Five years ago, for just under $1,000, a family could rent a three-bedroom apartment in Jamaica Plain. Today that same apartment goes for almost $2,000 a month. The real estate boom that has seen property skyrocket has also thrust out many families and other long-time members of Boston neighborhoods. Recently, the Forum for the 21st Century, a UMass Boston sponsored program to publicly discuss the issues affecting the city in the next century, tackled this dilemma.
Whether phrased as "economic cycle," "gentrification," or "real
estate boom," the issue boils down to a loss of stability in many
neighborhoods. Kathy Brown of City Life, a community organization in
Jamaica Plain, told the Forum one step would be more housing funding
from the government. Lew Finfer, director of the Organizing and
Leadership Training Center in Dorchester suggested the answer also
lies in communities becoming more organized and gaining more
clout.
Former State Representative Charlotte Golar Richie, now director of
the city's Neighborhood Development Agency, assured that housing is a
priority, but there is no getting around that part of the solution is
convincing communities to accept low and moderate income housing.
To that end, architect Kirk Sykes of the Primary Group talked about
the need to bring stable business back to the community as well, to
provide permanent jobs and the type of business that will make a
neighborhood less transient.
Change in the neighborhoods can be a bad thing, but most agreed,
change is a problem when you lose the diversity of those
neighborhoods. "If you look at the neighborhoods in Boston, they've
always been defined by the waves of immigration over the years," said
South Boston State Senator Stephen Lynch. "But with what we have
going on now, the thing that is defining the neighborhoods is that
the people there have enough money to afford the housing. What we're
going to end up is one homogenous group. And that's not a good
thing."