BOSTON (April 6, 2015) – Displaced tenants will march from Chinatown’s row houses on Hudson Street to join residents and activists from across the city at a Right to Remain Press Conference on City Hall Plaza on Tuesday, April 7. After the press event, they will join a public Hearing to Discuss Displacement, Community Stability and Neighborhood Preservation, sponsored by Boston City Councilor Tito Jackson.
Picture from a housing rally in Boston Chinatown (file photo).
Recent media coverage revealed that Chinatown residents are being forced out, as luxury development drives rent increases and real estate speculation. Chinatown residents are demanding that developer First Suffolk LLC grant tenants the right to return and remain at 101 and 103 Hudson Street.
Citywide leaders of the Right to Remain Campaign will call for policies to counter the displacement crisis:
– Protections for tenants facing no-fault eviction
– Increased community control of development, particularly on publicly owned land
– Neighborhood Stabilization Zones around new transit nodes and rapidly gentrifying districts
– Progressive revenue for affordable housing such as a luxury transfer tax and Inclusionary Development reform
WHAT: Right to Remain Press Conference
WHO: Chinese Progressive Association, Right to the City Boston and Boston Tenant Coalition
WHERE: Boston City Hall Plaza
WHEN: Tuesday, April 7, 2015 at 3:30 pm
(March from 103 Hudson Street in Chinatown at 2:30 pm)
WHY:
● Displacement has accelerated since the end of rent control 20 years ago.
● Luxury downtown and waterfront development is turning working class neighborhoods into playgrounds of the wealthy elite.
● Chinatown, once Boston’s poorest neighborhood, has added nearly 3000 luxury units, making high end and market rate units 58 percent of the housing stock.
● The Renter Nation is growing, with over 4,500 Boston foreclosed families in six years and most joining the rental market.
● 67% of Boston residents are renters, and 49% are rent-burdened, yet wages have remained stagnant.
● In 2012, Boston households in the 95th percentile of income earned 15.3 times the income of the poorest 20 percent, making Boston the third most unequal U.S. city, according to a recent study by the Brookings Institution.
###
The Right to Remain Campaign is an emerging citywide coalition: Right to the City Boston, Right to the City VOTE, Boston Tenant Coalition, Alternatives for Community & Environment, Boston Workers Alliance, Chinese Progressive Association, City Life/Vida Urbana, Dorchester Bay Economic Development Corporation, Dudley Street Neighborhood Initiative, Fairmount Indigo Line CDC Collaborative, Greater Four Corners Action Coalition, Jamaica Plain Progressives, Neighbors United for a Better East Boston, New England United for Justice.