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A Brief History of City Life/Vida Urbana

City Life/Vida Urbana is proof that local residents, when active and organized, can significantly improve their own lives. Created in the Jamaica Plain neighborhood of Boston in 1973 by political activists influenced by the civil rights, feminist, and anti-Vietnam War movements, City Life/Vida Urbana's successful strikes and eviction blockings quickly made the organization visible with tenants, landlords, urban planners, and public officials. Its accomplishments include:

City Life/Vida Urbana Eviction Free and Community Controlled Housing Zones of the 1980s and 1990s inspired similar campaigns in Boston and other parts of the country.

  • Utilizing a radical organizing methodology, CLVU helped develop hundreds of permanent affordable units in Jamaica Plain.

  • City Life/Vida Urbana successfully challenged major institutions who violated tenants' rights, such as the Inspectional Services Department, the Resolution Trust Corporation, and the Dime Savings Bank.

  • Our resident-led research into mortgage lending patterns uncovered widespread discrimination against Latino mortgage-seekers and pressured the three largest banks in Boston to increase loans to Latinos by 25% each year.

City Life/Vida Urbana commitment to community control of local resources, means that it has always been involved in a wide range of struggles: organizing for public education and welfare rights, working against racism, supporting grassroots labor organizing, empowering youth, and building international solidarity with justice movements in Central America, Palestine, and South Africa.

 

In the 1970s, Jamaica Plain, like many urban neighborhoods, faced disinvestment and neglect. City Life/Vida Urbana’s first major battles were against the Southwest Corridor project; blocking evictions of long-time residents; and bringing parents together to play a positive and unifying role during the struggle against school segregation in Boston.

converIn the 1980s, Jamaica Plain parks, triple deckers and convenience to downtown promised investors and speculators hefty profits in condo conversions marketed to young professionals; thus, JP’s housing market entered a cycle of speculation and condominiumsion.

 

City Life/Vida Urbana members declared Boston’s first Eviction Free Zone (EFZ) in Jamaica Plain, preventing hundreds of evictions. The EFZ later became the model for anti-displacement campaigns in Roxbury, East Boston, Cambridge and other parts of the country.

 

City Life/Vida Urbana played a key role in a seven-year fight to ensure that the Bowditch School, a vacant municipal building in JP, be used for affordable housing instead of condo development. In 1990, the Bowditch building opened as a 45-unit rooming housing for previously homeless people.

The late 80s market plunge led to an epidemic of arson-for-profit and foreclosures. This new cycle of disinvestment spurred City Life/Vida Urbana’s Community Controlled Housing Zone, an intensive effort to transform the patterns of ownership and power in Hyde Square. A major victory was an organizing campaign against the Smith brothers, which led to their conviction for arson.

 

City Life/Vida Urbana also led coalitions that uncovered the unethical practices of financiers, speculators, and government entities, like Dime Savings Bank and Resolution Trust Corporation.

The loss of rent control in 1994 sparked a dramatic increase in local rents and home sale prices. It also sparked City Life/Vida Urbana's Campaign of Conscience, which was launched as a vehicle to raise community awareness of the housing crisis and gain broad community support for affordable housing initiatives. This was a collaboration with the Jamaica Plain Neighborhood Development Corporation, a community partner that continues to be a strong voice for housing justice in Jamaica Plain. The Campaign gained attention when we asked landlords to sign a public pledge to keep rents reasonable.

As tenant organizing grew under the Campaign of Conscience, City Life/Vida Urbana began bringing together tenant leaders from surrounding neighborhoods. The Tenant Organizing Program is continuing the fight against displacement and for restoration of rent regulation through Anti-Displacement Zones.

Additionally, among its many achievements, City Life/Vida Urbana:

  • Established one of the first programs linking housing conditions to family health outcomes and counseled more than 4,000 families on housing problems that affect their health, including lead paint poisoning and conditions that aggravate childhood asthma (1988-now);

  • Sponsored annual Radical Organizing Conferences that bring together grassroots tenant leaders, labor and radical community organizers.

  • Organized a multi-racial network of 400 parents of Boston Public School students to increase grassroots participation on the Student Assignment Task Force, School Site Councils, and in discussions with the Mayor and Superintendent around school quality;

  • Founded the Massachusetts Community and Banking Council’s Task Force on Latino Lending. As a result, our first-time Latino homebuyer education program graduates 150 new potential homeowners each year. (1995-present); and,

  • Is a founding member of the Boston Tenant Coalition (BTC), which since the early 1990s has advocated for implementation of proposals that give low-income tenants in rent-controlled apartments priority for housing subsidies; give special rehabilitation loans to certain landlords in exchange for affordable rents; and would change city income targeting practices so that those most needy are those who are most eligible for affordable housing.

  • Participated in voter mobilization in fall 2004, where new voters were registered in the Jackson Square and Eggleston Square neighborhoods, resulting in a 26% higher voter turnout compared to the election in 2000.