‘Anti-displacement’ forum draws crowd to Codman Square

On Sunday night, community members from around Boston gathered at Dorchester’s Global Ministries Church on Washington Street for an “anti-displacement event” to discuss trends in rent levels, real estate prices, and affordable housing availability that organizers said were squeezing out low- and moderate-income residents with long-time roots in the area.

The meeting was set up by a consortium of groups including City Life/ Vida Urbana, the Fairmount/Indigo Line CDC Collaborative, Right to the City, The Union of Minority Neighborhoods and Dorchester Bay EDC. Codman Square Neighborhood Development Corporation (NDC), which is an active member of the Fairmount/Indigo Line CDC Collaborative, took a leadership role in getting the groups together.

The event was inspired in part by the continuing development of the new Fairmount commuter rail line, which includes the recently built stations at Talbot Avenue and Four Corners. Gail Latimore, executive director of the Codman Square NDC, noted during her opening remarks that while the new stations were an important victory in a ten-year fight to improve local transit options, they also could lure to the area an influx of upper-income householders who could displace low- and moderate-income householders currently residing there.

Fears of the potential for residential displacement were underscored by this year’s release of an NDC-commissioned report prepared by Boston University’s Urban Symposium that detailed the potential for significant demographic changes in the area in the near future.

The gathering of about 100 people on Sunday was diverse in terms of race and status as renters, homeowners, or business owners. Spanish translation was made available and was utilized by about one fourth of the audience. A significant number of attendees came from outside of the immediate neighborhood, including some from Hyde Park, Roxbury, and Milton.

Some shared anecdotes about their recent experiences with out-of-town realtors and developers attempting to purchase property in the community, which they viewed as a sign of oncoming gentrification.
Marilyn Forman, a lead organizer with Codman Square NDC and owner of the home that her parents purchased in 1967, said she recently received a hand-written letter from a woman in Hanson, MA, referring to herself as “Barton,” who offered to purchase her home “for cash regardless of its condition” and “without the hassle of having to list it with a realtor.”

The letter was traced back to Barton Wallace, president of Barton Property Group, which deems itself “The South Shore’s foremost expert of the Short Sale.” Forman said that many of her neighbors had received the same letter, adding that elderly people in particular were “biting on letters like this.” She suggested that the letters are seeking to take advantage of financially insecure homeowners and are contributing to the changing ownership patterns and increasing real estate prices in the area.

In an interview with the Reporter, Barton Wallace defended her letters, describing them as a common form of marketing utilized by many in her field and saying she had also sent such letters to “wealthy areas” such as Hingham and Cohasset. She was adamant that her practices were not predatory but rather offered a service that had been helpful to “hundreds” of people, oftentimes helping those in a difficult financial situation who, for example, might not have the funds to repair a property and wanted to avoid the difficulties of obtaining financing through a bank.

“Am I a lover of the banks? No. I hate them,” said Wallace. “I have seen what they do and I have seen how they take advantage of people. So we have been, in my estimation, champions working with people to help get them out of very fraudulent situations.”

The conversations at Sunday’s event also revealed some of the complexities involved in addressing an issue that affects individual members of the community in different ways. Multiple attendees stressed that while discussions of gentrification often focus on rising rent prices, local homeowners sometimes have valuable reasons for wanting to increase prices. They cited a desire to achieve financial stability, pay for their children’s education and save for retirement.

The issue of race was peppered throughout the conversation, with observations speaking to the intersection of race and class in a community showing physical signs of significant change.

Ron Bell, a longtime community organizer who lives in Milton, described his recent experience of doing door-to-door voter outreach in Mission Hill, where he grew up. “Where did all these white people come from?” he remembers thinking as he spoke with those who opened their doors. Bell added with a laugh, “I love my white people, don’t get me wrong.” Another man described seeing more “white people walking their dogs” in his neighborhood.

Another dynamic raised was the issue of local business owners who do not reside in the community. One woman shared in her small group that she “didn’t get the sense that people who own the businesses are in – or hire – people in the community.” She concluded that “gentrification happened a long time ago for commercial property” in the area.

Former local business owners Chris Graham and Deborah Davis offered a different perspective. While they did not reside locally, they said that during the nine years they tried to keep their Dorchester business afloat, they became actively involved in the community, including planning an annual music festival. They said that they were sad when their rent was increased and they had to leave the area.
For all the discussion of the various fault lines, the tone of the meeting was civil and collaborative, with a focus on generating ideas for collective action. Some proposed solutions included rent stabilization policies and “just cause” legislation (which would require landlords to provide just cause for evicting tenants); cracking down on the practice of marketing two-bedroom apartments as three-bedroom apartments; better public education about government programs, financial options and legal rights; maintaining a healthy stock of local affordable housing; and policies that would address speculation.

In a phone conversation after the meeting, Latimore said that she felt the discussions reaffirmed Codman Square NDC’s concerns about displacement in the community. She did, however, feel encouraged by residents’ degree of interest in the issue, which she said would help build an “equity army” to combat displacement.

Looking forward, Codman Square NDC has some affordable real estate development projects in the works. It is planning to break ground on 43 affordable housing units next spring, a mix of new and renovated units. There are also three other projects on the drawing board for which it is seeking financing with the goal of completing those in two to four years. Those projects would add at least another 100 affordable housing units to the area.


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