Fineberg Tenants Protest ICA-Linked Landlord's Greed In Brighton

Boston MA

26 May, 2022

12:42 AM

Description

On its website, the Freddie Mac organization states that "America relies on Freddie Mac to support the housing market and the nation's renters" and `since being chartered by Congress in 1970, we have fulfilled our mission to…promote housing affordability." And in a Sept. 17, 2014 GlobeSt.com website article, John Jordan noted that Capital One Multifamily Finance "provided 19 Freddie Mac fixed-rate loans totaling $134.4 million for the Fineberg Companies of Wellesley, MA to refinance a portfolio of 25 multifamily properties, all located within the Boston region," including "a $21.2-million loan for a group of four properties on Chiswick Road and Commonwealth Avenue" in Brighton. Yet despite Freddie Mac claiming to be an organization that "promotes housing affordability" and Capital One Multifamily Finance providing "19 Freddie Mac fixed-rate loans totaling $134.4 million to the Fineberg Companies" in 2014, tenants renting apartments in Fineberg's buildings in Boston's Allston-Brighton neighborhood don't think Fineberg is providing "affordable" apartments for them in 2022. So on May 22, 2022, tenants living in Fineberg's buildings—despite temperatures being over 90 degrees—spent a few hours of their Sunday holding a rally in front of the Jackson Mann Community Center at Union Square in Allston-Brighton to demand lower rents. In Boston, landlords have increased rents by 20 percent this year; and as many as 75 percent of tenants in Allston-Brighton are paying more than 30 percent of their incomes in housing costs. As a result, landlords like Fineberg are driving working-class tenants of all racial backgrounds out of the Allston-Brighton neighborhood in 2022. After Fineberg proposed—in the absence of rent control in Boston—rent increases for some Fineberg tenants of up to $400 per month in 2022, members of the Fineberg Tenants Union attempted to collectively negotiate with Fineberg for lower the proposed rent increases. But Fineberg has only been willing to reduce the proposed rent increases for some tenants, individually, by only between $20 and $50. At the May 22, 2022 rally, Fineberg Tenants Union, Allston-Brighton Tenants United and Greater Boston Tenant Union organizers and members, as well as Massachusetts State Rep. Mike Connolly all spoke briefly and urged Boston tenants to organize tenant unions and form united tenant fronts. They also led, in a spirited way, tenants in chants which voiced opposition to corporate landlord greed and excessive rent hikes and expressed support for restoration of rent control and tenant empowerment in Boston. According to an Oct. 22, 2020 Daily Free Press article by Hassan Ghanny, Fineberg Companies then owned "roughly 30 apartment buildings in Greater Boston" and in 2020 Fineberg Tenants Union members alleged "widespread shoddy living conditions across all of Fineberg's buildings in Allston, Brighton, Brookline, and Fenway," such as "broken windows, inadequate heat, chronic stolen packages, persistent mold and even mushrooms growing in buildings." Yet "a rough estimate of the value of Fineberg's real estate holdings in Boston alone is $223M." According to a follow-up March 22, 2021 Daily Free Press article by Aaron Velasco, an honorary trustee of Boston's Institute of Contemporary Art [ICA] museum, Gerald Fineberg, is the founder and owner of Fineberg Companies. And, as a 2021 Hyperallergic website article noted, "Tenant organizers say" ICA Honorary Trustee Fineberg now owned "52 apartment buildings with a combined 1,200 units in the Greater Boston area." Over a year before last Sunday's rally, the Fineberg Tenants Union had previously held a March 2021 rally outside the ICA museum, in the gentrified South Boston-Waterfront neighborhood, to protest how the Fineberg real estate firm, of the then-ICA board of trustees member and current ICA Honorary Trustee Fineberg, was treating its tenants. But the "non-profit" and state and federally tax-exempted Boston "Institute of Contemporary Art" still doesn't seem particularly interested in the contemporary rental hike concerns of the Boston working-class tenants and working-class artists of all racial backgrounds who live in the apartment buildings of ICA Honorary Trustee Fineberg. One reason might be because ICA executives are being paid a lot higher total compensations annually by the "non-profit" and tax-exempt museum, whose board of trustees has historically included Gerald Fineberg, than what the majority of tenants living in Fineberg buildings earn annually. Between July 1, 2019 and June 30, 2020, for example, ICA Director/Ex-Officio Jill Medvedow was paid a total annual compensation of $913,689 by the ICA and ICA Chief Curator Eva Respini was paid a total annual compensation of $256,383 by the ICA, according to ICA's Form 990 financial filing for 2019. In addition, during some of the same years that the ICA trustee's real estate firm was profiting from raising rents excessively and displacing tenants in the Boston apartment buildings it owned, the total annual revenues of the ICA—which owns over $37.5 million in corporate stocks and bonds and has an endowment of over $43 million—exceeded its total annual expenses; and ICA's total net assets increased. Between July 1, 2019 and June 30, 2020, for example, ICA's total annual revenue of $18.7 million exceeded its total annual expenses of $17.4 million by $1.3 million; while ICA's net assets increased from $101.7 million to $102.1 million during the same period. And one reason that Boston and Massachusetts elected officials—like the ICA museum—have done little, historically, to block landlords and real estate firms like Fineberg from charging Boston tenants inflated rents since the mid-1990s is that the campaign committees of most Boston and Massachusetts elected officials have been funded with "contributions" from individual landlords and individual executives of real estate firms like Fineberg. Between 2002 and 2019, for example, Fineberg executives gave over 80 contributions, totaling over $35,000 to the campaign committees of political candidates in Massachusetts—including 7 contributions, totaling $3,500 to former Boston City Council Housing Committee Chair Josh Zakim, 2 contributions, totaling $1,000 to former Boston Mayor Marty Walsh, 5 contributions, totaling $1,750 to Massachusetts Governor Charley Baker and 7 contributions, totaling $3,500 to former Boston Mayor Thomas Menino. And, coincidentally, in 2022 former Massachusetts Governor and Bain Capital Senior Advisor Deval Patrick also now sits on the ICA board of trustees that ICA Honorary Trustee and Boston Landlord Gerald Fineberg historically sat on.