For residents in Boston’s Chinatown, fears of displacement loom after a 25-story hotel building proposal moves forward.
The Asian population of Chinatown has declined from 69% in 2000 to 48% in 2020. Longtime resident Bingxiang Ma saw the shift over the past decade and said the hotel would oust more enduring residents.
In a meeting held in November by the Chinatown Residence Association, about 100 community members convened to share their thoughts on the proposal, most of whom opposed it. They raised concerns about the effects on the cost of living and potential traffic congestion, alongside grievances about the developer.
“The community feels like the city has kind of been listening to what the community is saying, but there are certain things about the height and affordability levels that we’re concerned about,” said Lydia Lowe, executive director of the Chinatown Community Land Trust to WGBH.
Chinese developer Sing Ming Chan has proposed a luxury hotel at 15-25 Harrison Ave. According to the Boston Planning Department Agency’s (BPDA) website, the August proposal seeks to build a structure exceeding current zoning height limits by 100 feet. As a result, public feedback and approval from the city will be required to proceed.
The proposal follows BPDA’s new zoning draft, which aims to promote affordable housing, emphasize the significance of small businesses and cultural spaces, and highlight Chinatown’s unique character. It was formally adopted on Dec. 14, stating that the staff would “work on new zoning for Chinatown that addresses the neighborhood’s needs as a vital cultural and community hub.”
Instead, the hotel’s proposal would be zoned as a mixed-use “neighborhood and cultural tourism destination” with hotels and entertainment venues, according to WGBH.
Chan also owns a hotel on Oxford Street, which has received several complaints regarding its upkeep. On Oct. 29, the Oxford Street Tenant Association wrote to Mayor Michelle Wu and city councilors in a letter expressing concern because “he’s not a responsible landlord. In our building, we continue to have rodents, cockroaches, and leaky appliances, with Mr. Chan unresponsive to our maintenance requests.”
“Once 25 stories are approved, this will affect other buildings as well and make gentrification and increasing rents worse in the privately owned row houses like where I live,” wrote Cuimei Zhu during the meeting’s public comment period. “That is why we are now living three households in one apartment and have been on the waiting list for elderly affordable housing for nine years.”
Waitlists for affordable housing have long been an issue for Chinatown residents. For Mei, a housing specialist at the Asian American Civil Association, applicants can wait for as long as five to ten years. “There are limits on affordable housing available in Chinatown, those housing are called subsidized housing, and almost all of these types of housing are already full capacity as the housing authority no longer accepts any more waiting lists,” says Mei.
The Asian Community Development Corporation (ACDC), a nonprofit that creates affordable housing in several parts of Boston, including Chinatown, said the hotel raises several issues: “the project exceeds current zoning limits; it contributes to gentrification and displacement; there’s a questionable need for a hotel in Chinatown.”
The nonprofit’s strategy for new, affordable housing lies in buying pre-existing structures in tandem with building new ones, “So we will continue to build new affordable housing, because there isn’t enough, but we also want to continue this new strategy, which is trying to buy what’s already out there. And in some ways you can think of it as once we, a nonprofit, buy it, it’s in effect taking it off of the speculative market,” says Angie Liou, executive director of ACDC, with Sampan.
“We know how difficult it was to build the community and form Chinatown, that’s why we have to protect Chinatown. We will always protect Chinatown, because it’s passed down from generation to generation,” expresses Ma.
Although some residents have departed for cheaper areas, a substantial number have remained out of necessity. Many, like Ma, are immigrants who have developed social networks with people speaking their language–with some residents not able to speak English at all.
An additional concern is the lack of a parking garage in the new building, decreasing parking spaces in an already busy pedestrian corner.
City Councilor Ed Flynn, who represents the district, has asked the BPDA to extend the comment period for the proposal that was initially set to close in November.
The extension was extended until Dec. 30. Boston’s Planning Department board will now consider whether or not to approve the plan or send it back to developers for revisions.
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