It’s been more than a year since The Pryde opened its doors in Boston’s Hyde Park neighborhood. And in that time, the former school building has become more than just an affordable housing option for older LGBTQ+ adults.
It’s become “the heart of Hyde Park,” Boston City Councilmember Enrique J. Pepén, who represents the neighborhood at City Hall, said.
“And the fact that used to be a school? And we took the opportunity to make that into affordable housing for our residents? That’s what we need to be doing across the city,” Pepén continued.
Bostonians could soon see more projects like The Pryde popping up across the city under a new ordinance that prioritizes converting surplus city property into affordable housing.
Flanked by advocates, Pepén, and other members of the City Council, Mayor Michelle Wu signed the language into law during a news conference at City Hall on Wednesday.
She positioned the ordinance as part of her administration’s ongoing effort to “[make] Boston a home for everyone.”
“Everything that we do, every investment that we make, every policy choice that we make is intended to root families in Boston and make sure that our families are also at home in every part of the city with access to every opportunity,” the Democratic mayor said.
Boston City Council President Ruthzee Louijeune, who helped shepherd the language through the legislative body, reflected on a conversation that she and Pepén had with students at her alma mater, Boston Latin School, earlier in the day.
Those students, who still lived at home with their parents, told the two city pols that they were worried about being able to afford to live in their hometown when the day came.
The new ordinance would go some distance toward making that possible, Louijeune said.
“We have a responsibility to respond and to do the work of responding to our young people who are worried about whether they have a future in this city,” Louijeune said.
While the ordinance codifies it, city officials have already done some of that work, Wu said.
She pointed to the “long overdue” construction of the Boston Public Library’s Chinatown branch, which is slated to include 110 new affordable housing units on the floors above.
“We’re excited to do the same with upcoming renovations to the Uphams Corner and West End branch libraries,” Wu said
The city also recently held a ribbon-cutting for a former police station in Mattapan that now includes 40 rental and owner-occupied units.
With space at a premium, city and state officials alike have looked to surplus property to help ease Massachusetts’s ongoing housing crisis.
Gov. Maura Healey announced in August that she’d freed up 450 acres of unused state land, all the better to build as many as 3,500 new housing units statewide.
A 2024 report card by the Boston Foundation, Boston Indicators and Boston University’s Initiative on Cities found that vacant public land could hold the keys to the construction of tens of thousands of new housing units.
“In a state facing a housing shortage of 200,000 homes by 2030, this utilization of public land in the Greater Boston Area has incredible potential,” the researchers wrote. “At higher densities, or with greater utilization of this vacant land, far more units could be built as well.”
Former City Councilmember Tito Jackson, who also worked on the issue, said much the same on Wednesday, observing that “we are not making any more land that I know of.”
With that in mind, the new ordinance is an opportunity to “align our values with our valuables in the city of Boston,” Jackson said.
Gretchen Van Ness, the executive director of LGBTQ Senior Housing Inc., which spearheaded The Pryde development, had some short and simple advice for city officials and her fellow advocates.
“All I can say is let’s do this,” she quipped. “Let’s do this everywhere.”
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