The affordable housing crisis in Boston is getting worse and the city’s political establishment has proven unwilling and unable to fix it. The only way is to build a movement that forces their hand.
The big private universities in Boston own $9 billion of property and help drive gentrification, but don’t pay property taxes. We demand they pay their share to fund the construction of public, high quality affordable housing. We also need rent control to stop skyrocketing rents and protect our homes.
Join Socialist Alternative, other housing activists, and City Councilor Lydia Edwards for a community discussion on building a movement that can achieve this on Tuesday, July 31st at 6:30pm at Encuentro5 in Downtown Boston!
Background on the issue of taxing the big universities:
There are 58 universities in the Greater Boston area, 57 of them being private. These private universities, despite being multi-billion dollar institutions, are technically non-profits and therefore pay nothing in property taxes while working class Bostonians ours every year. The City set up a program called PILOT, Payment in Lieu of Taxes, whereby they “ask” all the private universities that own $15 million or more in property to make a voluntary payment of 25% of what their property taxes would be to give back to the city.
Unfortunately, very few of them actually make the full payments. Despite being some of the biggest landowners in Boston, last year Harvard (owns 650 buildings) paid 13% of what its property taxes would be, BU paid 19%, and Northeastern paid 6%. The universities themselves are also a leading cause of gentrification in our city.
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