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ARCHIVES OF LEAD STORIES
January 13, 2005 Roxbury Action Program plans to sell off affordable housing Yawu Miller Community development corporations like RAP were seen as the best chance the community had at rehabbing decaying housing stock and developing affordable homes. Now a vacant parcel in the Highland Park neighborhood where most of RAP’s housing stock is located is worth several times more than a whole three-family building was worth in the 1970s. Half-million-dollar condos are springing up in the neighborhood and RAP Executive Director Lloyd King says it’s time for the CDC to sell off its remaining stock of rental three-family buildings. “We’re going to give a qualified tenant in each of the buildings a chance to become the owner,” he said. While one tenant earning as little as $30,000 a year would be able to own the building, the other tenants would continue to pay subsidized rents under the plan, according to King. King says the purchase prices for the 33 buildings currently in RAP’s portfolio would be affordable, but would not give an estimate. If King is successful in his bid to sell off his housing stock, it would be an unusual move for a Boston CDC — a near-complete divestment from the housing business. RAP began a similar process in 2003, when King initiated the sale of 51 of the CDC’s units to a private developer. That process drew a firestorm of controversy, when several tenants from the properties protested the move, citing the private developer’s refusal to guarantee long-term affordability for the units. The dispute was resolved when the state attorney general’s office entered into an agreement with the purchaser, Dennis Walsh, extending the Section 8 contracts 12 years and giving the residents the right of first refusal on the sale of the units. King says the matter was distorted by the press, including the Banner. While 95 percent of the tenants were in favor of the sale, according to King, a small, but vocal group was getting headlines with their opposition to the sale. “They were being organized by the HUD Tenant Alliance whose existence is dependent on their remaining HUD tenants,” King commented. “My motive was the empowerment of the tenants.” RAP sold the units to Walsh for about $50,000 a unit, according to King, with the understanding that he would provide the financing to fix them up and then sell them to the tenants. “It was a two-step process,” King said. “The buyer [Walsh] agreed to go along with the program.” King says the tenants were expected to purchase their homes using a HUD program that would allow tenants under the Section 8 program to use their voucher payments as mortgage payments. That program has since been discontinued. But opponents, including City Councilor Chuck Turner, argued the sale would have reduced the neighborhood’s stock of affordable housing. Turner says he and other activists turned over several properties to RAP in 1968 and asked that the organization keep them affordable as a measure against the gentrification that was then sweeping the South End. “It was clear that gentrification was going to come to Highland Park,” he said. “The objective that I thought we all had was to preserve affordable housing. The affordable housing structure is dependent on a subsidy agreement. Once you break that agreement, the affordability aspect is gone.” King, however, says RAP’s main goal is the empowerment of the tenants, most of whom favor ownership. “We thought RAP would be out of business by 1977,” King said. “Things never happened the way we planned it, but a true community development organization should work itself out of business by empowering the people it serves.” The last 33 units in RAP’s housing stock should be easier for the CDC to dispose of. Those units, located in scattered sites around Highland Park, are in decent shape and will be sold off within two years, King said. RAP’s last remaining building, the Alvah Kittredge House, is a vacant, 1836 Greek revival mansion on Linwood Street that the CDC is looking to develop in conjunction with Roxbury Community College. “We’ve been talking to RCC about converting it into an international student house and conference center,” King said. “It would have space in it for meetings.” RAP has owned a total of 84 units and helped redevelop the Norfolk House and the Marcus Garvey Building in John Eliot Square.
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