east boston

Last Wednesday, members of the Grid Management Tenant Association came together in East Boston alongside housing rights activists from advocacy group City Life/Vida Urbana (CLVU) to rally against what they say are no fault evictions in their building.

Earlier this month Gabriela “Gigi” Coletta, a former city council staffer, was declared the winner of the race for Senator Lydia Edwards vacated city council seat. Coletta has vowed to push for ambitious change in City Hall.

Unofficial Election Department results show Gabriela Coletta winning with 57% of the vote, with Tania Del Rio garnering 33%.

District 1 City Council candidates Gabriela Coletta and Tania Del Rio came together in an East Boston ward committee event aimed at getting their message to constituents and helping committee members decide on an endorsement for the district.

Despite a steady rain, the annual Día de los Muertos celebration took place with a parade, crafts for children, face painting, dance performances and live bands at the Veronica Robles Cultural Center (VROCC) in East Boston on Saturday.

Just days before a Boston Planning and Development Agency vote on plans to develop housing at the former Suffolk Downs race track, a coalition called the People United in East Boston for Liberating and Organizing (PUEBLO), of which City Life/Vida Urbana is a member, protested at the site.

The protesters, who represented activist organizations like City Life/Vida Urbana, Dorchester Not for Sale and the Massachusetts Sierra Club, oppose the redevelopment proposal for Suffolk Downs by HYM Investment Group, saying the addition of luxury housing would price the neighborhood’s current residents — mainly working-class Latino immigrants —out of the area.

Suffolk Downs forces us to grapple with the central questions of gentrification: Who is this development for? What kind of city are we? Who belongs here?

Many longtime East Boston residents fear that new developments will instead bring displacement in the predominantly Latino and Italian neighborhood.

Suffolk Downs, a vast tract of vacant land in East Boston, could soon become Boston’s newest neighborhood, with 10,000 units of housing planned for an area more than four times the size of the Seaport District.

The Boston City Council’s Committee on Planning, Development and Transportation held a public hearing on a neighborhood zoning initiative and master plan Monday night in East Boston. Nearly 200 people attended the meeting at Mario Umana Academy, led by the hearing’s lead sponsor, Councilor Lydia Edwards.

Mayor Martin Walsh’s office, in partnership with the Boston Planning and Development Agency, announced last Wednesday that it will launch new planning initiatives this year in Mattapan, East Boston, Downtown and Newmarket.