Category: Waltham Times

  • Codman Square’s Memory Café gives the forgetful the space to feel invited

    By Madyline Swearing

    Once a month — when the weather is right — volunteers, seniors, and caregivers gather in a room at the Codman Square Library, where handmade quilts adorn the walls. The space is open to anyone, and diagnoses are never asked for, but the two-hour block is intended to connect those who struggle with forgetfulness. 

    This Memory Café, one of two in Boston, is modeled after a program that originated in the Netherlands in the 1990s. The program began here in 2022, six years after Boston pledged to become a dementia-friendly city, aligning itself with the World Health Organization’s framework for community living.

    Though the rain on this day has kept regular participants at home, a team of volunteers keeps the festivities going. They break bread, issue handwritten nametags, and trade life updates in a round table, sharing news about weddings and upcoming cultural celebrations. 

    It isn’t just the programming that’s intended for older adults. Volunteers at the Memory Café are typically retired seniors who have been matched with the program by Boston’s Age Strong Commission, which provides resources to people 55 and older.

    One volunteer is Eve Baptiste, who made her way to Dorchester from England and, before that, the West Indies. After watching her family members struggle in inadequate senior living facilities, Baptiste says she became inspired to help make a difference. 

    “Our role is to make people feel comfortable and invited,” Baptiste said. “We also recruit people in the neighborhood to join us, and check in on people when we don’t see them.”

    Overseeing it all is Corinne White, the city’s dementia-friendly coordinator, who also leads a Memory Café in Jamaica Plain. Though she is a few decades younger than the participants and volunteers, White says connecting this community is important, especially in Dorchester.

    Dorchester’s largest age group, encompassing nearly a fifth of the population, comprises individuals aged 60 and older. More than a third of the neighborhood’s population is Black. White says both of these factors have influenced the café’s location in Codman Square. 

    “The number one risk factor for dementia is age, and it disproportionally affects Black Americans, who are two times as likely to develop dementia compared to a white American,” White said. Research hasn’t been able to identify why Black Americans are particularly affected, though higher rates of cardiovascular disease may play a role, according to the Alzheimer’s Association.

    Cafés typically begin with complimentary breakfast — this month featured fresh pastries, fruit, and coffee — before a round of introductions. For the quieter participants, White says she keeps a deck of cards handy with simple questions to stimulate conversation. The last hour is typically reserved for stimulating activities such as seated chair yoga, educational forums, and musical guests.

    The music-based activities are especially impactful, allowing participants to feel nostalgic and come out of their shells, says volunteer Keither Lennards. The Brocktonian has been with the cafés since its inception, after 16 years of volunteer work at Brigham and Women’s Hospital.


    “It has given the opportunity to bring together seniors with different levels of memory care,” Lennards said. “They’re with this guy who would come and wouldn’t speak to anyone. Suddenly, one day, we couldn’t get him to stop.” 

    This month, longtime musical partner John Poirier played a selection of oldies classics from Elvis Presley, Bob Dylan, and Johnny Cash. Volunteers requested songs, sang along, and danced with visitors who flitted in from the library. 

    One such visitor was Victor Rodriguez, a Codman Square resident who has volunteered in senior programming for 38 years. Rodriguez connects primarily with Spanish-speaking participants, all in an effort to give back to the community that has given him so much, he says.
    “We want to make sure they’re treated with respect and enjoying their home away from home,” Rodriguez said. 

    White says that besides adult day cares, there aren’t many opportunities for people with dementia to be around each other and interact. There are also few spaces for caregivers to interact with their clients in a relaxing atmosphere, away from medical spaces, she says.

    While a lack of transportation and weather may complicate participation at times, White says she hopes her consistent presence at the library will encourage the community to recognize the café as a safe and open space. She’s currently working toward expanding the cafés across the city, to be run by their own volunteer groups. 

    “People would’ve been devastated without the community they’ve made here,” White said. “We need to be here for when they’re ready to come.”

    This story is the result of a partnership between the Dorchester Reporter and the Boston University Department of Journalism.

    This article was originally published on October 22, 2025.

  • Work starts on Grove Hall’s full-service community center

    By Madyline Swearing

    Construction of Dorchester’s first stand-alone community center officially began last Wednesday (Oct. 15), three years after the location in Grove Hall was selected. Elected officials and community members celebrated the center’s planning, viewed building designs, and listened to a DJ play Michael Jackson and Prince on the site’s vacant lot.

    Part of the Boston Centers for Youth and Families, the Grove Hall Community Center will be Dorchester’s first full-service city-run center outside of a school building. The building will occupy a city-owned lot that sits across the street from the Grove Hall Library and Senior Center. 

    “For too long, Dorchester’s BCYF centers have been makeshift, shoehorned into leftover space,” said Mayor Wu. “With today’s groundbreaking, we’re making it clear that every neighborhood deserves a state-of-the-art community center that they can be proud of. It’s time to offer the level of programming that the families of Dorchester and Grove Hall deserve.” 

    The 41,000-square-foot facility will feature a pool, a technology lab, a teaching kitchen, and separate teen and senior centers. The $65 million project is funded through the city’s five-year capital plan.

    Because it’s a stand-alone facility, visitors and resources will not be restricted to school hours, allowing for more programming through BCYF. The center can also double as a temporary emergency shelter and a heating and cooling station.

    Designs for the center were finalized through a series of community meetings and feedback forums, including a 3D model viewing at the library. BCYF Commissioner Marta Rivera said the “historic” day would not have been possible without the continuous input from participants at the senior center and students from Dr. Albert D. Holland High School of Technology.

    High school junior Kingston Mills was chosen to represent the school at the groundbreaking ceremony. A Roxbury-Dorchester native, Mills said growing up in the neighborhood instilled a sense of resilience and community in him, which he says will continue to be fostered at the center.

    “Our youth may be 30 percent of the city’s population, but we’re 100 percent of the future,” Mills said. “Continue to invest in us. We’re worth it.” 

    Michael Kozu, co-director of Project RIGHT — which promotes neighborhood stability and economic growth within Grove Hall — said the development of the center can serve as a lesson to young people on how to push back against the status quo and work for what you believe in, despite roadblocks. 

    “Our job is not finished,” Kozu said. “We still have to fill the void for the next two or three years, developing prevention activities until the community center is built.”

    Cynthia Grant-Carter, a Dorchester resident of 30 years, says she is excited to have a space where community members can gather with their friends and family, without having to travel elsewhere.  

    Connie Forbes, a Grove Hall resident, said establishing the center has been an “uphill battle,” but she’s excited that the moment is finally here. “Finally,” she said. “We’ve fought so hard to have this for the community.”

    This story is part of a partnership between the Dorchester Reporter and the Boston University Department of Journalism.

    This article was originally published on October 22, 2025.

  • What to know about Bluebikes’ expansion in Dot, Mattapan, Roxbury, Jamaica Plain

    By Madyline Swearing

    Boston’s bike share system is expanding throughout Dorchester, Mattapan, Roxbury and Jamaica Plain, with 20 new Bluebikes stations to be installed in those neighborhoods. City officials hosted an open house on Oct. 1 at the Marshall Community Center, where residents reviewed proposed site maps and offered feedback on potential station sites (see map below for specific locations).

    Here’s a look at the details of the initiative.

    What is Bluebikes, and how does it work?

    Bluebikes is a publicly owned bike share system that lets anyone rent bikes from docking stations. The system operates in 13 municipalities and has 337 stations in Boston.

    Payment plans include 30-minute rides for $2.95, $10 day passes, monthly and annual memberships. Passes and memberships can be bought on the Bluebikes app and website, or at a station kiosk.

    Boston saw 2.6 million Bluebikes trips in 2024, 11 percent of which started in Dorchester, Mattapan, Roxbury, and Jamaica Plain.

    What is the Bluebikes expansion plan?

    Last year, Mayor Wu and the Boston Streets Cabinet — consisting of the Public Works and Transportation departments — announced plans to add 100 new Bluebikes stations throughout Boston’s neighborhoods to meet a rising demand.

    This is all part of Go Boston 2030, the city’s transportation plan to improve safety, expand access, and reduce emissions. Launched in 2017, the project’s initiatives have included extending MBTA service hours, building neighborhood “slow streets,” and ensuring each household in Boston is within a 10-minute walk of a public bike share station. About 89 percent of households meet that criteria, according to the Streets Cabinet.

    “The objective is to make it convenient and reliable for people to get around the city by bike,” said Boston Bikes Director Kim Foltz. “Biking is a sustainable and affordable form of transportation and is a good connection to other transit.”

    What has already been done?

    The expansion has been implemented in phases, beginning with the MBTA Red Line diversion in 2023. The first phase involved the addition of eight new bike stations in Dorchester and Mattapan, and 31 docks were added to existing stations.

    Since last year, the city has received more than 2,600 comments offering feedback on proposed bike station sites, compiled from open houses, emails, and survey responses. So far, nearly 80 of the 100 new stations have been installed across the Beacon Hill, Downtown, South Boston and Allston neighborhoods, to name a few.

    Where is the project now?

    The initiative is in its fourth phase, focused on adding 20 new Bluebikes stations throughout Dorchester, Mattapan, Roxbury and Jamaica Plain. The Streets Cabinet aims to install two to four stations in Dorchester, two to four in Jamaica Plain, two to five in Mattapan, and four to seven in Roxbury.

    Boston Bike Share Planner Louisa Gag said proposed sites were chosen for their visibility, clearance of utilities, and potential accessibility for a Bluebikes service van. Gag said it is a priority to put docking sites within half a mile of an MBTA station.

    Other requirements include access to at least four hours of sunlight each day, to charge the sun-powered docking computers, and ensuring sites leave at least 5 feet of sidewalk space for pedestrians and 1.5 feet of clearance from the street curb. Off-street sites were favored overall, as they don’t disturb parking and don’t need to be removed for snowplows in the winter.

    Sites may be installed on public or private property, which can include plazas, residential neighborhoods, sidewalks, parking lanes, and libraries.

    Residents are invited to attend open houses where they can review maps of potential docking locations, offer feedback and ask questions. There will be two events in Mattapan this month, on Oct. 28 at the Mattapan Library and on Oct. 30 via Zoom.

    Feedback forms will be offered in person at each open house or can be accessed on the city website until Oct. 31.

    What is the timeline for the project?

    The Streets Cabinet will accept suggestions for new bike stations until Oct. 31. They will be reviewed and considered over four weeks. Site lists will be narrowed, and permits will be filed. Installation is expected to begin in January.

    What other programs does Boston Bikes offer?

    Boston Bikes offers community workshops like adult bike lessons, youth biking programs, and community ride events. Cyclists can arrange to have their bikes repaired at no cost or learn how to fix them independently during community workshop events.

    Discounted bike passes and e-bikes are available for residents, new riders and those who are income-eligible.


    This story is part of a partnership between the Dorchester Reporter and the Boston University Department of Journalism.

    This article was originally published on October 17, 2025.

  • “White Raven, Black Dove,” a new opera animated by its performers, and a computer, debuts at Strand

    By Madyline Swearing

    Inside a sprawling Brookline home, where koi swim in an in-ground living room pond and a pet pig named Mazipan can be seen through sliding glass doors, a troupe of performers flit around a makeshift stage, rehearsing a battle of futuristic proportions.

    The scene is set in the years after the Sixth Extinction — a human-made climate crisis that has left the planet Earth a dystopian wasteland —and a new opera, “White Raven, Black Dove,” which is scheduled for a three-day run at the Strand Theater this weekend (Sept. 26-28), tells the story of the segregated Silvers and Onyx, who are faced with building a new world.

    Steeped in international mythology, the opera combines live performance with computer-generated animation to explore themes of race and climate change.

    As a self-proclaimed “activist” performance company, White Snake Projects produces only original operas by living creators as a way to “authentically” explore societal issues, says Cerise Lim Jacobs, the company’s artistic director and founder.

    “Art can be used as an instrument of change,” Lim Jacobs said. “It doesn’t have to be didactic and burdensome, but fun and immersive.”

    The company was founded in 2018 following the success of Lim Jacobs’ first opera, “Madame White Snake” — a retelling of an East Asian folktale — which won a 2011 Pulitzer Prize for its composer, Zhou Long.

    An immigrant and woman of color, Lim Jacobs says her values “totally permeate” the company and its work.

    As rehearsals continue inside her Brookline home, haunting vocals detail the discord between the identity-bound light-skinned Silvers and dark-skinned Onyx, and reveal how a scarcity of resources has driven the two groups apart. Amid the devastation, characters Raven and Dove serve as proponents of change.

    Shows are produced thematically each year. With last year’s general election, the company’s theme was voting rights. This year the environment has taken center stage. Lim Jacobs says recent federal funding cuts to organizations like the National Weather Service and the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration helped influence that decision.

    “What could be more timely?” Lim Jacobs said. “It cannot be more urgent. The whole thing is frightening.”

    Beyond advocacy, Lim Jacobs says, a main objective of White Snake Projects is to modernize opera and make it appealing to younger generations. One way is through the integration of cutting-edge technology in operatic settings.

    For the company’s director of innovation and computer-generated imagery (CGI, Curvin Huber, this means applying gaming technology to live performances. A professor at the Lesley University College of Art and Design, Huber has worked in the 3D industry as a generalist for about 30 years. His expertise with Unreal Engine, a game development creation tool, has optimized White Snake Projects’ scene designs.

    With Unreal Engine, photorealistic graphics can be created and modified in real-time, creating a speedier design process. Once the 3D imagery is generated, it can be projected on stage in any format.

    “The advantages are that it can build content quickly and we can make changes as needed,” Huber said. “It allowed for a more efficient pipeline.”

    While Huber has logged almost 100 hours working on “White Raven, Black Dove,” the base work was done by Lesley design students, who spent three semesters working with the creative team to produce the 2D animations and 3D illusions that make up the set.

    As part of Lesley University’s internal internship program, which matches students with local clients, students are assigned to specific teams, depending on their skill levels and interests. Derek Hoffend, professor of game design and immersive technology at Lesley University, serves as the students’ project manager.

    “They could be doing drawings and concept studies for character and environment designs,” Hoffend said. “Some do game engine work, where they’re building 3D environments in Unreal Engine.”

    Huber says he then acts like a cinematographer, polishing and refining students’ work to make it production-ready. “It’s a great experience for them — they get to see how it works,” he said. “We force ourselves to take a step back and ask what we want visually and what’s the best way to tell a story.”

    Hoffend says the opportunity for students to see the physical manifestations of their work has been beneficial for them both creatively and intellectually.

    “They really appreciate having a client,” Hoffend said. “They’re used to doing things in the classroom, but to see something that gets out into the world that’s also politically interesting is important.”

    In times of increased political divisiveness, Lim Jacobs says, the company has to consider the implications of its work more than ever before. And while funding may have been cut, production levels haven’t.

    “People have to feel hope, otherwise they’ll give up,” Lim Jacobs said. “We make work for our community. I hope they come and feel inspired to do a little something.”

    See “White Raven, Black Dove” at the Strand on Sept. 26 at 8 p.m., Sept. 27 at 7:30 p.m., and Sept. 28 at 2 p.m. A talkback with a member of the creative team will follow each performance. Tickets are “pay what you can.”

    This story is part of a partnership between the Dorchester Reporter and the Boston University Department of Journalism.

    This article was originally published on September 24, 2025.

  • Zoo’s Boston Lights exhibit comes with a side of wings, grilled corn, courtesy of ‘Park’d’ food vendors

    By Madyline Swearing

    Families, vendors, and elected officials gathered in Franklin Park last Saturday (Sept. 27) to kick off the launch of “Park’d,” a month-long food truck fair running alongside the Franklin Park Zoo’s Boston Lights exhibit.

    The event, which featured five food trucks, was organized by the City of Boston, the Massachusetts Office of Travel and Tourism, Zoo New England and CommonWealth Kitchen, a Dorchester-based food business incubator.

    “Park’d” food vendors will be at the Blue Hill Avenue entrance of Franklin Park from 6 to 10 p.m. on Fridays, Saturdays, and Sundays through the first weekend of November.

    The food service took months of planning, CommonWealth Kitchen CEO Jen Faigel said, noting that it was bolstered by the success of her incubator’s late-night food truck initiative with the city this summer.

    She said that the Zoo Lights exhibit provides the perfect opportunity to offer families and visitors a variety of late-night food options that wouldn’t be available otherwise.

    “It’s creating a meaningful opportunity for our businesses to go out to make some money and build their skills and knowledge,” Faigel said. “It helps to keep them moving on that path toward profitability for their business, and when they do well, we do well.”

    Along with a rotating selection of food trucks and carts, Park’d features family-friendly activities like cornhole, inflatable soccer, ring toss and face painting from local artist Sully Paints.

    In the center of the hustle and bustle, dishing up heaping portions of freshly grilled Mexican corn and a family rice recipe, was Lalu’s Chicken.

    Husband-and-wife team Christine and Felipe Ramirez have run Lalu’s through Commonwealth Kitchen for three years. After watching Felipe’s parents run their own brick-and-mortar restaurant for 15 years, and witnessing the massive demand for catering services at Christine’s biotech job, the pair realized they could find an opening in an untapped market.

    They’ve since moved into the corporate catering world and have spent evenings and weekends at pop-up events and farmers’ markets. Felipe said Park’d is a chance to tap into the underserved market along the Blue Hill Avenue corridor.

    “This is us giving the community the chance [to have] a variety of food to choose from late night, and not just the fried food that’s all over,” Felipe said. “We hope that the community embraces CWK and its members.” 

    Next to Lalu’s was Boss Town Hot Dogs. Former service industry worker Shema Taylor and veteran Michael Morris started the stand in Tennessee in 2017 before relocating the cart to Boston in 2023 and joining CommonWealth Kitchen in 2024.

    Taylor said the company stand prides itself on its menu options, such as plant-based sausages, gluten-free buns and an assortment of condiments, while using locally sourced ingredients from the New England frankfurter company Pearl.

    She hopes to expand by offering local baked goods and energy drinks in the future, but for now, her hope is that this event will help to spread awareness about minority-owned businesses and cuisines.
    “We want to let other minorities know that you can come out and be your own boss,” Taylor said. “Don’t take a ‘no.’ If you keep at it, it might be a no right now, but just stick with it and keep your eyes on the prize.”

    The aim, Faigel said, is to have about 10 food trucks and pushcarts rotate throughout the event, including Bibim Box, Magic Empanadas, and Caribbean Hibachi, as a way to help multiple member businesses build their skill sets and clientele. 

    State Sen. Liz Miranda was one of the elected officials on hand to welcome the crowd. 

    “Tonight is not just about feeding your hungry families and yourself, but actually contributing to Roxbury and Dorchester in a meaningful way,” she said. “I’m just really happy that the state did something right.”

    Faigel said that while many people may be living through difficult times, supporting local businesses can make a difference.

    “We all can feel overwhelmed and disempowered by what’s going on in the world,” she said.

    “Opportunities for people to come together with joy, with hope, in celebration of what makes Boston such a wonderful place to live — its diversity … I feel like we all need more moments of that.”
    Jeannine Laing and Dawn Morris stopped by the event to grab dinner during one of their daily walks, after learning about it on Facebook.

    “We’re always looking for new places to eat,” said Laing, who lives in Codman Square and works for the Franklin Park Tennis Association, a nonprofit that provides free tennis lessons for children and adults. “It’s in such a convenient location.”

    Morris, who recently moved from Roxbury to Dorchester and works in communications for the Boston Police Department, said she hopes the community will take advantage of the event while the weather is still nice.

    “It’s hard for everybody right now,” Morris said. “We have to support each other whenever possible.”

    This story comes from a partnership between the Dorchester Reporter and the Boston University Department of Journalism.

    This article was originally published on October 2, 2025.

  • Waltham Philharmonic’s season opens Sunday with works by Coleridge-Taylor and Dvořák

    The Waltham Philharmonic Orchestra opens its 2025-26 season on Sunday with a concert celebrating the 150th anniversary of composer Samuel Coleridge-Taylor’s birth.

    This event marks the orchestra’s first concert since May. The concert’s repertoire will include two Coleridge-Taylor pieces, “Idyll” and “Violin Concerto,” as well as composer Antonín Dvořák’s “Symphony No. 8.”

    Coleridge-Taylor is a Black British composer, conductor and virtuoso who is known as an underappreciated artist in the classical music world. The composer’s choral trilogy, Song of Hiawatha, composed in 1898–1900, was well known and widely performed in his day, but his works are relatively unknown today. 

    The orchestra’s Music Director Michael Korn said Coleridge-Taylor’s style of composition produced “exceptionally beautiful music” that is rarely performed. 

    “On the other hand, he’s an extremely original composer,” Korn said. “You can always hear the influence of Black music in his compositions.”

    Korn said one notable thing about Coleridge-Taylor is that the composer’s music weaves West African and European romantic styles together. He said Coleridge-Taylor’s obscurity can be partly attributed to the racial discrimination and biases that many believe still exist in the classical music world.

    “I do think that [Coleridge-Taylor] became marginalized because, in general, for Black composers, it was much harder to make it … in the classical music realm,” Korn said.

    In recent years, Coleridge-Taylor has been rediscovered. His music has been performed recently by the Minnesota Orchestra and the London Mozart Players, to name a few. He was also profiled in The New York Times.

    The concert is Sunday from 3 to 5 p.m. at the Waltham Government Center, located at 119 School St. Tickets are $29 for adults. Children younger than 17 will be admitted free of charge. For more information, see the Waltham Philharmonic Orchestra’s website.

  • Dot tenants push ballot measure to cap rent boosts at five percent

    By Nathan Metcalf

    Volunteers from Dorchester are gathering signatures at grocery stores, MBTA stops, and community centers in an effort to get a rent-control measure on the 2026 Massachusetts ballot that, if approved, would limit rent increases for most residential units to five percent a year, or the annual rise in the Consumer Price Index, whichever is lower.

    The bill would exempt owner-occupied buildings with four or fewer units and properties less than 10 years old. It would also repeal the 1994 law that outlawed rent control statewide, ended programs in Boston, Cambridge and Brookline, and barred new ones.

    Organizers have until Nov. 19 to collect the 74,574 signatures needed to put the petition on next year’s ballot.

    Supporters say the proposal, if made law, would give urgently needed relief to tenants struggling to afford housing, with many spending more than 30 percent of their income for rent. In Boston and Dorchester especially, advocates say, it’s essential to preserve working-class and immigrant communities that are now facing mounting displacement.

    For their part, opponents counter that rent caps would discourage new construction, reduce maintenance, and burden small property owners, worsening the shortage the measure aims to fix.

    Said Lori Hurlebaus of Fields Corner, a member of the resident-run alliance Dorchester Not for Sale, “We’ve been talking to people all over Dorchester who are feeling the pressure of rising rents. A lot of folks are worried about whether they can keep living in the neighborhoods they grew up in. This ballot campaign is about making sure they can stay.”

    Dorchester Not for Sale hosted a community dinner on Oct. 9 at the Vietnamese American Initiative for Development (VietAID) center in Fields Corner, where tenants and small property owners shared Vietnamese food and discussed strategy.

    Lan Le, a Vietnamese refugee who spent two decades in Dorchester before being priced out, said she has moved more than 15 times since arriving in the United States in 1981.

    “It made my family have to move out of Dorchester, which is where all the Asian community gather,” she said. “My mother doesn’t speak English, so it’s the best place for her to be in Dorchester, but because of the rent that we cannot afford, we had to move to Quincy.”

    Nelito Vaz, a tenant who has lived on Robinson Street for a decade, said his monthly rent has climbed from $1,600 to $2,150 over that time. “It’s very stressful,” he said. “When I pay the rent, I barely have money to afford other things that I need.”

    Despite already spending about half his income on rent, Vaz said he’s determined to stay among his Cape Verdean community in Dorchester. “That’s why I’m part of this organization,” he said, “so we can stay here and not get relocated.”

    Not everyone at the dinner was a renter. Rich LeBrun, a Dorchester resident who owns and lives in a two-family home in Ashmont Hill, supports rent control to protect both his tenants and his neighborhood.

    “In the last 20 years we’ve seen people that have been there for years and years be priced out,” he said. “As a small landlord, I see this as protecting my investment, because it’s protecting my neighborhood.”

    But many landlords and property groups say rent control would do more harm than good, warning it could drive up costs, discourage upkeep, and shrink the city’s housing supply.

    Leaders of the Small Property Owners Association, which helped repeal Massachusetts’s previous rent control law in 1994, argue that bringing it back would repeat what they call a failed experiment. The policy, in place from 1970 to 1994, “was a nightmare on all fronts,” said Vice President Amir Shahsavari, who noted that the association was founded by small, “mom-and-pop” landlords frustrated by what they saw as abuses under the old system. “History has shown that the policy itself is unworkable.”

    Tony Lopes, a Dorchester property manager who oversees approximately 30 units, said the effects would be especially damaging in neighborhoods like his.

    Of that earlier time, he said, “It led to higher rents, fewer available units, and discouraged new housing development. He added that rising insurance and tax costs make rent caps “unsustainable for local owners who rely on rents to send their kids to school or fund retirement.”

    Other landlords were blunter. Rick Martin, a Clam Point investor who has owned multiple two- and three-family homes in Dorchester since the 1990s, called rent control “an utter disaster for Boston” and said it would drive small owners out of the city.

    “If they’re going to bring back rent control, I want nothing of it,” he said. “You’re going to see people flock out of the rental industry left and right, and then you’re going to end up with dilapidated houses everywhere.”

    Tenant organizers dismissed those claims as fear-mongering from an industry long resistant to oversight.

    “This isn’t about punishing landlords,” said Jason Boyd, housing coordinator for the Dorchester-based coalition Action for Equity. He noted that the proposal exempts small, owner-occupied buildings and gives new developments a 10-year grace period. “It’s not targeting community members who live in the community,” he said. “It’s a simple and effective tool to protect tenants and allow people to plan.”

    Carolyn Chou, executive director of Homes for All Massachusetts, a statewide coalition of tenant and housing justice groups leading the Keep MA Home ballot campaign, said opponents are recycling outdated arguments.

    “We’ve heard the same scare tactics before, but this is 21st-century rent control,” she said. “Our communities can’t wait while people are being priced out of neighborhoods they built.”

    This story comes from a partnership between the Dorchester Reporter and the Boston University Department of Journalism.

    This article was originally published on October 22, 2025.