Keith Tyler

Class, Power, and Social Change

November 20, 1998

Since the beginning of 1998, Northeastern University has found itself in the center of a hot issue. With the latest in the school's recent plan to expand its campus, it has incurred the wrath of the next-door community of Roxbury. The university wants to build a residential housing complex, called Davenport Commons, on the south side of Columbus Avenue which would hold over 800 students. Once the plan was approved, however, Roxbury residents began to protest, embroiling the school and the city of Boston in a political and possibly a legal battle. As a five-year Northeastern resident student and campus leader, I feel it important to examine this issue, from a student perspective.

A Roxbury political action group known as the South-End Neighborhood Action Program (SNAP) has been at the forefront of the activism, rallies, and negotiations which represent those members of the Roxbury community who are opposed to Northeastern building there. They object to NU's building plan for a number of reasons. In recent months, they have been arguing and negotiating with Northeastern and the Boston Redevelopment Authority (BRA), demanding changes to the current proposal before they will consider dropping their objections.

The range of their objections originates from the order of events which led to the BRA's approval of the Northeastern plan. In 1986, Roxbury officials formed an agreement with the City of Boston, defining a procedure which the city would follow in developing on (or approving development plans for) publicly owned land in the community. This process included defining how the use of public land would be allocated, and provided for the community to give input as to the building plan and determine its usage.

Unfortunately, according to SNAP and their supporters, the City broke this agreement in the process which led to Northeastern being approved to build on the land intended for Davenport Commons. The city, they say, deliberately limited the time frame and publicizing for submission of proposals to build on this land. A Roxbury coalition approached the BRA and managed to hold public meetings with BRA and Northeastern's developers. This coalition recommended that the student housing aspect of the project be sharply reduced. The BRA (as well as Northeastern) disapproved of their recommendation and discarded it. According to Pat Cusick, director of SNAP, the "wheels were greased" to give Northeastern easy approval to build on the land.

SNAP and many community representatives, obviously, are extremely unhappy about the current situation. Although they are currently still negotiating with NU to get us to change the project, they are also working in other ways to put pressure on Northeastern and the city into capitulating to their demands. SNAP has collected over 800 signatures on a petition opposing the Northeastern construction. Some community leaders are threatening to "seize" the land by way of a sit-in on the vacant lot, reminiscent of a similar protest rally in the 60s. They have also called in the US Department of Housing and Urban Development (HUD) and asked them to investigate the case for evidence of discriminatory practices on the part of the BRA and the city. Were HUD to find such evidence, it would have the power to stop all federal housing funds to Boston.

Roxbury leaders have referred to this fiasco as an issue of racial discrimination by the city against the people of the community. Admittedly, the city has been less than respectful in dealing with them, some of whom are state senators and city councilors. But if there is no evidence of goodwill on the part of Northeastern, then SNAP and their supporters are also showing poor appreciation of the issues involved.

Why is Northeastern interested in expanding its campus and in building new buildings? The reason for the new construction plans, which include other buildings than Davenport, stems from four years ago. In 1995, for the first time in memory, the university discovered that, out of the upperclass students whom they had approved for housing for the coming year, there were 200 students whom the university could not find space for in its existing residence halls. This was not a simple issue of bad math on the school's part. Due to a decree by former Northeastern President John Curry, all freshmen are guaranteed a place in on-campus housing if requested. For the 1995-6 academic year, the freshman demand for housing moved from just over 50% to close to 66%. As a result, ResLife's estimates of available campus housing were off by 200 spots. To fix the situation, the school was forced to re-open its rented housing on the top floors of the Huntington Ave. YMCA, who had asked NU to move out. For further space, White Hall on Forsyth Street, which had housed graduate students for many years, was split into half graduate and half freshman housing. By the following year, graduate students were removed from campus housing entirely and White Hall became an all-freshman building.

This has only become worse in the three years since then. The department has used stopgap solutions over this time to alleviate the problem. Along with the space rented from the YMCA, Northeastern has been housing freshman students in leased space at an Emmanuel College women's hall, located a mile away from campus, since freshman demand for housing passed the 80% mark in 1996. In 1997, NU began leasing individual apartments in nearby buildings, and offering these "leased apartments," essentially a combination of on-campus and off-campus housing, to resident students. In 1998, when freshman demand reached almost 85% of the freshman class, NU began leasing space at a residence hall at Wentworth University. In the meantime, the school redefined its standards of room space per person and increased the capacity of many campus rooms. Rooms which had been single rooms became double rooms, and some double rooms became triple rooms.

These were all intended to be temporary solutions to Northeastern's housing problem. The only real solution, as student advocacy groups like RSA reiterated, was for the university to invest in building new residence halls. The newest residence hall on campus, Willis Hall, was built in the early 1980s. At the time (ca. 1996), Northeastern was already concentrating on three new buildings: an academic building (Classroom), a research center (Egan), and a recreation center (Marino). There was no room in the planning stage until 1997. In the summer of 1997, the Davenport Commons project was announced. It was followed by the announcement that fall of the West Campus project (now being built). Since the uproar over the Davenport project, and the resulting expectation that it may take longer than expected, NU has suggested two additional housing projects, which may begin construction after West Campus is done, if the projected time for Davenport goes beyond fall of 2000.

Even with the provisions made to stem the growth of the housing crisis so far, demand for housing has increased. With a significantly new housing selection process initiated for the 1998-9 year (a lottery-pick process), the wait list (those who "lost" the lottery) for upperclass housing reached 1000. In comparison, there were 1350 total upperclass housing spots available, a ratio of about 55%. With West Campus opening in fall 1999, ResLife estimates that 80% of applicants will receive on-campus housing. Eventually, as more halls are built, the school will endear to release its dependency on leased properties, and the housing overflow will disappear. The university has set a goal of 5000 spots for on campus freshman and upperclass housing.

Davenport Commons originally was planned to hold 879 students. This number included 235 spots for graduate students, bringing them back to the residential community. Around the outside of the building, integrated into its shape, were 25 two-story townhouse style rental apartments, for public availability. This is remarkable; there is not known to be another plan for a building where a block of independent rental units are combined with a university residence hall. Northeastern and the city tout the project as a model for college and community cooperation. In any case, it comprises a good part of the path towards the 5000-bed goal. West Campus, in comparison, will hold around 600 students.

Some of the compromises offered by SNAP have suggested cutting the number of students at Davenport significantly. A proposal in March to cut the number of students to 400 was flatly rejected by NU. Another proposal is rumored to have been offered in the past month which allows for around 550 students. The opponents want to see 50% of the Northeastern building to go towards for-sale and rental units, which Northeastern finds unacceptable, as it would cut the number of student spots. Cusick insists that even if NU and SNAP were to come to a compromise, they would still have a problem with housing students in the area. They "don't want to see students here, period."

Cusick insists that SNAP is not "anti-student," even after making comments like those above. But he admits that if the BRA had followed the SENHI process, the community (i.e. SNAP) would never have approved a university residence hall on the land. His objection is not to the idea of students living in Roxbury in itself, but the idea of having hundreds of them in one area, apparently even if "confined" in a sense to one building. Nevertheless, there seems to be a clear animosity and/or indifference towards students, or towards the housing crunch that has been their misfortune for the past three and a half years.

Cusick has made alternate suggestions for where Northeastern could build a new residence hall. He points to "air space" above the railroad tracks at Ruggles Station, which apparently NU has the right to build in. He also points to other bits of land on campus, mostly parking lots, as viable locations for building. These suggestions are heavily anti-student. Northeastern has already done much construction on top of former parking lots. Egan, Classroom, Marino, and the Centennial Common as well were all built on former parking lots. West Campus is also being built on a former parking lot. Meanwhile, the commuting majority of the student population are crying foul. Parking has become a depleted resource on the Northeastern campus. Suggesting that NU build on the few parking lots it has left is not helpful to the nearly 10,000 Northeastern students who drive to campus from outlying cities. Northeastern, of course, has to make some considerations for those students; it's not as if they can force them to use public transit or move closer.

Northeastern has tried to impress the positive aspects they see with the Davenport project onto the Roxbury opponents. Aside from providing public rental units, NU expects that the construction of new housing will reduce the number of students currently living in Roxbury apartments, by bringing them back into the residence hall system. Hearing of this, SNAP has moved the BRA to ask Northeastern how it plans to ensure that students will actually move out of Roxbury apartments and that they will be available to local people. BRA is now asking NU to develop a strategy to prevent students from renting off campus as part of the Davenport proposal.

This reflects a perspective of Northeastern's students as not being individual people, but almost as tools of the university who can be controlled by the school. BRA, at the behest of SNAP, is asking Northeastern to tell its students where to live and where not to live. Already, there is some concern among students that the administration is not interested in their opinions; for Northeastern to begin a campaign like this would make things worse.

In other parts of the city, this expectation does not exist. For example, in Allston-Brighton, the BRA approved a Boston University project to build an 800-student residence hall. BU actually enjoys wide support from the community for the project, which nearby residents expect will free up rental units and condominiums, and allow "regular professionals and families" to return to the area. Across the city, politicians and community leaders are calling on universities to build more residence halls to relieve the pressure on rental rates (which naturally jumped somewhat after the elimination of rent control in 1996­7).

While SNAP is fighting Northeastern, and its resident students who are packed like sardines or exiled to live in distant places, it is encouraging development on an $80 million project which will include a movie theater, hotel, and commercial space. Although SNAP has alluded fears that the Northeastern housing plan, which will bring 800 students into an economically depressed area, may serve to gentrify the area, this commercial development has received SNAP's praise, even though it will displace companies which currently exist on the land. Northeastern, in response to SNAP demands that the Davenport project likewise include more commercial space, pointed out that existing stores in the area are not doing well, and more commercial space might push existing shops out of the area. Likewise, the demand to increase the number of rental and ownership units will only drive up prices as it will become less financially possible to offer them at low-to-moderate rates.

The land, which has been vacant for 30 years, is not likely to be the target of a better proposal anytime soon, says NU. Other recent proposals for building commercial areas or low-income housing areas in Roxbury have either been impractical or unsuccessful. Cusick doesn't agree with NU's statement, and many SNAP supporters say they would prefer the lot remain vacant than to have the current Davenport plan built.

SNAP's main drive in their opposition to Northeastern's Davenport project is that the BRA and Northeastern have both been disrespectful to the community. They maintain that both to a large extent are ignoring the demands of Roxbury residents, and that the university and the city are unresponsive. However, SNAP, despite its claims to the contrary, has a strong anti-student attitude. They are equally inconsiderate of Northeastern's students, who are plagued by a three-year housing crunch, and of Northeastern's obligations not only to its on-campus students but also its commuter students. SNAP does not have any incentive to appreciate this situation, and the indifference between these two sides will only serve to worsen the situation for both. Until then, the resident students of Northeastern will still be bearing the brunt of all this.