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In the center of 43 Hutchings Street, an old Victorian home is pitting Roxbury's neighbors and residents against one another.
Transitional housing – temporary housing for vulnerable populations – has develop into some extent of contention, as residents claim Roxbury and Dorchester have been affected by zoning changes, leading to a disproportionate amount of transitional housing in the realm.
In the newest flashpoint of this debate, Bridgette Wallace, founding father of G{Code}, a nonprofit organization that gives technical education schemes for girls and nonbinary people of color, proposed conversion of the property right into a “state-of-the-art technology center” for as much as 14 prospective students – which suggests changing the zoning of the constructing from residential to transitional housing.
With seven transitional housing projects already in place inside a three-block radius of Hutchings Street and a growing number, many residents are concerned concerning the zoning changes.
“Our opposition is not directly directed at the G{Code} house,” Mayowa “Mo” Osinubi, an organizer with Hutchings Street Neighbors and certainly one of 67 residents who signed a petition opposing the proposal, told Boston.com. “We are opposed to what the transitional housing amendment will do to our community and our social fabric.”
But Wallace said the housing aspect of the project was “crucial.”
“When you don't have a safe place to live, it's hard to participate in anything else,” Wallace told Boston.com. “We've tried to educate the community as much as we can about community living and what it looks like and what it means.”
In a press release to Boston.com, seventh District Councilwoman Tania Fernandes Anderson emphasized the importance of the G{Code} project as an “opportunity to invest in young women seeking financial and professional development,” and said that 43 Hutchings St. is just not intended for use “as a halfway house, rehab center or any other facility beyond its stated purpose.”
However, Mayowa Osinubi expressed concern that if the zoning plans were modified, the home may very well be used for other transitional housing purposes in the long run. Councillor Fernandes Anderson didn’t reply to a request for comment on residents' concerns concerning the broader issue of transitional housing in Roxbury.
43 Hutchings St. over time
Mayowa Osinubi's mother, Ollie Osinubi, raised her on Hutchings Street. Ollie Osinubi said people “kept to themselves out of fear” when she first moved to the road in 1992, especially after the shooting of a 12-year-old girl further up the road.
“It's so community-oriented today,” Ollie Osinubi told Boston.com. “It wasn't always like this.”
When Mayowa Osinubi thinks back to her childhood, she says that although the adults sometimes kept to themselves, her children talked to one another because all of them went to highschool together.
“In primary school, people always told me and my friends that we were rich because of our houses,” said Mayowa Osinubi. “There really was this wonderful society of homeowners.”
But lots of these houses, based on Mayowa Osinubi, are actually converted into temporary housing.
“Our culture is being erased block by block,” said Mayowa Osinubi, who has lived on Hutchings Street since she was six years old. “This is a really bad precedent.”
Transitional housing in the realm
The Massachusetts Alliance for Sober Housing is a voluntary certification program that gives resources and transitional housing for people in recovery.
“People need to go somewhere,” Denise Menzdorf, executive director of MASH, told Boston.com. “We get some people off the streets, get them treated, and then get them into a rehab facility where they can stabilize their recovery and their housing situation.”
Sober living homes are usually not required to be certified in Massachusetts. Of the 32 MASH-certified sober living homes in Boston, 18 are in Roxbury and Dorchester. based on MASH website. This number doesn’t include non-certified rehab clinics in the realm.
Ruthven House, two blocks from Hutchings, is a MASH-certified rehabilitation home for girls that has been in operation since 2018.
Kathy Curley, the house’s director, described the positive progress she has observed in some residents as “magical.”
“As the director of a women's rehab center and as a woman who has been sober for a long time, there's something very special that happens in a rehab center,” she told Boston.com. “You just have the autonomy to be part of the community.”
Curley said the residents were “not loud and disruptive” they usually had “no problems with the neighbors.”
Against this background, it’s “disheartening” that some people “believe that something bad could happen in the neighborhood as a result of the rehab center,” Curley said.
“We lose people every day,” Curley said. “So having a safe place for someone to be if they want to be sober is critical to sobriety.”
opposition
Asha Janay, Roxbury liaison, said on the July 30 Zoning Board of Appeal meeting that she had received over 60 signatures opposing the proposed G{Code} project and zoning changes, in addition to 13 letters of protest.
Mayowa Osinubi said she felt “completely ignored” by the Land Use Planning Appeals Committee, which voted to permit the appliance to proceed.
“This is a slap in the face for us and we really want our side to be heard,” she said.
Mayowa Osinubi said she desires to proceed to combat the influx of transitional housing because she sees a “pattern … especially in black and brown neighborhoods” where they’re “affected by zoning changes.”
“It's almost like Roxbury is the dumping ground,” she said. “They don't engage the community and our voices are silenced and ignored.”
image credit : www.boston.com