Housing as History: Villa Victoria and the Fenway Community Development Corporation

Boston has been a national leader in efforts to bring much needed public and affordable housing to its residents. However, the city’s housing legacy is as complicated as it is innovative. This is the second program in a four-part series that will look at the history of six housing sites across the city and examine the conditions for affordable and public housing today, highlighting the challenges—and opportunities—that lie ahead for Boston.

In this program, Mario Luis Small, Grafstein Professor of Sociology, Harvard University; Mathew Thall, founding Executive Director, Fenway CDC; Mayra I. Negrón-Roche, COO, Inquilinos Boricuas en Acción will discuss Villa Victoria and the Fenway CDC.

In the 1960s and 1970s Boston struggled to stem urban flight and a landscape of deteriorating housing stock. Massive redevelopment projects, such as the razing of the West End, sent shockwaves through the city. By the mid-1960s, the South End found itself the focus of redevelopment plans. A group of mostly Puerto Rican residents began to meet and then incorporated as the Emergency Tenants’ Council, which became Inquilinos Boricuas en Acción, Inc. (IBA). In 1969, following a widespread campaign, the IBA won the right to serve as the developer for their neighborhood and; using the architecture of Puerto Rico as inspiration, built Villa Victoria. A few years later and few blocks away, the Fenway neighborhood faced the Fenway Urban Renewal Plan (FURP), which planned to clear sections of the neighborhood. local residents sued the city to block FURP and won the right to have a neighborhood-elected board become part of the decision-making process. Out of these efforts came the Fenway CDC with a mission to develop and maintain affordable housing and advocate on behalf of a vibrant and diverse community.

This program is made possible by the generosity of Mass Humanities and the Joint Center for Housing Studies at Harvard University.