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South Boston pols named in discrimination suit

February 16, 2011

By Staff Reporter

By Jim Smith

BOSTON — A coalition of civil rights activists in Boston has filed a federal suit challenging a 1998 deal that gives the Irish-American community of South Boston a majority of housing funds generated by development along the South Boston Waterfront.

Seven groups, including the Rainbow Coalition Party and the Lawyers Committee for Civil Rights Under Law, are claiming that City Council President Jim Kelly, State Senator Stephen Lynch and State Representative Jack Hart, all of South Boston, conspired to discriminate against minority residents of the city when they entered into a memorandum of understanding with city officials under which South Boston would receive 51 percent of the so-called "linkage funds," which is the money developers are required to pay toward a public fund used to build affordable housing units in the city.

The memorandum of understanding was hammered out in 1998 between city officials and the three South Boston leaders in exchange for the residents’ acceptance of the massive construction of a $700 million Boston Convention Center and related waterfront development in their midst.

As reported in the Irish Echo in June, a firestorm of controversy erupted on May 24 when the Boston Globe first reported on that agreement and questioned the compensation package’s fairness to other sections of the city.

The lawsuit, filed on Aug. 24 in U.S. District Court, alleges that the agreement violates the Federal Fair Housing Act, since most residents of South Boston, the primary beneficiaries of the proposed affordable housing, are white.

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The lawsuit also targets the South Boston Betterment Trust, the non-profit group that has been collecting community benefits and linkage payments from developers. One of that group’s primary goals is to build affordable housing for longtime South Boston residents who are at risk of being displaced from the neighborhood because of the high cost of housing.

Writing in the South Boston Tribune last week, Kelly said that liberal activists are again playing "the race card" and that "on almost every page of the lawsuit, discrimination is alleged merely because the majority of South Boston residents are white."

Kelly said that he, along with Lynch and Hart, were "looking forward to defending ourselves and our reputations" against what he described as a "frivolous" and "racist" lawsuit. "If there be any justice, the court will dismiss this matter immediately," Kelly said.

Meanwhile, skyrocketing rents are now forcing many working-class families out of South Boston. Leaders say that about 1,500 units of affordable housing will be needed over the next 10 years to prevent further displacement of longtime residents.

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