocates, including City Life/Vida Urbana and Boston Tenant Coalition (BTC), are criticizing the City’s plan for new housing creation and are petitioning new Mayor Martin Walsh to focus on lower-income residents.
The City’s current long-term plan for housing, announced by former Mayor Thomas Menino in September and called “Housing Boston 2020,” calls for 30,000 new units of housing to be built by the year 2020. It also stipulates that the City allocate $11 million, created by selling public land at deep discount and initiating or expanding other programs, to benefit “middle-income” households.
The coalition points out in its letter that no Boston median-income black, Latino, Asian or renter household would be able to access the proposed middle income housing programs outlined in the report.
The letter, sent last month to Walsh and Menino, states, “There is a mismatch between housing need in Boston and the targeting of City resources.”
“The BTC and members hope that with the letters and petition, and further read of the data, the City will change course in the final days of the Menino administration and with the incoming Mayor Walsh administration,” the petition’s accompanying press release states.
It is currently unclear if Walsh will keep the plan, alter it or scrap it. Gazette requests for comment from Menino’s City Hall and Walsh’s administration were not returned by press time.
According to the report, the U.S. Housing and Urban Development (HUD)-defined area used to measure income covers over 100 cities and towns, including very wealthy suburbs, along with the City of Boston. In addition, the HUD data only takes into account the incomes of families and excludes other households, like seniors living alone or groups of renters.
By shifting the data to reflect City of Boston-only data—and excluding metro Boston data, which skews richer, whiter and more family-oriented—Housing Boston 2020 could better benefit Boston residents that most desperately need it, the letter says.
“We believe instead of directing resources to people whose incomes are much higher than the average Bostonian, we should direct land, cash assistance and housing units to Boston’s low-, working- and middle-class residents using a Boston-based income scale,” the letter states.
The letter praises the plan’s comprehensive nature in increasing linkage fees—fees paid by developers that are used to benefit the City—and tying them to inflation; developing a strategy for student and senior housing; homeless prevention strategies; and other initiatives. But it also states that the coalition believes Housing Boston 2020 “could lead to the displacement of low- and moderate-income Bostonians, further gentrification and neighborhood destabilization if [issues are] not addressed.”
The City’s 2020 Boston Housing Plan advocates creating a “Middle Class Housing Access Fund” to allow middle-income buyers to buy into high-cost neighborhoods.
As stated in the City’s 2020 report, there are close to 46,000 households paying over 50 percent of their incomes for housing. Of that number, 23,000 are “extremely low-income” households or at risk of becoming homeless, with incomes 30 percent or below of the average median income of $75,500, or $22,650.
Housing should not cost more than 30 percent of a household’s income to be considered affordable.
The petition is open to new signatures online at petitions.moveon.org/sign/petition-to-direct-inclusion. At press time, it had 184 signatories.