How Does Meaningful, Well-intentioned Development in Neighborhoods of Color Become Predatory?

Elected Officials of Boston:

How does meaningful, well intentioned development in neighborhoods of color become predatory?

Well, one might think that any expansion of retail in Dudley Square would be a good thing and long overdue. Indeed, the boost in increased traffic and pedestrian activity bodes well for existing businesses. But the specter of a potential Wall-Mart in our future looms large and begs the question:  Who really benefits from development in Boston’s neighborhoods of color?

Yes, buildings are built, placards are posted and accolades conferred, but what about the people a given development effort is meant to serve?

A recent bone of promised union work to construct a Wal-Mart in Saugus is little incentive here in Roxbury or any other neighborhood of color in Boston. Rather, it’s a bone of contention, given such union contracts help to exclude local workers of color. With less than inclusive hiring and poor union recruitment efforts for perspective members of color, one is left asking: how is development helping our neighborhood?

Moreover, developing in this manner does not help sustain neighborhoods of color, but is in fact predatory to neighborhoods of color! And we know better!

225 Centre Street is part of the Jackson Square development project. This building is slated to be a union only job site, despite community insistence that non-union prevailing wage construction jobs be available. This type of workforce strategy will not serve the population largely impacted by this development. The strategy will, however, serve the union workforce, for-profit and mostly non-profit development corporations.

Here’s a housing example: the City of Boston allocates approximately 85% of its affordable housing resources to non-profits.  The state allocates approximately 50% of its resources.  This skew in resource allocation excludes construction Minority Business Enterprise’s across the board, which impacts architects, lawyers, accountants, property managers and construction personal that a business of this type might hire. Given MBE’s have a much better track record of inclusive hiring, this is devastating to communities of color in Boston.

Additionally, our difficulty to properly educate and prepare more young people to take up a trade or join the professional ranks translates to housing and a standard of living that is bounded by what little preparation we do get. Often, this preparation affords little. Increasingly, that housing and standard of living requires subsidy, which large developers, particularly of the non-profit ilk, too often provide and are happy to oblige at the expense of local small businesses.

If education is poor, jobs paying a living wage are scarce and development policies that sustain everything else, save the community it’s meant to serve, neighborhoods of color are left with little opportunity, and feeling preyed on. And that is wrong!

Development activity needs to be the catalyst which provides the underpinnings and infrastructure for sustaining permanent economic viability in neighborhoods of color. A permanent and viable economic base is a healthy permanent job creator and path to creating wealth.

Dare we ask: What is bad about people of color building wealth to secure their future? Nothing, right?

Please help us make things fair by standing with the community to say:

1. No to all exclusionary work sites that insist on union labor only!

2. No to work sites that cannot make 25% of the construction dollars available to legitimate MBE’s as the bare minimum!

3. No to contractors who cannot hit the Boston jobs policy as the bare minimum!

4. No to unions that do not maintain an inclusive membership!

5. No to housing and development policies that keep our neighborhoods poor, with little or no opportunity to grow economically like the rest of Boston!