Document 1: positive or negative

This demonstrates that gentrification is _____________________ for the city of Boston because it indicates

that ____________________________________________________________________________________

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Document Set 2: positive or negative

This demonstrates that gentrification is _____________________ for the city of Boston because it indicates

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Hi-Lo Foods (Hyde Square, 2012)

Whole Foods (Hyde Square, 2014)

Document 3: positive or negative

This demonstrates that gentrification is _____________________ for the city of Boston because it indicates

that ____________________________________________________________________________________

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With 61% of low-price tracts undergoing gentrification, Boston has become America’s top gentrifying city, according to the 2013 report referenced above. One major factor driving this has been a decline in affordability of different properties for low-income residents in the last 10 years, says Tim Davis, Senior Research Fellow at the UMass Boston Center for Social Policy. This decline in affordability is caused by both “classic gentrification”, in which higher-income residents move into neighborhoods, and a “sub-prime lending bubble” which led to a change in real estate prices that forced existing neighborhood residents to pay more of their income toward housing.

--Abigail Mariam in There Goes the Neighborhood Thanks to Gentrification (Harvard Political Review, August 2014)

Document 4: positive or negative

This demonstrates that gentrification is _____________________ for the city of Boston because it indicates

that ____________________________________________________________________________________

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Document 5: positive or negative

This demonstrates that gentrification is _____________________ for the city of Boston because it indicates

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Document 6:

Residents of neighborhoods who used the example of the West End to inspire them and fight to make urban

renewal better wonder if they may have succeeded too well. “Charlestown is gone” said lifelong “Townie” Moe

Gillen. “It’s been decimated by the yuppies.” Not long ago, some of the newcomers who live in the condominiums

at the converted Charlestown Navy Yard showed how little they cared about the neighborhood’s history by

complaining about the noise from the twice-a-day firing of the cannon on the USS Constitution—a tradition that

dates back to 1798.

--Jim Vrabel in A People’s History of the New Boston (2014)

Supporters rally in front of 103 Hudson St. in Chinatown yesterday to support three tenants who are being relocated until renovations are done on their building. Activists fear that the newly renovated apartments will be unaffordable to the low income immigrants from China who currently occupy them. (January 29, 2015)

positive or negative

This demonstrates that gentrification is _____________________ for the city of Boston because it indicates

that ____________________________________________________________________________________

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Document 7: positive or negative

This demonstrates that gentrification is _____________________ for the city of Boston because it indicates

that ____________________________________________________________________________________

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Document 8:

Between 1960 and 1980, approximately 25,000 residents were displaced. Most were poor and working class;

many were children or the elderly; many were African-American. During the same period, an estimated 19,000

new residents moved in. Most were middle or upper class; many were adults; many were white. If buildings

make a neighborhood, it can be said that the South End was preserved. But if people make a neighborhood, an

argument can be made that it was replaced.

--Jim Vrabel in A People’s History of the New Boston (2014)

As the wage gap between college grads and non-educated workers has widened, those that could afford a more expensive standard of living actually sought it out in expensive cities, making those places even more expensive and pushing out those with less income. On the macro-scale that’s an unsettling trend. But on the micro scale, individual cities probably want to ask themselves, “Who wins this game, and why?” Sociologist Richard Florida pointed out a “big talent sort” with “the highly educated and highly skilled going some places and the less educated and less skilled going to others. All that suggests that it isn’t low rents that attract the highly educated workers Boston wants. It’s good jobs and good amenities. Boston knows it has an inbred advantage because so many college students come here in the first place. If the city wants to stay on the upper end of the “big sort,” they’d do well to keep striving for those higher income college graduates.

--Eric Randel, Is the Entire City of Boston Gentrifying? (Boston Magazine, July 2014)

positive or negative

This demonstrates that gentrification is _____________________ for the city of Boston because it indicates

that ____________________________________________________________________________________

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Document 9: positive or negative

This demonstrates that gentrification is _____________________ for the city of Boston because it indicates

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Document 10:

Maps showing the impact of gentrification on minority groups of Boston (2014)

Dudley Square before and after the renovation of the Ferdinand (now Bolling) building

positive or negative

This demonstrates that gentrification is _____________________ for the city of Boston because it indicates

that ____________________________________________________________________________________

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Document 11: positive or negative

This demonstrates that gentrification is _____________________ for the city of Boston because it indicates

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Document 12:

In June, the U.S. Census Bureau announced that Boston’s population was on the rise and between April 2010 and July 2011, it increased to 625,087 from 617,594, reported the previous year.

Locals might fight the change as the population rises, either due to increases in rent based on the high demand to reside in a specific area, or because they claim Southie is no longer  “a tight knit neighborhood”. According to Joseph Vigdor, a professor of Public Policy and Economics at Duke University, there are some benefits for locals, especially those who are home owners.

“Increases in prices won’t really harm you. It’s going to make you wealthier, because the value of your house is moving up,” he said. Crime rates, which have plagued South Boston in the past, and even recently, may decline during the gentrification process, he said. “It’s a double-edged sword. I think a lot of people use the word gentrification to signify something that by definition is a bad thing,” said Vigdor. “You have to look at it from a neutral perspective.”

--Steve Annear in “You Will Never Be From Southie”: Debate over Gentrification Heats Up Online (BostonInno, July 2012)

Boston, Big-City Inequality Capital of the United StatesBy Kyle Clauss | January 15, 2016

BOSTON LEADS THE NATION in big-city income inequality, according to a new report released Thursday by the Brookings Institute.

The report named the Hub the most unequal major city in the U.S., with a host of numbers and figures

spelling out a troubling yet all too familiar trend of the city’s rich getting richer, and the poor getting poorer.

Boston households earning in the 95th percentile made $266,224 in 2014, while households in the 20th

percentile made just $14,942. Boston’s “95/20 ratio” of 17.8 just narrowly edges out New Orleans (17.7) for

the top spot, followed by Atlanta (17.5), Cincinnati (15.7), and Providence (15.4). Last year, a similar report

from the Brookings Institute using 2013 data placed Boston third, with a ratio of 15.0.

positive or negative

This demonstrates that gentrification is _____________________ for the city of Boston because it indicates

that ____________________________________________________________________________________

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Document 13: positive or negative

This demonstrates that gentrification is _____________________ for the city of Boston because it indicates

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Dudley’s new market rate: boon to some; to others: displacementJule Pattison-Gordon | 1/20/2016

As rents rise across the city, Dudley Square seems to be drawing real estate developers who aim to attract tenants seeking the more moderate side of market rate housing.For Roxbury residents who have long clamored for greater diversity of housing and business in the area, this may signal the hoped-for change. Their aspirations are largely reflected in the new tenants of the Bruce C. Bolling Municipal Building, with its cafés, boutiques and optometrist/art gallery.

Real estate developers like the Mayo Group apparently are banking on the district’s improved curb appeal as they usher in more market rate units. Brokers and real estate agents also said they expect many tenants to flock in from other neighborhoods as rents elsewhere in the city continue to rise.

But for Roxbury residents living in deeply affordable housing, the picture is bleaker. While rents on market rate apartments are currently near or below city average, they are climbing past the reach of the Section 8 tenants who have long inhabited the Dudley Square area; as a result, many of these tenants are likely to be displaced.

Q&A with State Rep. Malia on Gentrification

By: DAVID ERTISCHEK | February 23, 2016

Q: Development is a huge issue in JP, particularly affordable housing. What are your thoughts on those topics?

A: One of the things that drives the problem for us and across the country is federal commitment to housing has really dropped

off the agenda. When you start dealing with issues of physical issues at public housing and there are less and less resources

every year. Who’s going to pay for it? If not public housing, who is going to pay for affordable housing to be built? As the market

gets crazier, it’s even getting more difficult for smaller developers to come up with amount of money to do smaller building

projects and multi-unit projects. We’re seeing a bigger push for housing that is not affordable. I don’t know if I could afford my

house now. I bought my house in 1980. And JP wasn’t considered a destination. People would ask you why you live in JP. I didn’t

have a lot of money and I could afford to live here. The nature of what’s available has changed. There is going to be positives to

that, but when the housing mortgage crisis hit, a lot of people in JP really got hurt with evictions. I got arrested a few years ago

[for protesting] because in the Egleston Square area there was a female constituent. She moved into a house that was a former

Document 14: positive or negative

This demonstrates that gentrification is _____________________ for the city of Boston because it indicates

that ____________________________________________________________________________________

_____________________________________________________________________________________________________________________ .

Q&A with State Rep. Malia on Gentrification

By: DAVID ERTISCHEK | February 23, 2016

Q: Development is a huge issue in JP, particularly affordable housing. What are your thoughts on those topics?

A: One of the things that drives the problem for us and across the country is federal commitment to housing has really dropped

off the agenda. When you start dealing with issues of physical issues at public housing and there are less and less resources

every year. Who’s going to pay for it? If not public housing, who is going to pay for affordable housing to be built? As the market

gets crazier, it’s even getting more difficult for smaller developers to come up with amount of money to do smaller building

projects and multi-unit projects. We’re seeing a bigger push for housing that is not affordable. I don’t know if I could afford my

house now. I bought my house in 1980. And JP wasn’t considered a destination. People would ask you why you live in JP. I didn’t

have a lot of money and I could afford to live here. The nature of what’s available has changed. There is going to be positives to

that, but when the housing mortgage crisis hit, a lot of people in JP really got hurt with evictions. I got arrested a few years ago

[for protesting] because in the Egleston Square area there was a female constituent. She moved into a house that was a former

‘The Clarion’ Brings 32 Affordable Housing Units to RoxburyBy Kyle Clauss

BOSTON’S MIDDLE CLASS is rapidly disappearing. Working families are sprawling away from the city

proper as they find themselves unable to afford living here, only to encounter raising rents in the suburbs,

too. The Boston Globe ran a terrific story on this troubling phenomenon with a handful of startling figures:

--Boston households with incomes between $35,000 and $75,000 are down 3 percentage points from 2000.

--Median rents in Boston have risen by close to 50 percent over the last decade, to $2,200 a month. Wages,

meanwhile, have remained static.

--Boston rents are rising at five times the rate of income.

--Towns south of Boston have seen rents rise by almost 10 percent.

As the Globe notes, the evaporation of housing options available to Boston’s middle class is exacerbated by

the city’s insatiable need for more off-campus student housing. “Complicating the problem, real estate

developers are scooping up multifamily buildings in places like Dorchester and East Boston,” writes Katie

Johnston, “fixing them up to attract higher-end renters and sometimes evicting tenants in the process,

housing advocates say.”

Document 15: positive or negative

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Anti-eviction protest Friday in Dudley SquareCity Life Vida/Urbana planning demonstration for Ruggles Street tenants Friday night

Felicha Young, 49, is among tenants in a Ruggles Street apartment building facing eviction.

Protestors on Friday planned to demonstrate outside an apartment building in Roxbury where many longtime residents face eviction.Of the 15

units in the building, five tenants remain at 9-15 Ruggles Street in Dudley Square, advocacy group City Life/Vida Urbana told Metro.

Protestors planned to gather there at 6:30 p.m. on Friday, where they hope to convince the building’s new owner not to renovate those five

remaining units, and to keep rents low for residents who can’t afford to find somewhere else to live, organizers said.

“I don’t want to leave Roxbury. I was born and raised here. This is my home,” said Felicha Young, a 49-year-old mother of two who said she

grew up in the Orchard Park projects and has been living in her Ruggles Street apartment for 16 years. “This is where my roots are.” Young

said she’s been looking, but can’t find a two-bedroom apartment cheaper than $1,643, the cap for her federal housing assistance voucher.

A Boston Housing Court judge Thursday allowed Young until the end of February to move or reach an agreement with the building’s owner,

according to Deena Zakim, an attorney with Greater Boston Legal Services who is working with Young.