ARCHIVES OF LEAD STORIES
March 10, 2005
Jamaica Plain residents spar over affordable housing
Yawu Miller
Ann Marie Joseph walked to the front of the auditorium at the
Kennedy Middle School, stood before a microphone and made her
pitch for affordable housing in Jamaica Plain.
“I’m a recent recipient of affordable housing,”
she said. “I am not a drug dealer. I am not a prostitute.
My only crime is that I take care of my mother and my baby sister.”
While nobody at the meeting last week accused Joseph of criminal
activity, the conversation at last week’s Jamaica Plain
Neighborhood Council covered the topics of urban density, crime,
affordable housing and accusations of race and class prejudice.
At issue is the neighborhood council’s desired land use
for the site of the Blessed Sacrament Catholic Church, which has
been closed by the Boston Archdiocese. While some Jamaica Plain
residents called for affordable housing on the site, others were
dead against it.
“We need people that are home-owners,” said local
home owner Ginger Parker. “It’s not a stable neighborhood
where you can bring in affordable housing and it’s okay.
When you add too many people to a neighborhood, it brings us back
to where we were.”
Parker and others at the meeting recalled the Jamaica Plain of
the early ’90s when they said crime was more of a problem.
“Our neighborhood is still at risk,” Parker said.
While white Jamaica Plain residents argued both for and against
affordable housing, many at the meeting said they felt race and
class tensions came to the surface during the meeting when residents
argued against affordable housing.
According to the 2000 U.S. Census, the neighborhood is 57 percent
white, 17 percent black and 28 percent Latino. The white population
has historically been concentrated in the southern parts of the
neighborhood with a heavier concentration of Latinos in the streets
around Hyde, Jackson and Egleston squares.
In the ’80s and early ’90s, before an influx of white
renters and owners came into the neighborhood, the residents of
the Hyde Square section were predominantly black and Latino.
When rent control was lifted in 1994 and rents and home prices
in the Greater Boston area began their precipitous rise, Jamaica
Plain and other Boston neighborhoods became more attractive to
affluent whites who were priced out of the South End and other
downtown areas.
Former Jamaica Plain Neighborhood Council member Caprice Taylor
Mendez, who has lived in Jamaica Plain since the early ’90s
said the population changes have been marked.
“It used to be there were only Latinos and African Americans
on the 39 bus,” she recalls. “My co-workers were afraid
to come to this neighborhood.”
Now the side streets surrounding the Hyde Square section of Jamaica
Plain are dotted with new buildings featuring $500,000 condominiums.
Although the white population in that section of Jamaica Plain
has visibly increased not all of the white residents have the
same comfort level. One man said he was still uncomfortable walking
to the Jackson Square MBTA stop.
“He said he wouldn’t walk his dog to Jackson Square,”
said Neighborhood Council Chairman Nelson Arroyo, who made an
impassioned speech against bigotry at the end of the meeting.
“I was very offended by the remarks a lot of people made,”
he told the Banner. “Some of the comments were insulting.
I grew up in affordable housing.”
One resident, Marc Guertin, compared affordable housing to the
institutions that Hyde Square — the Veterans Administration
Hospital, Blessed Sacrament and the Angel Memorial Hospital. Guertin
argued for retail space for small businesses like Purple Cactus
and JP Licks — upscale businesses from the predominantly
white Pondside neighborhood. He advocated studio apartments and
one-bedrooms with underground parking.
“Institutions already have a strong presence in this neighborhood,
architecturally as well as socially,” he said in remarks
given at the beginning of the meeting.
Others who spoke at the meeting objected to Guertin’s apparent
characterization of affordable housing as an institutional land
use.
“What, you don’t like hospitals?” asked Thomas
Fiori. “You don’t like the VA?”
Fiori said he currently lives with four other adults in an apartment
said he cannot afford to buy a home in Jamaica Plain, where the
average home is worth $448,000.
“There really is a battle going on here in the city as to
whose Boston this is,” said Steve Backman. “Is the
city going to remain a place where the people who grow up here
can afford to stay here?”
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