Activists protest Kenmore landlord

Activists protest Kenmore landlord

Landlord Francis Colannino was invited by the Forestvale Tenant Association this weekend to negotiate a twenty year contract of affordability for Forestvale or a sale of the property to a non-profit organization.

According to members if the Tenant association, both these proposals would maintain the affordability of homes while simultaneously allowing Colannino to make even more profit on the property than he has in the past.

Colannino denied the invitation to negotiate and on Saturday, 60 tenants and community supporters protested outside his office building at 690 Beacon st. in Kenmore Square.

"Mr. Colannino wants to terminate three project-based Section 8 contracts with terms ending in September of 2002," said Mark Pedulla, tenant organizer from City Life in Jamaica Plain. "If these contracts are terminated, we'll lose 108 units of permanent affordable housing."

According to Pedulla, soon there will be nowhere for people to go for affordable housing. Pedulla also says that if Colannino does accept the tenants terms, "he won't go hungry either."

The Forestvale housing complex falls under the project-based Section 8 contract with the department of Housing and Urban Development that allows the tenants to pay 30 percent of their income towards rent while the remaining amount is subsidized by the state.

Tenants argue that "Mr. Colannino can make huge additional profits by signing on for long-term Section 8 contract with HUD under the "Mark up to Market" program.

"This will give him a $400 rent increase right now," said Pedulla. "But in turn, he must sign for a 20-year-contract for affordability."

According to the association's calculations, Colannino will accrue $6.4 million in four years from a total of $8.4 million in revenues.

But Colannino, who in a letter to the Tenant Association on September 10 said that "Forestvales Limited Partnership's commitment to provide housing to the community has not changed and that we want all residents who wish to remain members of the Forestvale community to fell secure in their homes and comfortable about their future here," has apparently reneged on his word.

Tenants have witnessed Colannino pay off hid HUD mortgage and cancel the Section 8 contract at his Waverly development in Allston-Brighton. Rents shot up and tenants at Forestvale fear the same will happen to them.

"I'm here in support of tenants who live at Forestvale," said Norma Rosario of Mission Hill. "I've seen so many families displaced and forced to leave their homes. No more. We will not be pushed out of the city."

After rent control was abolished in Boston in the early '90s, rents skyrocketed making affordable housing a scarcity.

Colannino says that if rents were to rise as a result of terminating the HUD contracts, tenants would all receive mobile "enhanced" vouchers that could be used throughout the city.

But according to the tenants, the vouchers are not the answer to affordable housing. They are more problematic than that.

"The problem with the vouchers is that although they are portable, they would pay the same as a normal voucher outside of Forestvale," said Pedulla. "this makes it very difficult for people to use them anywhere in the city."

The tenants claim that half of Boston's Housing Authority vouchers are returned because tenants can't find a place to use them.

The tenants association's message is clear. As protesters chanted slogans like "Colannino you can't hide, JP won't be gentrified," and "Housing for people, not just for profit", they will not give up until they win.

"What Colannino's trying to do is legal, but extremely unethical," said Steven Weinstein, Tenant Association leader. "We're fighting an economic battle with a moral argument and we will win."

Photo (Activists protest)