Demonstrators inside City Hall demand affordable housing

NEW BEDFORD — Tiffany Ellis sleeps outside the downtown library most nights. On Thursday, she carried her sleeping pad up to the third floor of City Hall and laid down right in front of Mayor Jon Mitchell’s office.

“Just help us,” she said she wanted to say to the mayor. “You see us every day, doing the same thing.”

Ellis visited City Hall with about a dozen other demonstrators from United Interfaith Action, a local group that advocates against racial and economic injustice. They demanded that the city government do more to fight New Bedford’s housing crisis. The group brought nearly 70 letters it had collected from community members, each one describing a personal housing struggle.

The group staged the demonstration after Mitchell declined its invitation to attend its community meeting on Monday and discuss its affordable housing proposals.

“The mayor did not come to us, so we are coming to him,” said Roselia Gomez, one of the event’s organizers.

But Mitchell wasn’t at City Hall on Thursday — he was in Baltimore for an event with other mayors, city spokesperson Jonathan Darling said. A member of Mitchell’s staff accepted the letters and gave the demonstrators a phone number they could call to schedule a meeting.

“The Administration welcomes UIA’s letters and ideas on the regional housing issue,” Darling said in a statement. “The Administration remains focused on achieving the goals outlined in the [city’s housing] plan, including stimulating new housing development, reactivating underutilized properties, and relieving housing instability and affordability concerns.”

Darling said housing and planning officials had previously met with the group, but did not explain why the mayor did not send a representative to the group’s community meeting on Monday.

Andrea Sheppard Lomba, United Interfaith Action’s executive director, said the group appreciates what the mayor has already done to make housing more affordable. The Building New Bedford plan, which the city announced last year, laid out a broad set of strategies to address the crisis, including an expansion of the city’s first-time homebuyer program that launched this week.

“He hasn’t completely ignored it,” Sheppard Lomba said. “But given the level of the prices, there’s a lot more that could be done.”

The group wants the city to pass an inclusionary zoning policy, which would require that some apartments in every new development be set aside for low-income renters. Around the MBTA stations, the group wants 10% of the new units to be affordable for people making 30% to 60% of the area’s median income.

Organizers also want the city to put 30% of the money from certain funding sources toward affordable housing. Those sources include Community Preservation Act revenue, federal community development grants, and what’s left of the city’s pandemic relief money. 

The city came close to that benchmark with its Community Preservation Act funding in the last cycle, spending 28% on housing projects. The city spent 22% of its last round of federal Community Development Block Grants on housing. And as of October, housing made up the largest category of the city’s pandemic relief spending. About $13 million is left in unallocated federal pandemic funds, according to the city auditor’s most recent spending report.

Housing crisis a “living nightmare,” speaker says

United Interfaith Action announced its plan for Thursday’s demonstration at a meeting on Monday night, when dozens of people filed into the basement of Our Lady of the Assumption Church. 

Renee Ledbetter, United Interfaith Action’s board president, said she has something in common with nearly a quarter of New Bedford households: she spends more than half of her income on housing. Some weeks, she can’t afford to go to the grocery store.

“It’s a living nightmare,” she said.

Danielle Brown, a program director at the homelessness and addiction nonprofit Steppingstone, said her housing costs have risen so much that she has sat crying in pharmacies because she couldn’t afford her medication.

Speakers pointed to a long list of statistics that show just how severe New Bedford’s housing crisis has become. The city’s annual homeless census counted 346 people in shelters and on the streets in January of this year. Using a broader definition of homelessness that includes couch surfing, New Bedford Public Schools counted more than 1,000 students who were homeless this school year.

There are 6,888 people waiting for housing vouchers in the city and 2,534 on the public housing waitlist, the group said. They pointed to other alarming numbers, like New Bedford’s 27% increase in rents last year, from the New Bedford Economic Development Center’s recent housing report.

City Councilor Shane Burgo, who chairs the council’s housing committee, stood before the crowd and committed to help pass inclusionary zoning and push for the funding allocations the group called for.

The mayor doesn’t believe in affordable housing, Burgo said, and doesn’t want it in the city. The councilor doesn’t think the city hasn’t made enough progress since the mayor announced the Building New Bedford housing plan over a year ago.

“He issued this plan to shut us up,” Burgo said.

In an interview after the event, Burgo said inclusionary zoning might have been redundant for New Bedford two years ago — many projects in the city don’t pencil out without government subsidies that require affordable units to be set aside.

But now, Burgo is concerned that tax incentives for market-rate developments are driving the development of “luxury” apartments, leading to gentrification.

“Increasing market-rate [housing] doesn’t help the individual we’re trying to get off the street now,” he said.

Economists say that building high-end apartments can help “soak up” affluent renters, freeing up less expensive housing and taking pressure off the overall market, but Burgo doesn’t buy that idea. Although data shows that thousands of households in the city can afford to pay more than they are now paying for housing, Burgo said they’re probably happy to live below their means and wouldn’t move into a more expensive apartment if it existed.

State Rep. Tony Cabral said he’s in favor of inclusionary zoning. He said he hopes New Bedford is open to requiring developers to reserve 10% of all new apartments for low-income households.

“I don’t think 10% is a whole lot to ask,” he said.

Activists press Legislature for a tax on $1 million real estate sales

At the state level, United Interfaith Action called on legislators to support a proposed fee on high-dollar real estate transactions. 

The proposal, which Gov. Maura Healey included in the housing bond bill currently in the Legislature, would give communities the option to tax real estate transactions over $1 million to fund affordable housing.

“In New Bedford, we need all the funding we can get to fund more affordable housing,” said Jack Livramento, who questioned state legislators about the tax in front of the crowd.

State Rep. Chris Hendricks said he supported the tax, but with a “huge caveat” — it probably won’t pass.

The House stripped the proposal from the bond bill, and the Senate has not included it in its version of the bill. The only way the transfer fee could be added back is through a Senate amendment, which lawmakers say is unlikely.

Cabral said he wasn’t against the idea of the tax, but he’s not a fan of local option taxes. Instead, he would rather see the tax passed statewide so that New Bedford could benefit from revenue generated in wealthier cities.

“The transfer tax would not raise a single penny right now in New Bedford,” he said. That’s because homes in this city don’t sell for over $1 million.

But the tax might start generating revenue in a few years, Livramento rebutted.

“I’m conditionally with you, but not the way it’s being proposed by our governor,” Cabral said.

State Sen. Mark Montigny was not at the event and his office did not respond to a request for comment.

Attendees booed the mayor’s absence at the Monday meeting.

“Is this acceptable?” Ledbetter asked the crowd.

“No!” they shouted back.

“I’m tired of my community not being seen or heard,” Ledbetter said.

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