As Boston moves into 2024, and you Mayor Wu put the finishing touches on your State of the City address, a united citizenry wants to share the current state of our thinking with you.
A number of common concerns, particularly regarding continued off-kilter real estate development, have brought together concerned citizens from all parts of the city: from the Alliance of Downtown Civic Organization neighborhoods, to adjacent Charlestown, Roxbury, Mission Hill, Dorchester, East Boston, JP and also outer neighborhoods like West Roxbury, Hyde Park, and Mattapan. Mayor, you may have noticed a recent bounty crop of letters, issued almost weekly and predominantly focused on your development policy. Most remarkably, many say the same things but come independently from very diverse communities. Respectfully, it's time you take serious note of these letters and their sentiments.
Having read your recent BPDA press release, we are worried, Madam Mayor, that you may try to take a sort of victory lap on the City’s year-long BRA and development reform efforts.
That would be a mistake. These “reform” efforts have not gone well despite what you are being told by officials involved. The amount of friction and distrust between the city autocracy and normal everyday citizens has never been higher. A reform effort like Squares and Streets, which replaces neighborhood zoning and favors instead bureaucratic centralized authoritarian rulemaking, is broadly viewed as a step backward. It didn’t have to be this way, but this is where your people and the BRA have brought us.
We ought to be having a larger “path forward” discussion, to include critical issues like affordable housing. Yet we are having no such discussions. Instead, the BRA continues to shield a system which hands out tens of millions of dollars of tax abatements in return for a tiny fraction of that sum in affordable housing “linkage”. Very few agree on even a definition of affordable housing. Fewer still agree on where this housing should be built, and why our antiquated linkage systems always seem to yield tens, not hundreds, of affordable units.
We are also troubled by Boston’s significant overbuild in commercial space, especially biolabs. Why do we have 10 million square feet of lab space under construction when all labs combined today just barely tip 3.5 million square feet? What’s the economic math here? Also, can you tell us clearly if Boston is shrinking or growing? If it is shrinking, as most statistical measurement outfits report, how is it shrinking? Who is leaving, and why? And why, when you speak of reforms, is there no discussion of this continued commercial overbuild, almost twice as large as Manhattan’s?
Mayor Wu, 2024 can herald a new dawn for you. You’re halfway through your mayoral term, but stormy skies greet you right now. What also greets you is a massive block of residents who supported you during your campaign and sincerely want your campaign platform - true reforms, more growth, more equity - to become reality. But Boston is badly off-track right now. Please work with us, your constituents and previous campaign supporters, to right the boat and put Boston back on a track of trust and cooperation. It might take a little humility, but the benefits will be legion. Please make these corrections so that we can feel great about supporting you again.
Ford Cavallari, Chair, Alliance of Downtown Civic Organizations Steve Fox, Chair, South End Forum Martyn Roetter, Chair, Neighborhood Association of Back Bay Rodney Singleton, Steering Committee, Highland Park Neighborhood Coalition
