Mass. Legislators' Campaigns: Funded By Real Estate Ind. Execs?

Massachusetts Senate Housing Committee Co-Chair Lydia Edwards may not be in a hurry to respond to the affordable housing crisis that Massachusetts market-rate tenants are facing during the current decade by holding any rent stabilization bill-related public hearings this summer.

One reason might be because the election campaign committee of the Massachusetts legislature’s Housing Committee co-chair received individual contributions of $1,000 from individual real estate industry developers and their relatives—who generally oppose enactment of state-wide or local rent-control legislation and mainly “develop” luxury apartment buildings containing condo or market-rate rental units—between June 2017 and June 2023, totaling thousands of dollars.

Between December 16, 2019 and December 20, 2022, for example, the Edwards Committee campaign committee of the current co-chair of the Massachusetts legislature’s Joint Committee On Housing deposited 6 individual contributions, totaling $6,000, received from Millennium Partners Founding Partner Christopher Jeffries and his wife, Lisa Jeffries, as well as 2 individual contributions, totaling $2,000, from the Millennium Partners Founding Partner’s son and daughter-in-law, Millennium Partners VP Sean Jeffries and Jennifer Jeffries—according to data posted on the Massachusetts Office of Campaign and Political Finance website.

In addition, between December 16, 2019 and December 20, 2022, the campaign committee of the current Joint Committee on Housing Co-Chair deposited 10 individual campaign contributions, totaling $10,000, received from executives or relatives of executives of the apparently historically or currently Millennium Partners-affiliated Cargo Ventures real estate industry firm.

Millennium Partners was formed in 1991 by Christopher Jeffries and Philip Aarons, a former assistant to former New York City Mayor Ed Koch and a Koch administration official between 1978 and 1983.

But according to a book review by Samuel Zipp that appeared in the Nov. 23, 2010 issue of The Nation magazine, “many blacks saw” then-NYC Mayor Koch’s ”attacks on poverty programs and his turn to neoliberalism as biased,” “the mayor was judged mostly on his insensitivity to the ways in which racism and segregation had limited possibilities for people of color” and “he failed to appreciate the deeper structural inequalities still faced by blacks and Latinos.”

After filling the Koch administration’s President of the NYC Public Development Corporation position from mid-1979 through 1983, Aarons then became President of General Atlantic Realty Corporation, the real estate subsidiary of General Atlantic, a privately held investment firm, before later establishing Millennium Partners with Jeffries.

According to its website, “Millennium Partners has developed more than 2,900 luxury condominiums” and “owns and operates a portfolio worth over $4 billion.” And in Massachusetts, Millennium Partners/MP Boston has contributed to the institutionally racist gentrification of Boston by “developing” the 15-story, 256-unit Millennium Place luxury project in the Theatre District, the Millennium Tower luxury project and the Winthrop Center luxury complex.

Elsewhere in the United States--after the Millennium Tower of 419 luxury condominium units which Millennium Partners “developed” at 301 Mission Street in San Francisco apparently developed sinking foundation and tilting problems--the Millennium Tower Association of luxury condo unit owners residing in this skyscraper apartment building initiated a lawsuit against Millennium Partners which alleged that “the Tower was constructed on an inadequate foundation system and has experienced vertical displacement of over 16 inches” and “the tower has settled differentially and it is out of plumb by over 12 inches.”

In an email, sent to the public relations firm which handles press inquiries submitted to Millennium Partners before posting this article on the Boston Patch website, this writer provided Millennium Partners with an opportunity to respond by email to the following four questions of clarification:

1. Would it be accurate to characterize MP Boston as being the Boston office of Millennium Partners and to consider MP Boston and Millennium Partners to be the same company?;

2. Is MP Boston and/or Millennium Partners affiliated in any way with Jacob Citrin's Cargo Ventures company?;

3. Is MP Boston and/or Millennium Partners opposed to enactment of a state-wide rent control law in Massachusetts and/or opposed to the Massachusetts legislature allowing the City of Boston to enact a rent stabilization ordinance?; and

4. Why did some individual Millennium Partners executives make individual campaign contributions of $1,000 to the Edwards Committee campaign committee of Massachusetts State Senator Lydia Edwards between December 16, 2019 and December 20, 2022?.

But, according to a July 14, 2023 email from the San Francisco-based PR firm employed by Millennium Partners, “The team” of Millennium Partners/MP Boston “has no comment at this time.”