Several neighborhood organizations, including JP Progressives and the Jamaica Plain Neighborhood Development Corporation (JPNDC), are co-sponsoring a forum on inequality that will take place April 9, according to a press release.
The other co-sponsors of the event, which will be moderated by DigBoston news editor and former Gazette columnist Chris Faraone, are Jobs with Justice and Action for Regional Equity. Discussions will take place on local strategies to raise wages and challenge income and wealth disparities.
“Economic inequality is growing across our nation. Here in JP, we see how hard it is for people to live on low wages—even with two or three jobs,” states the press release. “We see small businesses struggle as chains gain a foothold. We see neighbors pushed out by rising rents and condo conversion. And we see the impact all this has on the young people growing up in a quickly changing environment.”
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"Condo conversion" is not a direct cause of displacement, it is a symptom. If we want to keep poor and middle class people in JP, we need to build enough housing so that the rich are not bidding against the rest of us for the tiny number of units that come on the market every year.
Affordable housing means density, which means building bigger and taller and ending the constant bickering over "massing" and "shadows."