District 7 residents call for development moratorium

High concentration of affordable housing, lack of resident input cited

As Mayor Michelle Wu looks to speed up the development of affordable housing across the city, Roxbury residents are calling on the administration to pump the breaks.

Last week, at the city council meeting, Councilor Tania Fernandes Anderson called for a moratorium on affordable housing development in her Roxbury-centered district until an agreement can be reached on how best to involve the community in decisions regarding what will be built in their neighborhood.

According to Fernandes Anderson, the neighborhood bears the brunt of affordable housing development, while the community craves more mixed-income opportunities.

“The people of District 7 are tired of decades of unsatisfying development policies that have marginalized them from the levers of decision-making,” she told her colleagues.

Fernandes Anderson says that 54% of the apartments in Roxbury are income-restricted, compared to 19.2% citywide. She added that in neighborhoods like Back Bay and Bay Village only 6% to 8% of housing units are affordable.

The measure is being co-sponsored by Councilor Kendra Lara, who said that the current system that requires just one public meeting after a proposal is selected is unfair. Proposals also may or may not be informed by community input.

“We want to be able to have conversations with the people who live there about what they want and what is going to best serve their needs. We’re unable to do that,” she said.

Lorraine Payne Wheeler, President of the Roxbury Path Forward Neighborhood Association and a member of the Roxbury Strategic Master Plan Oversight Committee, echoed Lara, saying that her neighbors don’t think their feelings are truly being considered.

“People are concerned that they show up at meetings about publicly-owned land, but they’re really not being heard. And the project just goes on, without input from community members,” Payne Wheeler said.

Payne Wheeler says she is supportive of the moratorium because it’ll be an opportunity to discuss other types of development that could be possible for Roxbury.

“I think people really are looking for a mixed-income community,” she said. “In order to get that, we’ve got to look at ways to provide the kind of housing that people want.”

Payne Wheeler described an appetite for “middle income” housing and pathways to homeownership in order to create wealth-building opportunities and a demographic willing to move into existing homes sometime in the future.

“If you don’t have that middle income, people that are ready to move up into a home, most of those homes are going to be sold to nonprofits or sober homes, or something along those lines,” she said.

She also mentioned difficulties that arise from concentrated affordable and low-income housing, like parking shortages and the inability for restaurants and specialty businesses to thrive.

Others support the moratorium because it provides an opportunity to think about if the income-restricted development taking place truly is affordable to longtime residents.

“Someone has to define affordability and fairness,” said Louis Elisa, president of the Garrison Trotter Neighborhood Association.

Elisa, whose organization is part of a District 7 Advisory Committee that meets weekly with Fernandes Anderson, said that this moratorium is something that residents have been demanding for a long time, and that they want a bigger stake in what’s being built.

“This is not an anti-development request. This is a moratorium until you have a process in place that allows the community in D7 to be effectively engaged and involved in how the development is taking place, and what development takes place,” he said.

Elisa hopes that the moratorium would be able to give some power back to D7 residents.

“We want to see them get the fairness that they are asking for,” he said.

During Wednesday’s meeting, Councilor Michael Flaherty also lent his strong support to the moratorium, recalling his own district’s experience with the development of South Boston’s waterfront. Flaherty said his constituents repeatedly called for increased affordability considerations to no avail.

“The folks that have made Roxbury District 7 into the great neighborhood that it is, they should have some more say in what’s happening,” he said.

Fernandes Anderson’s moratorium must first go through a public hearing headed by the council’s planning and development committee before any final decisions can be made. That hearing date is to be determined.