Members of the world's oldest profession once frequented the corner of Hemenway and Norway streets, attracting cruising customers and plying their wares. Angry residents mobilized and, working closely with the police, finally cleared the prostitutes out.
The playground on Edgerly Road was once a dump. After pressure from local residents, the city agreed to spend money to rebuild the park. Now it's a center of the community.
Indeed, efforts by community groups and involved citizens have transformed the east Fenway. Today it is a safe, clean and attractive neighborhood.
So one might think residents are now basking in the glories of their many victories, reveling in their successful creation of a vibrant and stable urban community.
And so they would be but for one problem. Many, indeed most, of the residents of the east Fens rent their homes. As the community has become more attractive and more people have discovered city living, rental prices have climbed.
Thus we face the uncomfortable situation of residents being priced out of the neighborhood that they in effect created. The price of success, if you will, is eviction.
It is not only individual residents who are hurt however. The Fenway is not a desirable community simply because it is safe and clean. It is attractive because it is all those things and urban as well — a term that connotes a community that is diverse and energetic. That diversity and energy are in danger of being lost if rising real estate prices serve to create a community that is more homogenous.
What's the solution? There are four. One, of course, is to let the prostitutes come back. It's a move that certainly would cause real estate prices to drop quickly but is (one hopes obviously) not a desirable answer.
A second approach is to control pricing. It's a scheme — rent control — that Boston and Cambridge used to use with disastrous results. Rent control certainly cut rental prices, but at the cost of degrading buildings and communities. Proposition 9, passed by voters four years ago, effectively put an end to rent controls statewide.
A third approach is more realistic: increase the local supply of affordable housing. One way is to encourage developers to build affordable units when they build or renovate. The city of Boston is experimenting with this, providing financial incentives for those who agree to set aside some units for those making at or near an area's average income.
It's a good but under used strategy. For the most part, the state and federal government treat affordable housing as something for the very poor. But the Fenway's experience — and it is an experience shared by many urban neighborhoods — is that people we might think of as close to the middle class need help as well. Adjusting those programs so that they encourage housing development for a range of income levels would do a lot to ease the pressure the Fenway feels.
Finally, something has to be done about student housing.
Colleges and universities in the area do not provide enough on-campus housing for their student population. The predictable result is that students flood the local real estate market. Funded by their parents and willing to endure conditions that families would not tolerate, they bid up the price of housing.
The obvious solution is to push colleges and universities to build their own housing. That too is fraught with its own concerns; neighborhoods are rightfully afraid that university-owned housing will take over a neighborhood. But solutions are possible. Boston University, for example, has recently agreed to build student dorms on the old Armory site, a move that has Allston and Audubon Circle residents cheering. Similar solutions are needed from the dozen or so colleges that are in and around the Fenway.
Pushing to increase the supply of housing is a smart move for the city as well. Cities depend upon residents for their vitality and their stability. When rising prices force them to move outside, we are all losers.