Mission Main tenants protest relocations

Mission Main tenants protest relocations

A group of Mission Main tenants staged a demonstration Friday afternoon on Ward Street in Roxbury to protest the Boston Housing Authority's plan to demolish their homes and relocate them out of Mission Main while the development is reconstructed.

"They've already removed more than 200 people from other buildings they destroyed and they haven't even started construction yet", said Maria Lebron, one of the organizers of the protest. "We want them to start construction on those empty lots before they kick anybody else out".

The Boston Housing Authority has given about 70 additional families at Mission Main until the end of August to move out of the development, so that demolition can begin on the buildings they currently occupy. All departing residents are being offered housing in other BHA sites, or Section 8 housing vouchers that subsidize market-rate rents, according to BHA officials.

Mission Main is undergoing a massive renovation as part of at $100 million U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development grant called Hope 6. The grant was awarded in 1993, but five years later housing units have only been destroyed. None have been built, angering HUD officials who earlier this year threatened to revoke the Hop 6 funding if construction did not commence.

In April Boston Housing authority officials announced that lingering disagreements between the BHA, HUD, tenants, and the Mission Main Development team, a private development company running the project, had been resolved and that the project would move forward.

But yesterday protesting residents said the BHA and the private development team has mismanaged Hope 6 thus far, failing to work with Mission Main tenants or involve them in development plans, and stalling on the construction phase of the project.

In a statement the group of protesters said they were "not satisfactorily represented by the current Tenant Task Force" and called for the election of new tenant leaders.

Adeline Stallings, co-chair of the Tenant Task Force, would have none of it": "Let's get off the bull- and let's get down to the facts of it", Stallings told the Banner.

"They have known since day one that they have to move, they just don't want to move", Stalling said of the protesters. "The Task Force members have to move, we all have to move", she added.

The Tenant Task Force last held an election in March of 1996, according to Stallings. HUD requires Hope 6 projects to have tenant elections every two years.

Most tenants that have moved out of Mission Main have been relocated to other BHA units, many in the Bromley-Health Housing Development in Jamaica Plain, some in subsidized private units. According to the protesters, in the latest round of relocations some tenants have been offered only Section 8 housing vouchers, which subsidize market-rate apartment rents, rather than BHA housing.

"People don't want the Section 8s because you usually have to move around year to year when landlords keep raising the rents", said Ceredo Dean, an 11-year resident of Mission Main.

"A lot of people have lived here their whole life and are afraid that if they leave they won't ever be able to come back" Dean said.

Hillary Jones, chief of staff for the Boston Housing Authority, said such fears were unfounded "Everyone who is temporarily displaced as a part of the Hope 6 project has a right to return once reconstruction is complete".

Roger Cassin, project manager for the Mission Main Development team, said construction actually began on the project on Monday. BHA officials and residents, though, said they were not aware that any construction had begun.

Photo (Victor Maitas took part in protest)