What is happening this week at the city and state level could have the most consequential impact on the economic fate of Black and Latino residents and homeowners in Boston. If you’re interested in the matter of real Black wealth creation, you should pay attention. If you are interested in racial equity, you should pay attention.
On Thursday, September 19, at 10 a.m., the Boston City Council will hold a hearing on the matter of deed restrictions. This hearing, requested by District 7 Councilor Tania Fernandes Anderson, will explore whether the restricted deeds policy imposed by the city in their homeownership programs have a positive or negative effect on the goal to promote generational wealth creation. There is so much at stake. While the city is constantly professing that racial equity and wealth creation is not just a goal but a priority, their homeownership policies suggest just the opposite.
Many agree that the city’s 3,000 plus predominantly Black and Latino families who enjoy homeownership status would not likely have the opportunity but for assistance from the city. Few are aware that the restrictions imposed for the assistance is a 50-year wait to enjoy equity in your home — longer than a 30-year bank mortgage; a requirement to get permission from the Director of the Mayor’s Office of Housing to be away from your home more than a month (For those sons and daughters of the deep South, sound familiar?); and finally, a failure to live continually for the first 30 years renders the entire purchase null and void. If your loved one, the homeowner, passes away or vacates after 28 years, the city reclaims the home and starts all over.
Boston has the longest deed restrictions policy in the country. The Director of the MOH states that the fear is that if they allow homeowners to sell, they’re likely to sell their homes to white people.
Also, this week, the Chestnut Hill based non-profit, BlueHub was in Suffolk Superior Court before a standing-room-only crowd of homeowners. They went to BlueHub seeking help to save their homes, financially stressed during COVID, on the belief they’d receive help to avoid losing their homes. Why wouldn’t they think so? After all, BlueHub was listed on the Attorney General’s website as a company available to assist homeowners facing foreclosure. But it turns out the AG deleted the company from the list after receiving complaints from hundreds of homeowners.
What they have is what may be the highest paid non-profit executive in Boston, Elyse Cherry, who has a salary and benefits close to $1 million and has become one of the largest donors to state and congressional legislators. If there is no connection to her stepped up donation activity and the unprecedented movement of this legislation, it certainly appears so! After years of trying, she has successfully gotten the most dangerous language in the much-awaited Economic Bond Bill. The language would provide no recourse for BlueHub borrowers, who find themselves in a worse predatory mortgage from BlueHub than before their “assistance.” Anyone who heard the testimony before the legislative hearing last year could not ignore the similar stories from the 30 plus who came from all over the state to testify and had the same experience.
BlueHub calls you and says, “You have to get down to our office in the next 2-3 hours to close your loan in the next 2-3 hours or we won’t be able to save it from foreclosure!” Borrower responds, “Don’t I need an attorney?’ BlueHub responds, “No we have an attorney for you.” The state legislature is poised to grant them immunity from any recourse their mostly Black and Latino victims would otherwise have.
You have two tasks this week. Attend the hearing at Boston City Hall on Thursday and call your state representative and state senator to say no to the predatory language in the Economic Bond Bill. We cannot allow either one of these efforts to succeed, lest we want to be reminiscing 10 years from now how Blacks and Latinos used to be the majority in Boston!
Dianne Wilkerson is a former state senator from Roxbury and the author of the state’s major Anti-Predatory Lending Bill of 2004.
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