A 97-year-old World War II veteran who fought in Iwo Jima is waging one final battle for the America he needs to see — saving reasonably priced housing within the Back Bay.
Richard Cook was wheeled out to the entrance of Tent City, the place he lives along with his daughter Heather Cook in a townhouse on the again, in a freshly-printed white T-Shirt that shouts “SAVE TENT CITY.”
Other involved residents — some shouting out affectionate hellos to the aged veteran — would quickly be part of the pair at round 6 p.m. Wednesday in their very own shirts. They additionally introduced boards protesting “Peabody Properties stop Air BNBs” or just asking “What about us?”
The residents have a litany of complaints about their constructing’s administration and a burgeoning worry that the complicated that homes their properties — some, like Cook, have lived there for many years — will change arms.
“With this place, when there’s hundreds of rooms and this and that, and security, and so they come to the end of the line — they see there’s nothing here anymore, it’s not an easy grab anymore,” Richard Cook stated. “Now they want to get what they can, and that’s the whole story.”
The actual drawback, Heather Cook stated, is “We don’t really know the truth” about the way forward for Tent City, which is a big combined growth of items together with lower- and middle-income items.
“There’s talks. The hearsay is that it’s going to be sold because of the backdoor conversations,” she stated. “It was understood that the only way the property could be sold is if BPDA (Boston Planning & Development Agency) joined conversations.”
The Herald was unable to achieve a consultant of Peabody Properties, the corporate that manages Tent City, by press time.
It’s a scenario that the 2 metropolis councilors who stood beside the residents, Council President Ed Flynn and Councilor At-Large Ruthzee Louijeune, stated they’ve been conscious of since no less than final 12 months.
Heather Cook “had mentioned that there were issues with the management company here at Tent City and an effort to push out our residents, which is completely unjust, especially when you know the history of Tent City and how hard folks like Mel King and folks fought for affordable housing to be here,” Louijeune stated.
Tent City appears like an uncommon identify for an residence complicated and that’s as a result of it’s: The identify commemorates a 1968 demonstration by South End residents a few lack of reasonably priced housing. Activist Mel King, lengthy an opponent of the then Boston Redevelopment Authority’s evictions of low-income residents, organized a sit-in on the website to protest a parking storage being constructed there as a substitute of reasonably priced housing.
It was a problem that galvanized Boston and was on the heart of the 1983 mayoral race between then-state Rep. King and supreme winner Ray Flynn. The 1988 residence complicated was constructed throughout Flynn’s tenure.
“This place has significance to me and my family,” Ed Flynn, Ray’s son, stated. “But more importantly it’s about the residents and making sure that Boston is a city for everybody and not just the wealthy.”
Richard Cook, who caught with the protests into the night, added he was a sniper with the Navy through the struggle and was overjoyed to return to Boston as a plumber. “It was really something in those days,” he stated of the neighborhood’s working-class appeal he’s now combating to retain.
Source: www.bostonherald.com”