The Codcast: Pushed out of Roxbury
By 
Some people may have been taken aback by the overflow crowd of 350 people who showed up earlier this month for a Boston City Council hearing in Roxbury to hear concerns about displacement. Kim Janey was not one of them.
“I was not surprised at all,” said Janey, the district city councilor who represents Roxbury along with parts of Dorchester, the South End, and the Fenway.
Janey, who sponsored the November 13 hearing, said concerns about displacement have reached a fever pitch in Roxbury, where housing costs shot up by 70 percent from 2010 to 2015, twice the rate of the overall citywide appreciation of 36 percent during that period. “People are feeling the heat,” she said on this week’s Codcast. “People are being pushed out of our neighborhood. And so we need to come up with creative solutions to keep residents who want to be in Roxbury in Roxbury.”
Exacerbating the problem, said Janey, is the city’s enormous racial wealth gap, which has left blacks disproportionately vulnerable to displacement. She said 81 percent of the households in her district are renters, a much higher figure than the citywide rate.
The displacement and gentrification story is certainly not a new one. What’s playing out now in areas of Roxbury looks similar to the changes that overtook the South End a few decades ago.
Just how to head off the negative consequences of growth and development, however, has long eluded planners and activists in Boston and cities across the country. “All things really need to be on the table,” said Janey, including recent talk of a return to rent control, which was banned through a 1994 statewide ballot question. “There isn’t one magic pill we can take that’s going to solve it.”
Other approaches that should be considered, she said, include a vacancy tax and a “graduated transfer tax” to discourage people from buying and quickly flipping property.
Jarred Johnson, founder of Dorchester Growing Together, an affiliate of the national YIMBY movement that thinks robust growth is part of the answer to the urban housing affordability crisis, joined Janey on the Codcast and said boosting the housing supply has to be part of the solution.
Janey said the development boom that has been underway in the city hasn’t addressed the problem. “We keep building housing that people in the city can’t afford to live in,” she said.
Johnson argued that new development, even at the high end, can take pressure off existing housing stock. Indeed, he argued that opposition to new projects in wealthy neighborhoods like the Back Bay is contributing to the pressure on prices and supply being felt in places like Roxbury. Meanwhile, he said neighborhoods like Roxbury have to be open to “upzoning” and other changes that allow greater density and cost-reducing approaches like the use of prefab housing.
“I don’t see a future in which the housing stock and the visual look of Boston stays the same and we have affordable housing,” he said. “To me, that doesn’t jive. To me, the community and the neighborhood is the people.”
Janey said some projects may be too big for a neighborhood, but there has to be a willingness to accept new development. She recounted a recent showdown in a Roxbury neighborhood over boosting a project size from six units to eight units.
–MICHAEL JONAS
BEACON HILL
Robert L. Reynolds of Putnam Investments and Chris Anderson of the Massachusetts High Tech Council say Massachusetts is in the fiscal stability cellar, and the state could be plunged into crisis if the economy falters. (CommonWealth)
A new health care fee is costing Massachusetts businesses $288 million. (MassLive)
Jay Ash, the governor’s secretary of housing and economic development, signals that he may be moving to the Massachusetts Competitive Partnership. (Boston Globe)
Treasurer Deb Goldberg says online lottery sales are the way to go if the state wants to compete with the coming of legalized sports betting. (Boston Herald)
MUNICIPAL MATTERS
Governing profiles 10 men and women it selected as public officials of the year.
A Pioneer Institute report says there has not been much progress is switching over to civilian flaggers in the state mostly because they are being paid at rates comparable to the pay police had been getting for such duty. (Boston Herald)
WASHINGTON/NATIONAL/INTERNATIONAL
Ed Burley says compromise is possible between US Reps. Nancy Pelosi and Seth Moulton. (CommonWealth) David Bernstein suggests Moulton is not off his rocker. (WGBH)
The ever unpredictable Alex Beam comes to Howard Zinn’s defense. (Boston Globe)
ELECTIONS
Video game developer Brianna Wu, whose Democratic primary challenge to US Rep. Steve Lynch didn’t gain much traction, says she will run again in two years. (Boston Globe)
BUSINESS/ECONOMY
Retail pot is here, but it looks like it will be a while before a store opens in the Boston area. (Boston Globe) A Herald editorial laments the fact that the first pot store likely to open in Boston will be on Friend Street near North Station, a neighborhood that “is already a hotbed of drug addiction.”
Amy Dain says malls are reinventing themselves as “lifestyle centers.” (CommonWealth)
EDUCATION
Rahn Dorsey, who served as Boston’s first ever education chief, a top post distinct from the district superintendent’s position, left last week after five years on the job with no word from City Hall on why or where he’s heading. (Boston Herald)
Lisa Guisbond of Citizens for Public Schools says the proposed charter school expansion in New Bedford is “mind-boggling.” (CommonWealth)
The “fingertip rule” may get a second look as Worcester reviews its school dress code. (Telegram & Gazette)
HEALTH/HEALTH CARE
More medical school graduates are skipping out on the years of practice that used to precede diving into the health-related startup world and heading directly into entrepreneurship at the start of their careers. (Boston Globe)
Dr. Andrea McKee says less than 2 percent of Americans eligible for lung cancer screenings are getting them. (CommonWealth)
TRANSPORTATION
As the MBTA’s Fiscal and Management Control Board prepares to debate the transit agency’s future governance structure, Jim Aloisi calls for more municipal input on the oversight panel. (CommonWealth)
The MBTA is working on — but acknowledges there is no easy fix for — “bunching” — the phenomenon of long delays for a bus or train, followed by several arriving in close succession. (Boston Globe)
Mayors and city managers are forming a commuter rail coalition. (CommonWealth)
ENERGY/ENVIRONMENT
The Trump administration released a devastating report Friday on climate change that directly contradicts its own approach to the issue — and is expected now try to discount or ignore the findings. (New York Times)
We need a Green New Deal in Massachusetts, says Craig S. Altemose of Better Future Project. (CommonWealth) Meanwhile, Eric Wilkinson of the Environmental League of Massachusetts says Boston needs to do more, including building offshore wind and electrifying the transportation sector. (CommonWealth)
A US Senate field hearing on the gas explosions in the Merrimack Valley is set for today in Lawrence. (WGBH)
Peter Howell, founder of the Nantucket-based Seal Action Committee, says gray seals should be removed from the endangered species list as part of the effort to curtail the presence of sharks in the waters off the Massachusetts coast. (Boston Globe)
Weaning the world off coal as a source of energy production is a top priority for addressing climate change — and an enormously difficult thing to pull off. (New York Times)
RELIGION
For St. Anne’s Church in Fall River, the masses are over. (Herald News)
CASINOS/MARIJUANA
A Lowell Sun editorial acknowledges pot sales got off to a smooth start, but worries that the problems will only emerge over time.
CRIMINAL JUSTICE/COURTS
Boston Police Commissioner William Gross, in a Facebook post, ripped the ACLU of Massachusetts over its lawsuit claiming the department is shielding too much information about its collection of data on alleged gang members. (Boston Herald) The ACLU, in a statement, said Gross was diverting attention away from legitimate issues raised by the group. (Boston Herald)
Bristol County courts are using videoconferencing to hold bail hearings for detainees being held in jail, a move corrections and court officials are applauding and defense lawyers are criticizing. (The Enterprise)
MEDIA
Loretta McLaughlin, a one-time editor of the Boston Globe editorial page and veteran health and medical reporter, died at age 90. (Boston Globe)