East Boston Community Development Corporation (EBCDC) — Strategies for Protecting East Boston from Gentrification

The EBCDC’s mission is to relieve unemployment, underemployment, and economic depression through the creation and expansion of job opportunities in East Boston, and to provide housing and otherwise to initiate or assist housing development activities for low- and moderate-income families and seniors. Recently, the EBCDC worked in partnership with local investors to convert a portfolio of 36 multi-family buildings comprising 114 housing units to the state’s first ever Mixed Income Neighborhood Trust (MINT). The MINT model places governance and control of the portfolio in the hands of a local purpose trust, while financial investors hold the economic interest in the portfolio. In addition to a City deed restriction which will ensure that the units are income restricted in perpetuity, this new model empowers the local community to address displacement by placing governance, ownership, and management in the hands of a community trust. This site visit will begin at EBCDC’s office, where there will be a short presentation on this longtime working class and immigrant neighborhood, and the pressures of gentrification that it is facing. Following the presentation, participants will take a bus tour of ‘Eastie’ (as it is known by residents), which will showcase and explain the anti-gentrification work that has been, and is being, done.