To afford the average purchase price of a Boston home, a household would need to earn at least $181,000 a year, according to a recent Boston Globe story. In Chinatown, property values have skyrocketed since the luxury development boom and remain high despite the current recession.

What has that meant for Chinatown’s immigrant, working class residents? The signs of gentrification now visible throughout the city took root early in this community. American

Community Survey data for 2017 revealed that the median income for a white household in

Chinatown was $113,678, compared to the Asian median of $17,997.

As luxury units threatened to outweigh lower-priced housing, community organizations and activists came together to demand funds and support for existing and new affordable housing on all available public land.  Chinatown’s large subsidized housing developments have stabilized nearly half of its working class residents. But another story has unfolded in its smaller private properties.

Real Estate Speculation Has Displaced the Most Vulnerable

While some families who owned homes in Chinatown may have benefitted from rising property values, the sharp rise in real estate speculation threatens Chinatown’s future. Rents and property sales prices took a leap following a decade of luxury development.

Chinatown’s older brick row houses and small properties have housed some of the community’s most vulnerable immigrant, working class families, disproportionately concentrated in service and hospitality industries and among the hardest hit by the pandemic. In the past decade, the community experienced a wave of evictions or “building clearouts” as row house after row house was snapped up by outside investors seeking record profits. Modest tenement-style homes became mini-hotels that rented by the day or week.

As a result, a row house that was modestly priced in 2010 began selling for double its assessed value by 2016!  After the City of Boston passed its Short Term Rental Ordinance to limit the loss of residential housing, many of these short term rental operators sought approval for buildouts and additions that would allow them to turn modest homes into luxury condos. This triggered a call for a Row House Protection Area on the few remaining row house streets.

Reclaiming and Preserving Our Row House Streets

The Chinatown Community Land Trust (CLT) seeks to preserve some of the neighborhood’s historic brick row houses as permanently affordable housing. The buildings have been home and landing place for generations of working class immigrants since the mid-1800s, and some still remember the days when children of different cultures played together on these small-scale streets.

Over the past few years, Chinatown CLT bought and reclaimed two row house properties from short-term rental use, creating seven affordable condos for low income buyers. As a Community

Land Trust, it creates permanent affordability through community ownership of the land. Through 99-year ground leases that outline these terms, Chinatown CLT ensures that the homes remain affordable whenever they are sold. By supporting the homebuyers as they develop their condo association, the organization helps neighbors connect and make decisions together.

While Chinatown’s row houses will not make up a large number of affordable homes, small property preservation is one important piece of the housing stabilization puzzle. Chinatown CLT is particularly focused on opportunities for home ownership and resident-controlled housing.

Potential models may include affordable condos, homeowner plus affordable rental unit, cooperative housing, or rent-to-own housing. Row house preservation is also part of a vision to preserve and develop Chinatown as a historic and cultural district.

Now is a critical moment to safeguard the living pulse of Boston’s immigrant history, before the row house streets of Chinatown are lost. Chinatown’s history and cultural character is a valuable asset that the entire city of Boston cannot afford to lose.

Rebuilding Community Together

Chinatown’s longtime property owners and its family associations have provided inexpensive housing for decades, and can play an important role in preserving Chinatown’s future.

Community-minded owners can work with or sell to Chinatown nonprofits that will preserve long term affordable housing for the community. Today, property owners have become accustomed to quick cash offers from investor buyers. But these cash buyers are more often the speculative investors seeking to increase profits through demolition or maximum buildout plans that threaten to displace residents and further erode the neighborhood feel of Chinatown.

A market-rate sale to a nonprofit may take a few more months to close, but instead of destabilizing or displacing residents, the property is preserved for the long term, so that Chinatown can continue to be an anchor for immigrant working class families for generations to come.

Partnership with Chinatown CLT can also be a way to bring resources for building renovations or retrofits in exchange for affordability, a right of first refusal, or other agreements that can benefit both the community and the owner.

Chinatown CLT asks row house owners that are thinking about the future of their properties to explore these options that stabilize Chinatown’s future.  Chinatown CLT can be contacted at participate@chinatownclt.org or by phone at 617-259-1503.

Lydia Lowe is the Executive Director of the Chinatown Community Land Trust, Inc.