Building blocks for compassionate cities
A year after becoming the first woman and person of color to be elected to lead the city of Boston, Mayor Michelle Wu stood on the steps of a vacated church in February to fulfill a promise to reinvent how the city cares for its residents.
The building is part of a $67 million project to lift up low-income neighborhoods. Seventeen unused buildings and empty lots will be remade into more than 800 income-restricted units for rent or ownership, combined with artist studios, shop fronts, health clinics, and after-school centers.
The project is one of the more innovative ideas playing out across the United States as municipal planners and private developers grapple with how to ensure cities provide adequate housing for both existing and new residents. In many cities, that requires redressing historical harms caused by eminent domain or anti-blight laws that allowed city officials to appropriate homes or overrun whole neighborhoods.
It also means adjusting to economic changes, such as a boom in tech industries, that can leave cities like Boston too expensive for people in service jobs or low-salaried professions like teaching. “We can’t grow sustainably unless our residents are secure in their homes,” Ms. Wu said in her first State of the City address in January.
In some cities, like Washington, minimum-wage workers must clock 80 hours per week to afford a one-bedroom unit. The 2022 Greater Boston Housing Report Card found that Boston’s rental and homeowner vacancies were among the lowest in the country.
Ms. Wu’s strategy centers on replacing the city’s planning and development board and banning the use of anti-blight laws that enabled city officials to seize buildings they decided were dilapidated or otherwise undesirable. In its place, the mayor has proposed a new board under her office to create, as she said at city council meeting, “climate resilience and healthy, connected communities.”
Developers, citizens, and city officials are struggling to agree on what her goals will require. That may be more unifying than it sounds. Removing obstacles to adequate housing will require broad and democratic discussion, one marked by humility and openness. Mayor Wu’s project to renovate and renew 17 sites across Boston’s diverse neighborhoods is a start toward refashioning a city with compassion for all.
