| FUP| | First-Year Urban Program |
|
|
|
|
work that city: roxburyprevious|next
Loosely bounded by Mass Ave to the NE and Huntington to the NW. "Rocksbury" was so-named because of the puddingstone found in the area. Roxbury today is the neighborhood home to a large African-American population, as well as Latino, Caribbean, and Cape Verdean (especially around Dudley St.). In 1985, the composition was 76% of African Descent, 13% Latino, and 11% others (largely white and Asian). The median income for Roxbury was only 2/3 of Boston's median. In the early 1980s Roxbury lost many manufacturing jobs. A few surrounding manufacturing firms and retail and service stores in the Dudley Square area provide most jobs. Until about 1900, Roxbury was a community of English, Irish, and German immigrants and their descendants. In the early 20th century, Roxbury became more diverse with the establishment of a Jewish community in the Grove Hall are along Blue Hill Avenue. Following a massive migration from the South to northern cities in the 1940s and 1950s, Roxbury became the center of the African-American community in Boston. Social issues and the resulting urban renewal activities of the 1960s and 1970s contributed to a decline in the neighborhood. More recently, grassroots efforts by residents have been the force behind revitalizing historic areas and creating Roxbury Heritage State Park. The relocation of the Orange Line and development of the Southwest Corridor Park spurred major investment, including Roxbury Community College at Roxbury Crossing and Ruggles Center at Columbus Avenue and Ruggles Street. Commercial development now promises reinvestment in the form of shopping and related consumer services. Highland Park, Dudley St., Bromley Heath: Although these spots are all south of here, they are in the heart of Roxbury, and represent community action for change. FUP has been involved with many organizations in this area. Dudley Street is a home to DSNI, which used to be a FUP site and which we see a movie about. Highland Park is the area where HYCC is located, home of Sam, an incredible VISTA volunteer who came to Roxbury in the '60s and never left. Historically, the area has the remains of an old revolutionary fort. John D. O'Bryant High School: One of the three exam schools in Boston, along with Boston Latin Academy and Boston Latin School. It offfers college prep classes with a focus on science and technology. It is the most racially diverse of the three schools -- its student population in December, 2002 was 28.1% Asian, 48.0% Black, 14.6% Hispanic, 9.2% White. (In comparison, BLA's numbers were 22.0/25.4/10.9/41.4, and BLS's numbers are 28.8/13.7/6.1/51.3. The Boston Public School System as a whole: 9/48/28/14.) At the same time, it has the worst MCAS test scores of the three exam schools; one former FUP leader called it the token exam school for the colored community, claiming that only BLA really prepared students to go to college, but one proud O'Bryant parent defends the school's academic strengths and says that the racial balance of the school makes the experience at this high school much better than at Boston Latin High School. Dudley Square / Silver Line: Dudley Square is a major hub for MBTA buses, bringing the mixed blessing of improved transportation/business and increased pollution. In September 2002, MBTA kicked off the Silver Line, a fifth T line connecting Dudley Square with downtown. (Later, the Silver Line will extend to Logan Airport.) Unlike the other four existing T lines, the Silver Line is not a light-rail train but rather a bus with its own lane. Some activists have dubbed it "the Silver Lie" because it went far over budget and is not the light-rail system once promised by the city; some scoff at having another bus, because they claim that the bus will be slow in traffic even when in its own lane. On the plus side, the bus is very large and comfortable, environmentally friendly, and pretty classy. First Church of Roxbury: "The Campaign to Build Safer Communities," a (currently local) prison reform campaign now focused on shutting down several control units (high-security prisons), is based here. Some other sites of interest include Madison Park HS, Roxbury Community College, Reggie Lewis Track and Athletic Center, and Jackson Square. While walking past Madison Park, you might want to talk about MCAS, the return to neighborhood schools, and METCO. Roxbury Crossing T stop: The Southwest Corridor park can also be seen here. In the late 1960s, the federal government had earmarked money for construction of a 12-lane highway (8 traffic lanes, 2 emergency lanes on each side) where the park and the Orange Line. Local organizers joined forces with local government to freeze the federal funds and turn them over to the state to be used for public transportation. As a result, the Orange Line was moved from Roxbury and extended further into Jamaica Plain. Even though local organizers recognized the problem of moving the line they agreed to it with promises of getting a line into Roxbury, a promise "fulfilled" by the Silver Line bus (see South End stuff for more info). The entire project attracted impressive development, led by community members such as Chuck Turner (now City Councillor for the area), who created a community college, park space, and some local businesses. Also, look toward Boston and see the police station, conspicuously placed between Lower Roxbury and Mission Hill. back to top Misson Hill Mission Hill: a.k.a., "Mission" or (if you live in Alice Taylor or Mission Main) "MHP," the Mission Hill Projects. Demographics: Alice Taylor and Mission Main are composed mostly of black and Latino families; among the Latino families, most are Puerto Rican or Dominican. There are many single mothers and a few adult males; quite a few of the Latino families have two parents in the household. Also, many of the families are related. Mission Main is mixed-housing, although it is illegal to group people together by income level so the market-rate housing is spread throughout the development. For the most part, people in the two developments get along. Community Groups and Institutions: Issues: Community Voice Both Alice Taylor and Mission Main have elected Tenants Task Forces charged with representing tenants in management decisions. (Currently, in Mission Main at least, residents have 50% ownership of the development.) There are mixed feelings, however, about how effective these groups are. Out of frustration with the Mission Main Tenants Task Force, resident and activist Gloria Murray formed the Mission Main Concerned Residents Committee a few years ago to rally more residents into having their voices brought to the table. The Mission Hill Gazette is a monthly newspaper (not particularly with an activist perspective), available in places such as the Parker Hill Library. The Mission Hill Youth Collaborative is growing in its potential to represent youth, and Sociedad Latina is active in the Boston Parent Organizing Network currently around education issues. Teens in The BLOCK program have put out a summer newsletter - copies are probably available at the community center. State representative Jeffrey Sanchez, who grew up in Orchard Park and Mission Main, and Councilor Mike Ross are two of the main politicians representing Mission Hill. Educational, Medical, and Cultural Institutions Mission Hill is surrounded by institutions. Educational institutions include Harvard School of Public Health and Harvard Medical School, Northeastern, Wentworth Institute of Technology, Simmons, Emerson, Mass College of Art, and more. Further medical institutions include Brigham and Women's Hospital, Children's Hospital, and more. Cultural institutions include the Isabella Stuart Gardner Museum and the Museum of Fine Arts. Some feel these institutions do not do much for the community besides create new buildings and take up more space. Some institutions do make some effort to work with the community though - often some people in an institution are invested in community partnership (and among these, some more genuine and some because of public relations and community relations), while others in the same institution are apathetic about or outright against community partnership. Finally, through the Harvard After School Initiative, many youth programs in Mission Hill and the Fenway receive a good deal of funding. Some Harvard students feel that this is largely to serve Harvard's public relations purposes in the communities where the university is - a pattern, they claim, that you see in Harvard's HAND program in Cambridge and in Harvard's always-continuing negotiations with Allston and Cambridge. "There aren't even any kids in the Fenway!" one former FUP leader exclaimed (exaggerating some); other students feel the university should support neighborhoods in Boston (and beyond) even where it is not located. President Larry Summers, however, defended these actions to the Public Service Leadership Summit in 2003: Harvard has a responsibility to the communities it is in. And while there is no quid pro quo, if a community says that they are willing to let Harvard build there or reap certain benefits, provided that Harvard in turn provide benefits to the community, why shouldn't Harvard agree? History Mission Church: The Mission Church of Our Lady of Perpetual Help is an old Irish-Catholic church (est. 1878) that is dealing with changes in the Puerto Rican community. It holds separate Spanish services. The building is made out of puddingstone, the "rock" that supposedly puts the "Rox" into "Roxbury." Although right next to Mission Main and Alice Taylor, few parishioners actually come from these housing projects. And the "Mission" from the Church put the "Mission" into "Mission Hill." Mission Church is one of the few basilicas in the world (bonus points if you know what that means!). The Mission Main housing projects were built following WWII and were intended to be temporary structures to house soldiers returning to Boston after the war. Decades later, the dilapidated Mission Main buildings constituted one of the poorest neighborhoods in Boston. In the past few years, the housing project was razed to create mixed-income housing, which combines some subsidized housing with some that sells at market rates. Some families from the old Mission Main still live in the complex, though many were displaced because the new housing (rows of houses instead of apartment buildings) does not have the same capacity as the old buildings. A few years back, Mission Main was the focus of a great deal of media attention. In 1989, the murder of Carol DiMaiti Stuart made national headlines -- Charles Stuart, who was white and affluent, claimed that he and his pregnant (white) wife were carjacked in Mission Hill, robbed, and shot by a black man in his twenties. Carol died of a gunshot wound and her unborn child, delivered by emergency Caesarian after the shooting, died 17 days later. Charles Stuart suffered a non-lethal gunshot wound to the stomach. Believing Charles' story, Boston police raided Mission Main, arresting black men in the projects as suspects. Stuart identified William Bennett from a police line-up as the alleged shooter. However, little direct evidence pointed to Bennett and police became suspicious of Stuart's story (and eventually of Stuart himself). Stuart's brother later went to police with information suggesting that Stuart himself had killed his wife, shot himself and used Mission Hill's crime-ridden neighborhood as an alibi -- as the police were becoming more sure of his guilt, Stuart committed suicide by jumping off a bridge into the Mystic River. Bennett was later cleared of all charges. The Stuart case generated enormous animosity between the Boston police and Mission Hill community, who alleged that racism prompted investigators to buy Stuart's bogus story blaming a black man. These racial tensions have not dissipated to date. Stuart's story perhaps seemed more plausible to many because of Mission Hill's recurrent problems with crime and drugs. Mission Main contained what the Boston Globe called "the largest open-air heroin market in the Northeast," and crime was commonplace. In September of 1993, massive police raids occurred in Mission Main as part of the city's Operation Clean Sweep, an effort to rid crime from Mission Main and other city housing projects. Many of the criminals and drug dealers operating in Mission Main were not residents of the community, but used the economically and geographically isolated community as a base of operations. Police arrested dozens and dozens of people within Mission Main, many for outstanding warrants, in a succession of large-scale raids between September and December of 1993. While Operation Clean Sweep significantly ameliorated the drug and crime problems in Mission Main and was praised by some tenants, other residents and observers alleged more racism by the Boston police, claiming that young black men were arrested indiscriminately during the raids, whether or not they were suspects. The police did indeed arrest many people who were later released with no charges filed and observers decried this as another example of the blatant racism that had operated in the Stuart case. In 1993, Mission Main started down the path toward its current state with a "HOPE VI" grant to the Boston Housing Authority (BHA) by the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development (HUD). The HOPE VI grant, consisting of $50 million in funds and $40 million in federal tax breaks and credits, is given to city governments to improve the worst housing projects in the nation. The BHA planned to use the HOPE VI money to demolish the decrepit Mission Main buildings and rebuild the projects as a mixed-income development with better infrastructure and hopefully less economic isolation. All tenants currently living in Mission Main were promised the right to return after construction was completed. However, the HOPE VI grant soon became mired in BHA inefficiency and power struggles between the BHA and the Mission Main Tenant Task Force (MMTTF), which believed the BHA was not sufficiently taking tenant concerns into account in their plans for the project. HUD required the BHA to begin spending HOPE VI money within two years of receiving it, but because of the delays, this deadline was not met. Consequently, in December of 1997, HUD froze all $90 million of HOPE VI money and began an audit of BHA spending. Because demolition of the buildings had already begun but construction had not, Mission Main languished for months as half rubble and half condemned buildings while the BHA attempted to resolve its problems with the HOPE VI plans. In March of 1998, the Menino administration made certain important concessions to the MMTTF that had been holding up the process and, as a result, HUD unfroze the HOPE VI money. As construction began in earnest, families were offered three options by the BHA. They could be moved within Mission Main several times during the construction and so be able to remain in the community, they could move to another BHA housing project elsewhere in the city, or they could take Section 8 vouchers which would allow them to rent private apartments at "fair market rent" while still paying same amount of rent as they did in Mission Main, with the BHA paying the rest. However, landlords are reluctant to rent to Section 8 tenants (although discrimination in this way is illegal), and the idea of moving to other projects is unappealing to many families. Thus, many tenants feel that the BHA in effect squeezed them out of Mission Main to allow richer tenants to move into the rebuilt, mixed-income development. Long one of the most activist communities in Boston, Mission Main residents staged protests of this perceived discrimination. The construction went through, however, and over just the past year or two Mission Main has made the transition to mixed-income housing. How the dynamic plays itself out is something to watch in the coming years. Roxbury Links -Mission Hill Main Streets -Dudley Street Neighborhood Initiative -ACT Roxbury -Boston Redevelopment Authority -Roxbury.com -La Alianza Hispana previous|next |
|
contact us: fup@hcs
back to top |