The Big Picture

We’ve been saying it for a long time. Housing laws pushed by legal aid lawyers are designed to put private housing providers out of business so that tax-funded subsidized housing developers can take over.

Some of you may think we are paranoid nuts. So we offer you:

Exhibit No. 1:

Rooming houses.
Between 1965 and 1985, Massachusetts lost 96% of its rooming house units, the largest drop in the country.

Exhibit No. 2:

Willa Mae Brothers.
She’s the black landlady who was jailed last year after Boston boarded up her rooming houses. All four of her rooming houses have been bought by – you guessed it – non-profit tax-funded agencies, to be turned into homeless shelters, the government’s version of rooming houses.

Exhibit No. 3:

Cost. Typical room: $400 a month. Typical shelter bed: $1,300 a month.
Rooming houses are almost gone, low-income neighborhoods face rampant deterioration and abandonment, advocates cry for more high-cost subsidized housing, no changes in housing laws. Does 1 + 1 = 2?