City Council to revisit housing lottery rules

The Boston City Council is looking into changing Boston's lottery system for awarding below-market housing, put in place to discourage racial discrimination, to give preference to neighborhood residents.

Since 2000, when the Boston Redevelopment Authority first began requiring large-scale developers to build affordable housing as part of their development plans, those units have been awarded through a lottery system to needy residents regardless of their home neighborhoods. By giving all city residents an equal chance, officials hoped to avoid problems that had plagued the city in the late 1980s, when it faced a lawsuit alleging that members of minority groups were steered away from white public housing developments in Charlestown and South Boston.

But Councilor Paul J. Scapicchio of the North End said that gentrification has overtaken racial discrimination as a concern and that neighborhoods across the city are losing their individuality and civic strength to upscale development that longtime residents can't afford.

''When Boston was 20-25 percent minority and it was mostly African-American, absolutely there was a need" for a lottery that ensured minorities had access to affordable housing built in white neighborhoods, he said. ''Now, it's so diverse and multicultural, I think the times merit us revisiting how we take care of people. Who's getting displaced? It's the middle-class families, those people who are coaches in Little League and Pop Warner, PTA members, the people who are very involved."

Scapicchio plans to request a hearing on the issue at the City Council meeting today. Eleven of the 13 city councilors have signed on to his proposal, and the other two are leaning in favor of it, he said.

Under the lottery system, developers advertise affordable units citywide, and anyone who meets the income limits can apply for the chance to purchase or rent one. Names are selected at random. Factors including Boston residency and physical disability are weighed in giving applicants priority in bidding. Scapicchio wants the city to consider an applicant's neighborhood, as well.

In the past, minority communities have been wary of changes to the lottery system.

But the latest measure is being supported by Councilor Chuck Turner of Roxbury, who said that because of the shifting demographics, he is now willing to look at changing the lottery system so that perhaps 25 percent of affordable units could be awarded to applicants from the neighborhood.

''There's a large enough percentage of people of all different races living in most of the neighborhoods that neighborhood preference wouldn't have to mean white preference," he said.

Councilor at Large Felix D. Arroyo has also backed the hearing request.

''Just because you are a worker and can't afford the same level [of housing] as others, doesn't mean you should be displaced," he said.

BRA officials said that changing the policy may not be as simple as councilors are suggesting, however. BRA director Mark Maloney said that he likes the idea of neighborhood preference and that the agency has explored the idea. But lawyers advising the BRA have said the change may violate federal fair housing laws.

''It is considered unfair; it's limiting the opportunity to too small a population," he said. ''I personally would like to see the possibility to do it differently; however, we certainly cannot violate case law at any point in time."

Maloney said he is sympathetic to Scapicchio's logic: If neighborhood residents are hurt the most by development, why shouldn't they also be the first to benefit from it? But the lawyer Maloney said he hired to explore the possibility of offering neighborhood preference advised against it.

''The instructions they were given were to find a way to legally do that," he said. ''They came back and said, 'You can't do it.' "

Scapicchio said the researchers who looked at the legal issue for him came to a different conclusion. He said he wants to offer neighborhood preference only for units built by private developers under the BRA policy, not public housing constructed with federal money.

''I don't see how those rules would pertain; there's no federal money involved," he said.

Developers have created about 500 affordable units under the BRA policy in the past five years.

Turner said he would like to see the policy apply to all of Boston's affordable housing stock, including units overseen by the city's Department of Neighborhood Development. And though he believes federal law would prohibit giving neighborhood preference for all units, a judge might be persuaded to allow the city some flexibility, he said.

''It would be illegal to say all the housing in a particular neighborhood would just go to people who lived there -- that clearly would fly in the face of federal fair housing laws," he said. ''The question of whether it would be illegal to have a percentage go to the neighborhood is the question that the hearing would be exploring."

Tom Cunha, chairman of the Charlestown Neighborhood Council, said he would like to see the lion's share of BRA affordable housing go to neighborhood residents.

''I'm 50 years old, and the guys I grew up with, a good two-thirds of them had to move out of the neighborhood because of housing prices," he said.

''These are firefighters and police officers and teachers, they're the fabric that makes the community work."