Residents of ten apartment buildings in Chinatown face the threat of eviction, according to the Chinese Progressive Association in Boston Chinatown, reports WGBH (Photo by Zozolka).
Four tenants alone were seeking protection from eviction the day a reporter showed up at CPA offices.
“I want to stay here,” said Tan Qiang Yu, one of those tenants. “We don’t — me and my wife — we don’t speak any English. It’s hard for us to get around. We don’t know how to take the subway.”
25 years ago, Asians made up 76 percent of the residents in Boston Chinatown. But with luxury apartments replacing low and moderate income housing, by 2010 that percentage had dropped to 46 percent.
“Where are people gonna go?” CPA’s Karen Chen said. “There’s really not many places that people could move to and a lot of the new housing stock in Chinatown, or around Chinatown, are all luxury.”
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You can read more details of the gentrification of Boston’s Chinatown and what some hope to do about it on WGBH.
